Tuesday, November 11, 2014

Grinding

         
                   Grinding is something that happens in a lot of different games, but also in life. Grinding is repeatedly doing something in hopes of gaining a small advantage. In some games it is similar to gambling or playing the lottery. Whether it is grinding Handsome Jack for the Conference Call in Borderlands or Decoding rare engrams in Destiny in hopes of getting a exotic, grinding can get boring. I have spent a lot of time grinding on games due to the fact that I'm usually the one with the most gaming time so i get stuck doing the dirty work. I don't mind doing it because it gets results and its nice to see the reward. Another reason i don't like grinding is because sometimes it helps out the community. When a new Borderlands game comes out and people don't know where certain things drop its nice to contribute to the community in hopes of helping other gamers out.

                 After playing destiny for weeks, i ended up at a cave where you could rubber band your controller and still farm as efficient as anyone else. I like playing the game, not letting a rubber band do my work for me. I think it lowers your opinion of a game when it becomes so easy to get results, and also builds a standard of getting what you want without working for it. I personally don't mind being the one that does the grinding because it helps people around me enjoy the game more.  As soon as I cap in Borderlands I am expected to farm my wife a Hellfire. My wife isn't the biggest gamer in the world, but she does try. At first, that was due to the fact that I did it and she wanted to share things with me but over time she developed a genuine interest in games. I have woken up to her thumbing through Gearbox information in hopes of finding a kernel of news about a new game release.

                No matter what type of game you play, there will always be some form of grinding. One of the first games I played was Super Mario Brothers and I remember being surprised by the fact that my dad always had 99 lives. I remember thinking that he would never died, but at one point I watched him sink all 99 into one level. Grinding sometimes makes games fun, and sometimes makes you pull your hair out, but it usually has some form of reward. One of the things i love about games is that grinding isn't necessary unless your really trying to min/max. Once you start looking at a mob that the designers put hours into designing and instead look at it as a .03% chance to drop a weapon you want, you will start losing interest.

              Grinding often leads to another thing that I think plagues the gaming scene: Cheating. A lot of people would rather cheat than put in the hard work for most things in games. I have used a cheat code or two in my days because it is fun to walk around in GTA with unlimited ammo and trying to see how much carnage you can cause. I usually ask people when I see them cheating, and their response usually is that they don't have enough time. My brother is a great example of this. He is a really good gamer, but with how big his family is, he doesn't really have enough time to sit down and play as much anymore. My main problem with cheating, is when there is a ego to go along with it. People bragging about a weapon that they had someone dupe still baffles me to this day. Respect the people that put the time into getting results.

            All in all, grinding in games, has taught me to not give up so easily on certain things in life. It taught me that you don't always immediately see the results you want and sometimes can lead to nothing, but there's still that glimmer of hope. Getting things with ease sometimes doesn't feel as rewarding because it doesn't feel like you earned it. One could say i grinded through a lot of girlfriends before I found my wife, and I can tell you with honesty, it was worth it.

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