The GRIND Magazine Is Here!

First published in GRIND Ediția Definitivă, page 3.

GRIND EDITORIAL (2024) DEFINITIVE EDITION

Aappeared magazine

GRIND!

”With patience, dedication and consistency, anything becomes possible.”

On 18 September 2012, a user named Dick Tree caused a stir on the GameFAQs forums: he promised to spend hundreds of hours in Final Fantasy VII's first reactor room and keep fighting enemies until the two characters you control at the start of the game (Cloud and Barret) reached maximum level 99. For every battle won, the heroes of this JRPG adventure earn 80 experience points. And to reach the peak of their powers, each of them would need 2,452,783 experience points.

Anyone who took on such a Herculean (and somewhat Sisyphean) task would have to face 30,659 near-identical battles, each lasting about a minute even when the enemies are crushed in a single hit. And obviously the whole thing would have to be spread over several days, with the game saved as often as possible so as not to lose hours of work to a power cut.

GameFAQs users were impressed by the promise and by the effort it implied: they began posting daily in the thread dedicated to the initiative, and some of them even placed bets on Dick Tree's consistency. Many were convinced that sooner or later anyone would realise the task was pointless and abandon it to spend their time on something else.

But Dick Tree seemed convinced of his mission – he even warned the sceptics that he had already completed the task once before, and that this time he would document it in photographs to show everyone he kept his word. After a few days, screenshots began to appear (taken with a mobile phone on a CRT screen, because we're still talking about a PlayStation 1 game).

Within two weeks, GameFAQs users got impressive proof of progress: the two characters, Cloud and Barret, had reached levels 46 and 41 respectively. But after this post, which brought hope and excitement, Dick Tree went inactive for two and a half months. Then he came back and apologised, saying he no longer had his PlayStation console but would have it back within a week.

Soon afterwards the same Dick Tree announced that he had restarted work on the project from scratch… without offering any explanation as to why. Later he posted screenshots taken on a new TV, showing characters who had reached level 52. But even this step forward, which took several months, was followed by a disappointing announcement:

Dick Tree now has other things keeping him busy, but he thinks he'll have more time over the summer.

Almost two and a half years later, on 17 January 2015, the project was still unfinished. So a GameFAQs forum user wrote a short post under the pseudonym CirclMaster: “Fuck Dick Tree, I should do this”. And over the days that followed he started posting screenshots of his own progress. “Dick Tree should have stayed out of this topic, because he cannot win. Either I get to level 99 first and beat him in his own topic, or I successfully goad him into finishing despite his trolling. For the record, either way I’m staying the course and reaching level 99.” – CirclMaster, February 2015. By June 2015, after he had passed le- vel 50 with both characters, CirclMaster began streaming his daily efforts to complete the challenge Dick Tree had originally promised. He set up a Twitch channel and, over the following months, fought monsters that respawn in exactly the same spot.

In March 2016, CirclMaster had passed level 76 and was gaining a level every 2 weeks. Then he suffered a shoulder injury and announced that his progress would slow, because he would be trying to play one-handed. That was also when Dick Tree returned to the forum, where he started insulting CirclMaster and reminding him that he had been the first to complete the task (though he never produced any proof).

But the miracle happened on 7 April 2017, during what had already become a traditional Twitch stream: CirclMaster got Cloud and Barret to level 99 in the first reactor room with enemies in Final Fantasy VII. Over the course of 2 years and 3 months, the mysterious forum user spent 525 hours in the game doing exactly the same thing. He kept at it even after an accident that later required shoulder surgery, and showed everyone that the mission Dick Tree started is achievable – with patience, dedication and consistency, anything becomes possible.

Later, a user named Skub revived the thread Dick Tree had started, to ask him what he thought about somebody else completing the task he had promised. Dick Tree's reply was curt: “He did a good job, but I did it first”.

Vlad Costea