When to grind and when to just quit a game

I used to push through games out of stubbornness, telling myself it would get good eventually. Sometimes it did. More often I just resented the hours I'd lost.

Now I give a game a fair shot — usually a few hours past the tutorial — and then I check in honestly. Am I curious what happens next, or am I just filling a quota? That question has saved me a lot of wasted evenings.

Grinding is fine when it's building toward something you want. Strategy games like Iron Dominion earn their slow stretches because the payoff is a plan coming together. Grinding to pad a timer is a different thing entirely.

Your time is the real cost here, not anything else. Spending it on a game you've stopped enjoying is the only thing I'd genuinely call a bad deal.