Abstract
Problem: What is grind in games, why does it exist, and can you design a game without it?
Approach: Tim Cain defines grind, examines why it feels different for different players, lists both good and bad reasons for its existence, and discusses whether grind-free design is achievable — drawing on his experience with EverQuest, Fallout, and The Outer Worlds.
Findings: Grind is inherently subjective — the same activity can be fun in one game and tedious in another, even for the same player. Games can be designed without required grind, but players will invent it anyway, and removing it often leads to complaints about game length.
Key insight: You can eliminate mandatory grind by ensuring non-grind content provides everything players need (XP, materials, money), but be prepared: some players will still find grind where you didn't intend it, and others will call your game too short.
Definition
Grind is anything in a game you do over and over and over to achieve some goal — XP, item drops, crafting materials, reputation. If repetition is the method, most people call it grind.
Tim's formative grind memory comes from EverQuest in the late '90s. Necromancers needed bones to summon pets, and bones dropped from skeletons of any level equally. So high-level necromancers would go to level-1 zones, AoE all the skeletons, and loot their bones. The savvy (and generous) ones would shout offers — "I'll pay a platinum for a stack of 20 bones" — letting low-level characters farm bones they didn't care about in exchange for money they desperately needed. Everyone won, but it was still grind. Tim thought the game should have dropped the bone requirement after level 15–20 when you got higher-level pet spells, but it never did.
Grind Is Subjective
One person's grind is another person's fun. Tim identifies several dimensions of this subjectivity:
- Farming lovers vs. haters. Some EverQuest players loved sitting on spawn points, chatting with friends, killing respawns casually. One of Tim's friends called EverQuest "a chat room with orcs." Others despised the same activity.
- Arcade-mode reframing. Another friend saw grind as the RPG switching into arcade-style play — "see how many you can kill with one fireball" — and enjoyed it on those terms.
- Game quality as a filter. The same player can love clearing a goblin army in one game and hate doing the identical thing in another. A great game gets excused for content that would be called grind in a lesser one. This is why grind is so hard to define — your own definition may not apply consistently even for you.
Why Grind Exists: Good Reasons
Tim identifies three legitimate design purposes for grind:
Exploration
If harvesting materials spawn at random points throughout a zone and won't respawn elsewhere until collected, players are incentivized to explore areas they'd otherwise ignore — they'd just stick to roads and quest markers without it.
Gap-filling
Grind serves as an always-available method to get a small amount of XP, money, or reputation when you're close to a threshold. You don't want to start a whole new quest line — you just run out, kill a few things, and you're done. This is why players like respawnable areas even if they don't call it grind.
Something to do while waiting
Especially in multiplayer games, grind gives you something to do while waiting for friends to log in. You pick a spot, nearby zombies keep spawning, you pluck them off. It's casual, low-stakes fun.
Why Grind Exists: Bad Reasons
It's trivially easy to implement
A spawn point on a 20-minute timer is about the easiest content a developer can create. Minimal design effort, fills space.
It inflates game length
Trash mobs and required grinding make the game longer. Many players' first question about a game is "how long is it?" — and if it's under 15–20 hours, they consider that bad. These length-focused buyers actively encourage developers to pad with grind.
It's a psychological retention tool
Grind keeps players in the game or brings them back. "I never got that magic stone drop — my friends aren't on tonight, I'll go camp that spawn point." It's a deliberate ploy to increase engagement.
Can You Design a Game Without Grind?
Yes. Design your content so that the main story arc plus a few side quests provide all the XP, crafting materials, and money players need. If no grind is ever required, it becomes avoidable — and complaints about grind become "you don't have to do it."
But Tim offers several caveats:
Players will invent grind
Any monster that respawns and drops anything at all will become a farming opportunity. A cemetery with zombies intended purely as atmospheric lore? Players will grind it for jewelry drops or XP. Your intent doesn't matter.
Mastered skills feel like grind
Once players max out a skill like lockpicking, every subsequent lock feels like a grind — they gain nothing from it. They don't literally want all locks to disappear, but the feeling of pointless repetition is real.
Players outpace content creation
Players consume content faster than developers can make it. When they run out of story quests, whatever remains — daily quests, repeatable content — gets labeled grind by default.
The length paradox
Tim made Fallout with absolutely zero grind. Nothing respawned — clear an area and it stayed cleared. The only way to grind was wandering the world map hoping for random encounters. Players complained it was too short (despite being ~40 hours, in an era of 80–120 hour RPGs). The Outer Worlds was 15–20 hours with no grind. Players complained it was too short. Tim told his team: "If the biggest complaint we get is 'too short,' that's a complaint I will gladly accept."
Summary
Grind is hard to define because it's subjective, context-dependent, and perception-warped by game quality. It has legitimate design uses (exploration, gap-filling, downtime activity) but is more often a cheap way to pad length and retain players. You can design without it, but players will find grind where you didn't intend it and simultaneously complain your game is too short. The designer's job is to make grind never required — and then accept the inevitable length complaints with grace.
References
- Tim Cain. YouTube video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TeWjO3xbenk