I've been playing games for a large majority of my life, so when I tell you that I've come to a revelation that has shocked me to my gaming core, the part of me that is larger than almost any other, you may begin to appreciate where I'm coming from. I'd like you to bear with me, we'll be touching all over the place (but not on little kids or women, because that's illegal).

I'll begin with MMOs, as I recently (approximately six months ago) quit World of Warcraft again. There was a very good reason for it: everything in the game could be broken down to a monotonous task that I was to perform, one way or another, for hours upon hours at a time. For the most part, this was entirely self- motivated. I simply wanted to have better gear / stats / in-game rep than my friends. Or anyone I happened to run across. I wasn't very good at it, which made The Grind even more unbearable, as did the fact that I'm not very good at muti-tasking. Even so, day in and day out I would find myself staring at my trusted laptop for days of my life, gathering Signets, Badges of Justice and cold hard gold.

Eventually, I realized how monotonous it all was, and growing increasingly resentful toward The Grind, I branched out, looking to other forms of electronic distraction to satiate my love of the medium and was shocked when I found that I was not enjoying any form of games. I had been tainted by an MMO, and was only beginning to feel the cold fear that gripped as intense as any phobia. A fear that I have only now come to describe as "The Grind". I wrote about this fear briefly in an earlier blog, but the more I have come to play, the more I have identified and isolated the feeling.



For example, when I sit down to play an adventure game, I will normally attempt to collect all the pieces of heart, or masks, or stars, whatever the game has to offer. Normally, this is driven by my own competitive nature, my need to find more or apply myself more to a game than my friends, even if I don't directly know someone who is currently playing the game. I need bragging rights for when I meet the only other person to have played this game to the end, let alone to 100% completion. But when I realize what I'm doing, that I'm simply going through a mediocre, monotonous process that doesn't even touch the underlying narrative or sometimes even the primary game mechanic, I find myself afraid, for I have encountered The Grind in the wild once more.

I find the same gripping terror when I play puzzle games (incredibly Grind-driven), or any game with a High Score. I found it in the movie "The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters" when Steve Wiebe drew out maps of each stage of DK to maximize his potential path. When I played WoW and even Pokemon, I made spreadsheets of gear, or IVs, or charted the most effective opposition to certain offenses in Halo. I've even found the fear in Audiosurf, being drawn to Stealth Mono mode (as there is a definitive ending!) and attempting to hit every single color bar to get the best score. I live for this in games, I feed off it, and once I realize what I'm doing, how I'm mutilating the games that I love so much, I'm disgusted with myself, and afraid that I won't be able to stop, that I'll continue ruining games in this way for myself long into the future.

It's truly terrifying when you realize that every game you play is nothing more than a repetitive mechanism cleverly (or not) disguised by plot, style, and the occasional non-stat driven multiplayer. Think closely about your favorite games, I think you'll be just as frightened as I to discover how much time you waste on the same shit, over and over.