One of my favorite guys in the industry, Jason Booth, has finally updated his blog. Unfortunately, it’s with the news that he’s left the MMO arena. His reason? The grind.

Instead, the MMP industry is boiling the formula down to a very destructive set of lesson for our society. These lessons appear to be:

  • Achievement is far more important in life than enjoyment, family, friends, etc.
  • We should all be equal, regardless of our given talents. Time and devotion to achievement is all that matters, skill and smarts are worthless.
  • Don’t think, just grind.
  • If you grind harder, you will be “more cool” than others.

The problem is that none of these really lead to a happy or compelling life. Play is supposed to be an enjoyable learning function which helps you to understand some aspect of life, not a time waster, or worse, something which literally drives you to neglect your life.

Jason is taking a new job over at Harmonix, the makers of Amplitude and Frequency. Given where Jason’s passions lie (he was the creative force behind the innovative music system in Asheron’s Call 2), this seems like a good fit, but to me, the MMO industry seems somewhat diminished by his absence.

Edit: Here’s a link to a first glimpse of Dungeons and Dragons Online, Jason’s last project at Turbine. It gives an idea of where Jason’s hatred of the grind was driving DDO’s design.