The Grind Ennobles Us

First published in GRIND I, pages 56–57.

We live in a world dominated by instant gratification: as long as you have money, any joy or pleasure is just a few clicks or screen taps away. If we're talking about games, then we see how trends from the real world and digital multiverses have combined to form an ambiguous augmented reality.

While governments print money as if they were playing SimCity in god mode and inflation had no consequences for the economy whatsoever, investors with smartphones buy shares as if orchestrating the collapse of the Lifeinvader social network in GTA 5, and car makers allow “engine upgrades” that unlock via a $2000 electronic payment (yes, even more so than in NFS), games too are going through a strange phase.

On the one hand, we have “free” titles that monetise attention or impatience: want to try again? You can watch an ad or buy extra lives. Want the ads to disappear? All of that can be sorted with a microtransaction.

But the situation becomes far less honest and far more dubious when we look at games we pay 60 euros for (more recently, even 70 for next-gen console titles) which still charge extra fees for content. Remember the days when extra characters were unlocked through effort, or by entering cheat codes? Well, all these bonus elements are now nicely packaged up and go by the name of DLC (Downloadable Content), Expansion Pack or Season Pass. They're no longer a bonus that shows the developers' involvement in the project and their wish to offer added value, but a fresh attempt to fleece the player.

I paid 300 lei for Super Smash Bros on Nintendo Switch. But if I want Sephiroth from Final Fantasy VII or Steve from Minecraft on my fighter roster, then I have to dig another 120 lei out of my pocket for Fighter Pass 2. In other words, before I can even unlock the fighters, I have to buy a special pack.

The only difference from Ubisoft or Activision-Blizzard is that at least I have to put in some effort to unlock them, so the gratification isn't entirely instant.

But at the heart of these mercantile phenomena lie the grind and a huge catalogue of games that, in their day, shipped complete, making no compromises. In these magical realms on the verge of disappearing, rare items, hidden characters and secret maps can only be earned through work. And these are the games I recommend for the mind and spirit — because behind the effort lie rewards that can't be obtained by any other method (at best, you can download saves or install trainers).

While I was working on the magazine, I discovered how the grind I did in Final Fantasy X had made me more patient. It even helped me think strategically and pay more attention to tasks at work — without feeling the need to check my phone or look at social media. The fact that I completed repetitive objectives in a game got me to rediscover my concentration and sharpen my attention. And this discipline of consciously investing a certain number of hours to reach a clear objective has come to look like something obscure and old-fashioned. In an era where any piece of information is a search away and access to knowledge and entertainment is limited only by your own curiosity, we need techniques for ordering our thoughts more than ever.

Grinding means acknowledging your own limits and chasing an objective while holding on to the hope that, eventually, the attempt will succeed. It takes extraordinary perseverance and strong willpower. And at the end, once the goal is reached, we can say we've successfully projected meaning onto our efforts.

If John Lennon told us back in the 1970s that time spent pleasantly isn't wasted at all, then GRIND magazine turns up some 50 years later to tell you that time spent on a difficult, well-defined objective is exactly the meaning of life. Without grind we would never have built imposing monuments. Without grind we would never have tempered nature's whims to become the dominant species on the planet. And without that same grind, nobody would ever have got a Demonspike Coat in Diablo to face down every attack coming from the Unholy One.

Whatever its nature, the grind purifies us, chisels us and ennobles us. And while “casual” gamers roll their eyes and say that grinding isn't for them, we'll use our patience and willpower to achieve more impressive things both in everyday life and in games. Come over to the grind side!

— Vlad Costea i —_ —_ _ — — aie es ps h t h i i i 2 a]