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Why do Koreans like to grind so much?
Lord Jezo
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I am really curious about this one, it struck me when I was out at a store and saw a pack of Maplestory cards, all of a sudden I was overwhelmed by the way that game makes you grind to a degree that most sane people just cannot handle.
Then I thought of all the other Korean games I have played throughout the years, all of those free to play MMO style things that come and go like the wind, every one of them has some kind of grinding nastiness that is not really disguised by anything more than a guy telling you to go kill 7,500 tree stumps.
Why is it always the Korean games that work like this? What is it about that society that makes grinding just an appealing game mechanic?
Then I thought of all the other Korean games I have played throughout the years, all of those free to play MMO style things that come and go like the wind, every one of them has some kind of grinding nastiness that is not really disguised by anything more than a guy telling you to go kill 7,500 tree stumps.
Why is it always the Korean games that work like this? What is it about that society that makes grinding just an appealing game mechanic?
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I never asked for this!
Isn't this just MMO's in general though?
It's not as if Koreans aren't interested in other games. I mean, they have absolutely huge Starcraft and Counter-Strike communities for example. Really I think you're just looking at a subset there.
It is, but I feel like in western MMOs they try to hide the grinding with things like story quests and other various paint jobs that make it easier to handle and prettier to do. In a Korean MMO it seems like a more raw and pure form of grinding, where all you need to do is get 5,000 exp and to do that you just sit in one area and kill hundreds and hundreds of enemies. There are really no missions or psuedo interesting things to do, its just go after things for hours and hours and hours.
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Personally, I see it as quite fucking retarded to make a game and then tell people they need to spend 40 hours doing nothing but clicking a button before they can play. Other times, since these are all "Open Betas" they just don't want everyone getting to the end content quickly to see how much of a shambles it really is.
But hey, as long as they keep making them, bot programmers will still be able to feed their families.
I mean, it's not as if you can do much grinding in a game of Starcraft, that all comes down to your skill level. Sure it takes time to develop that but then the same could be said of any game really.
I have noticed a tendancy to focus on things like raw mechanics and metrics (things like Mouse-Actions-Per-Second in Starcraft for example), but again, I think that just might be a side-effect of having a more involved hardcore community.
one was that when they first started introducing MMOs into korea, they wanted to keep it extremely simplified, as to not scare them off, hence a lack of tons of quest and depth
another is that the majority of the players play it with their buds in gaming cafes, where they go to shoot the shit after school. Grinding for that long isn't that bad in company of friends, food, and just socializing really
I've heard that koreans hate grinding as much as we do, but it's alleviated by the above.
I can't say that these are concrete facts, just stuff I collected overtime. I have noticed ever since the release of WoW, korean MMOs are trying to be a little more than they were before.
Yup, pretty much. There are tons of "PC Bangs" or "PS2 Bangs "over there, like big internet cafes devoted to gaming (some complete with TV's so they can watch the national Starcraft league while they play...). They're dirt cheap too, used to be about $1~2/hour, but been a few years since I've been in one. Most gamers there don't game at home, rather they meet up with friends after school or work and have their own LAN party whenever they want. As for grinding, I'd say that rushed development time is a big part - management wants to get their piece of the pie and doesn't want to spend the money on creative content development.
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I think that's healthy.
The strongest Korean players and the founders of the "movement" are household names for anyone familiar with Go. Cho Nam-ch'eol, who was the strongest player in Korea in the sixties and seventies; Cho Chikun, his nephew, who moved to Japan and became the strongest player there in the late seventies, eighties, and nineties; Cho Hun-hyeon, the strongest Korean player of the eighties; Lee Changho, Cho Hun-hyeon's student and the strongest player in the world through the nineties and until the rise of Lee Sedol, who now seems to be the strongest.
