Where’s My Montage? The Performance of Hard Work and Its Reward in Film, Television, and MMOGs

Every massively multiplayer online game (MMOG) begins new players at Level 1. The player must grind his or her way through many early levels to reach any kind of decent reward for the hours invested. Compared to films going back to Rocky and television shows such as Crime Scene Investigation (CSI), there is no montage to fast-forward through the work involved in reaching the game’s reward. What is it about online games or the player that makes such work so compelling? Why would hard work, something that is often avoided in the daily grind of an 8—5 job, be forced upon the videogame player—often to his or her delight? To address these questions, we use Ian Bogost’s concept of unit operations to evaluate the concept that ‘‘hard work is rewarded’’ as it relates to various media, including films and videogames, and to analyze the historical and theoretical implications of the concept.