[IGZ Bot]

This is a weekly column from freelancer Rowan Kaiser, which focuses on "Western" role-playing games: their stories, their histories, their mechanics, their insanity, and their inanity.

Let's talk grinding. No, not how college students awkwardly demonstrate affection for one another at parties. No, I mean that thing that role-playing games do that's bad. The one that makes people not like RPGs. That kind of grinding. Like the "daily grind" except for video games.

Except that I'm not sure which games have grinding.

This makes it difficult when I talk to people about what kinds of RPGs they like or dislike, especially when they want recommendations. The specter of "grinding," of playing an RPG but being forced to do something that's considered bad, hangs over the genre like a cursed dagger. People want to play RPGs, sure, but they don't want to play the ones that force them to do something over and over again. This of course begs the question: what is grinding?Continue reading 'Grinding' and its relationship with the RPG genre

'Grinding' and its relationship with the RPG genre originally appeared on Joystiq on Sun, 05 Aug 2012 18:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.




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