There's not really a problem with that, of course... except that the professional system is completely swamped and can't hope to deal with all of the aspiring pros. Hundreds of people try to become professionals, dedicating years of study to the game, with no real chance of becoming a pro. It's to the point that it's become harder to become a pro than to qualify for major tournaments--the system is so saturated that only people who have the potential to be top, championship-level pros can win through.
Han Sanghoon, for example, became a 1-dan pro last year. He then rapidly beat Ryu Shikun (JP 9-dan), Gu Li (CN 9-dan), Cho Hunhyun (9-dan), Park Yeonghun (9-dan), Ma Xiaochun (CN 9-dan), Lee Changho (9-dan), and other notable players--although he ran into the impenetrable wall of Lee Sedol in several title leagues and tournaments.
That's sort of absurd, and it's not as if most of the lesser pros are old enough to retire. It makes no objective sense for a youth to dedicate himself to Go at this point, and yet they still do.
Wasn't there a True Life about this or something?
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I thought this was exaggeration for effect, but then I started to wonder, how many tree stumps did I kill in Maplestory?
Now that I think about it, that sounds about right.
and besides games like maple story are huge all over the world. it's not like koreans are the only ones playing through the grinds.
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If everyone in WoW could get to the max level in a day, there would be a lot less "bragging rights". People would probably get bored quicker. Once you've experienced max level, and if everyone around you is maxed out, what keeps it entertaining?
Much more game play opens up when there is a bit of a grind. People can harass those trying to level, then their clan shows up to protect. Much more drama can take place, than a bunch of maxed out people sitting around in town, pvping each other until we all know that hack3r has the best gear in the game and no one can beat him.
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I never asked for this!
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You're saying this like there aren't grind festy western and Japanese games.
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I never asked for this!
Oh, there are a few. But it seems almost every Korean game has it, and they have elevated it to an art form.
This discussion reminds me of playing Granada Espada. Fantastic game, graphics-wise. It was beautiful. And the music was excellent, a mix of baroque, classical, and techno (I have the soundtrack, it's four CDs long). And the idea was unique: Control three characters at once!
Oh, but the griiind...
And it probably wasn't even the most egregious example out there, I'll bet.
This is no longer the case as more and more people have high speed connections at their home in Korea. The cost of broadband is very competitive (around $40 USD a month for a fiber optic 100mb/s up and down connection or less than $20 for a typical cable modem connection) allowing a much larger pool of people to play online games from home. I currently work for one of the largest online game publishers in Korea and our player numbers show a definite trend of more users playing from their home (connections from internet cafes are easily tracked due to certain regulations and trade groups here). We operate casual games (free to play with micro-transactions) which skew towards playing from home, but approximately 45-75% (depending on the game) of users play from a non-internet cafe PC today.
I would say the bigger impact on the prevalence of grinding in many online games in Korea is due to the way business metrics are measured here. Almost all online publishers use a metric known as ARPU and TS to measure the success of a product. ARPU is Average Revenue per User and TS is average Time Spent by a user. Generally these two metrics are highly connected, with a higher TS usually resulting in greater ARPU. This means companies see a high TS as resulting in larger revenues and therefore push developers for ways to increase this metric. It is this focus on increasing TS that leads to a more 'grindy' elements in many of the online Korean games. There are a lot of other complex factors such as piracy, griefing, competitive gaming, and niche market of single player games that feed into the design of games in Korea, but the business factors probably have the largest impact on why games here emphasize the grind.
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I find it relaxing too, it's nice since my mind isn't always on super powered mode all the time. If I want to play something like Ninja Gaiden or Team Fortress 2, I usually have to had caffeine or a full meal, or else my game will be shit. In MMOs it's necessary for grinding, and it's still getting something done. Though in the end, the most fun I usually have is chatting it up with duders
Grinding is usually more "stressful" for me, because I hate doing it, and tend to try and "power-level". So I just cut MMO's out of the equation, and I've been a much happier person since. (at least, less tired because now I'm actually getting full nights sleep :P )
Cool. It's useful to have the opinion of someone who's actually there and knows what they're talking about.