1d4+1

Grind: verb, ground,  grinding

1. Performing repetitive actions to the point of braindeath in order to achieve a minor gameplay goal, ie gaining one level. I finally reached the Elite Four in Pokemon Diamond, but then I had to spend a whole day grinding just to beat them.

Grinding is something I can sort of see a place for in an online setting. There needs to be something big to separate different levels of players: why not the number of hours they put into it? I’ve seen my little brother waste entire weekends on Rainbow Six Vegas to unlock a new ranking and some goofy pink camo helmet. People have died trying to do what’s best for their WoW characters. In this setting, there’s a sense of achievement. You get better gear, more money, and you hit the level cap. You’re so good, you spend most of your time helping your friends try to get as good as you. But most importantly, you’re better than all those other guys who didn’t have the dedication to get where you’re at.

So I concede grinding can have its place in a multiplayer setting. But grinding in a single player game? That’s practically a crime against humanity.

I know, Pokemon isn’t entirely single player. There’s all kinds of fun stuff you can do with your friends. You can make poffins, have beauty contests, and run around the underground among other neat things. But the fact of the matter is that, even if you choose to battle your friends, your pokemon don’t gain any exp. Thus, the lonely grind persists.

I can’t see any greater reward in grinding by yourself. Where’s the achievement? Oh, I’m better than that NPC character. Hooray?

In a single player experience, doesn’t it make more sense to just balance the game to avoid the grind? Could the 60 levels (10 levels per each pokemon in my party) of grinding I’ve done in the past couple days have been avoided if there’d been a few more trainers here and there? Did all those level 45 golbats really have to die?

Has grinding truly become an alternative to balancing?

I got my DS a little over a year ago, and in our honeymoon stage I’ve marveled at how it has a game for everything: from yoga and cooking guides, to tiny versions of the AAA titles from the big consoles. It’s aiming to be a little something more than a toy that kids carry to keep from dying of boredom when their parents go carpet shopping, which is great. However, every time I walk into a game store, I can’t help but feel that ninety percent of the games on the DS shelves are very specifically targeted at 4-12 year old females. These dreaded “games for girls” cover a wide variety of feminine interests, including babies, horses, fashion, and combinations thereof.

I have very mixed feelings about these games. The instinct for most female gamers is to hate them, because they’re sexist and awful and soforth, which is a very justifiable feeling. Showing little girls that their career options are limited to fashion and figure skating is just diabolical, and is perpetuating a social paradigm that should have died a long time ago. Even worse is when the game developers pretend like they’re going in a better, less sexist direction. Take Imagine: Family Doctor, for example. It’s a “family” doctor, so it’s still an excuse to include babies, but it’s a doctor nonetheless. Flip over the box and one of the core features is redecorating your doctor’s office. Because after a long day of giving sad, sick children strep cultures, all you want to do is redecorate the place. That potted plant is filled with bad memories of that sniffle you couldn’t diagnose. Besides, that wallpaper is so 90′s.

For those who actually want to play girl games, the story goes from offensive to sad. A girl game’s graphics are typically two generations behind, and gameplay usually falls into the categories of shallow and awful. I was a little girl once, I understand where the games’ themes come from. But why do they have to suck? Do the developers think, “Hey, girls haven’t been playing games for the past forty years, they won’t know any better!?”

There’s one thing that keeps me from hating these games, and that’s that, no matter how poor, there is an effort being made for girls. It was very rare to find games like these when I was growing up, and when I found one, I usually jumped on it. Hell, I rode horses from the ages of 3 to 14, I would have killed to have this kind of variety.

I’ve thought about what I would do if I was given the opportunity to work on girl games, and I find myself equally conflicted. Assuming I was given the authority to change the face of these series, would my strategies even work? Right now, piles and piles of cheap shovelware are being sold because there are puppies in dresses on the box. Would people care if the games were good, would it sell any better? If I tried to strain some of the “girly-girl” from it, would fewer people be interested?

Regardless, if I were in charge, I would stop shipping one of these games every other week and start focusing on quality. It doesn’t need to be dumbed down. If a kid is into something, they’re going to know all about it. When I was 5, I knew the scientific names of more dinosaurs than I was capable of counting. Give it some depth, make it realistic, just like we do with any other game. Let kids pretend they’re doing the real thing, and I think we’ll see a much better overall opinion of these girl games, even if they’re about cooking and taking care of babies.