Grinding, in addition to something you do on the dance floor or with unprocessed wheat, is a pejorative term for overly repetitive and un-fun actions in gaming. Say, killing a hundred slimes in Dragon Warrior to save up for that sweet suit of Full Plate, or doing Battlegrounds over and over to gain Honor. The essence of grinding is doing (ACTION) over and over for an unreasonable amount of time until (THING) happens. When it gets bad it can take hours of repetition to gain a single level/piece of equipment/puffy pirate shirt. Note that killing stuff to gain XP is not grinding in and of itself – it has to be extremely repetitive and deeply boring before you can call it that. Some games can actually make leveling fun.

To be fair, there are arguments in favor of grinding. The first is an issue of pacing – if you start the game with everything unlocked, you have nothing to play for. A slow gain of power throughout the game keeps it fresh by giving the player new abilities every so often. Time between new abilities also gives the player a chance to learn how to use them to their fullest – imagine being dropped headfirst into a game that starts with ten different abilities. Grinding can also be good storytelling – the best way to convey that a character is growing in the story is to have him actually grow and become capable. The other argument is, well, routine is nice sometimes. It’s comforting to do a repetitive task until your mind goes elsewhere to contemplate the nature of the cosmos. Like a nightly cup of hot chocolate, a repetitive task can be a pleasant tradition of sorts.

World of Warcraft stands poised at the center of the casual/hardcore MMO divide.  Opponents say that the game is too easy, and that getting to endgame is far too quick. Proponents of the game say that eighteen-hour boss fights are stupid. See, there are punishing, brutal games, and people are ok with that – it actually adds to the charm. Death is a great way to illustrate this – let’s say you die (in a game! in a game.) Prince of Persia has you respawning seconds later, exactly where you were before your untimely demise. WoW makes you take a walk or pay a bit of money every time you die. FF11 conjures a spectral hand to punch you in the kidneys. FF11 is more grindy than most games, exacting a fee of many hours from its players in exchange for items. Death actually causes a loss of experience, causing the player to lose hours of work. In my opinion, somebody should have been shot for that decision, but that’s a valid game design decision for many players, and here’s why. In our hypothetical Game A, there’s no reason to avoid death, since there is no punishment for it. This means that survival isn’t an issue, and that there is no fear of dying. Compare that to a visceral experience like FF11, where a death can cost you valuable hours of your life. In that game, you’re gonna give it everything you’ve got to make damn sure that you’re not going anywhere. These situations create real (simulated) danger, a risk of losing something. Pupils dilate, palms shimmer with sweat and adrenalin begins to flow. This might be the purest way of tapping into the gamer’s flight-or-fight reflex ever devised. Other games do it too, of course. My friend got hugely into Shiren the Wanderer, a Roguelike that severely punishes dying by taking all of your unstored items and gold. Diablo II’s Hardcore mode deletes your character when you die once.

There’s a relationship between the two, of course. The more you grind, the more time you’ve invested into your gear/character. If you’re playing a punishing game with high grind, death really hurts. Basically, to figure out how hard a game is going to be, multiply its Grind Value by its Punishment Value. The higher the result, the more difficult/exhilarating/annoying the game. This even accounts for hypothetical games with light grinding but ridiculous punishments for death, or vice versa. There are no numbers, of course, but this is a good guideline for how “intense” a game will be.

The Gears image, WoW Skills image and the Dead Queen image (which is delightful) are all licensed according to Creative Commons.

The core gameplay is present, but the awesome polish will come later. Basically, everytime the player does something, a random electronica sound will play. The player will be effectively creating a soundtrack while playing the game, and it’s gonna be really cool. Problem is, I develop on a Vista laptop, so I can’t hear anything.

Game’s still fun, just awfully quiet. I suggest you listen to this music while you play

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2omWeiZdKs

Thoughts? Comments?

Also, thanks to Ashley and co for making this easy-to-use-and-powerful game engine. This is definitely my gamedev platform of choice. I’ll keep you posted here, dear reader.

The box art tells you what you’re in for. In this case, giant capes.

Running with the Devil…. Kings

I’ve been into the metal since high school, and I’ve never seen a combination of words more suited to be a metal band name than Devil Kings. It was pretty well-recieved…. well, it wasn’t hated. Besides, I had Gamefly, so I could return it in a day if I didn’t like it (as it turns out, I returned it in a day, after beating it).

What is Devil Kings? It’s the American adaptation of what seems to be a Japanese game about the Japanese warring-states period, or something. Instead of a historical pretense, Devil Kings creates an imaginary landscape of magic and war. Oda Nobunaga becomes the Devil King, which is much easier to repeat while headbanging and flashing the horns (incidentally, he’s the guy with the Spawn cape in the above picture). It plays like…. well, ever played a Dynasty Warriors game past the original? It plays like that. For those of you that never experienced DW2-6, it goes something like this.

Tactician: We need to take this city, and we’re only gonna send you. You’ll cut through and make it happen, right?
Warrior: There’s thousands of enemies out there! Do you expect me to kill all of them?
Tactician: Here’s a sword. The sharp part goes into the… multitude of soldiers out for your blood. Have fun!

You’re a guy, and there is a teeming mass of other guys for you to kill until you win. The enemies are faceless and nameless (mostly, there are heroes with names floating above their heads), and collapse handily when you cut them with sharp things. Generally, your character swings in wide arcs, allowing you to kill at least 10 cannon fodder men with every swing. It’s mindless twitch gameplay, and it is fun, at least for a little while.

Anyway, Devil Kings is that, with a supernatural gimmick. The hot-blooded young guy actually has fire powers, the evil guy with scary mustache can beat people up with his Cape that He’s Probably Borrowing from Spawn, and the lightning-themed guy can use his powers to bring his enemies to a shocking conclusion. Get it? Because lightning is…. never mind. The game revolves around you killing more and more guys, getting power ups that allow you to kill more and more guys. I usually use that language to make fun of MMOs (eventually moving on to some sort of treadmill metaphor), but it’s deeply rewarding on some level to swing a sword once and have it send 20 poor souls to the Great Beyond, watching your kill count rise in the lower-right corner of the screen. The single player is mercifully short, which prevented me from getting bored of it. I was able to beat it in one sitting (I didn’t actually complete the game, which would have involved beating it with everyone), and I can say that I beat it because the game showed me the credits, so there.

I invite you to watch the following cutscene.

It will teach you three things about this game.

1. It is english-dubbed. That’s a huge plus for me, and tends to be a minus for people who aren’t me. This game has a bit of acting, so you can see here if it won’t stab your ear drums to listen to it.
2. Look at the self-righteous youtube comments from a variety of people who are deeply offended about a video game’s take on Japanese history. This, and similar, might be the rationale for repackaging it as a wholly fictional fantasy game for American audiences. That, and the new name they chose is f***ing metal.
3. A guy drives a spear into the ground, and uses it to flip both himself and the horse he’s on. You’re seriously doing yourself a huge disservice if you don’t watch the video.

In conclusion, it’s a fun romp that you’ll get tired of quickly. Rent it, enjoy it, and never look back. Games like this make me happy to be a Gamefly subscriber.

Devil Kings
Rent it.