Dopamine loops, sunk cost fallacy, and the quiet pride of pointless suffering
The Moment Fun Quietly Leaves the Room
There is a moment every gamer recognizes, even if nobody really wants to frame it as a confession.
The controller is still warm. The quest log hasn’t changed in hours. The music loops again, politely, like it’s apologizing for existing. The reward is known in advance. And still, nobody quits.
Not because it’s fun anymore.
Because stopping feels… wrong.
Grinding is one of the strangest rituals modern entertainment ever normalized. It looks suspiciously like labor, feels uncomfortably like obligation, and delivers rewards that often border on insulting. Kill ten enemies. Collect twenty fragments. Repeat until meaning returns — or doesn’t.
Somewhere along the way, enjoyment evaporates. The behavior, however, stays firmly glued in place.
Dopamine Doesn’t Care If You’re Smiling
This isn’t a design flaw. It’s design literacy.
Game designers learned what casinos, fitness apps, and social platforms learned years ago: progress doesn’t need joy. It just needs motion. A bar that fills. A counter that increments. A small chance that this run will finally matter.
Dopamine is often marketed as the chemical of pleasure, but it behaves more like a motivation accountant. It doesn’t ask if the experience is enjoyable. It asks if the loop is still open. As long as something might happen soon, the brain stays engaged.
That’s why the best grinds never fully close the door. The reward is always slightly delayed. Never impossible. Just far enough away to keep anticipation alive. Wikipedia’s breakdown of dopamine strips away the hype and shows how unromantic the mechanism really is:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dopamine
Fun is optional. Anticipation is not.
When Time Becomes a Trap
Then comes the second hook, quieter but heavier: time already spent.
After ten hours, quitting feels inefficient. After twenty, it feels irresponsible. After fifty, it feels almost insulting to the earlier version of yourself who endured the worst parts. This is the sunk cost fallacy wearing a headset, and it’s ruthless.
Economists describe it clinically — Investopedia does a neat job of that — but gamers experience it emotionally. The logic is twisted but powerful: if this was pointless, then so was the effort. And effort, especially painful effort, demands validation.
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/sunkcost.asp
The irony is cruel. The more miserable the grind becomes, the harder it is to abandon.
The Honor Culture of Digital Suffering
Here’s where grinding takes a strange turn.
Gamers don’t just unlock items. They narrate the suffering behind them. How long it took. How bad it felt. How many failed runs stacked up before success. Effort becomes currency. Pain becomes proof.
There’s a quiet honor culture around grinding. Complaining is allowed — encouraged, even. Quitting is not. Walking away implies weakness. Enduring implies legitimacy. A reward earned easily feels disposable. A reward earned through repetition and frustration becomes sacred.
Pointless suffering, when shared, stops feeling pointless.
The 22Bit Detour: Familiar Loops, Different Arena
Midway through this discussion, it’s hard not to notice how similar this mindset feels across digital ecosystems. Grinding mechanics aren’t exclusive to games. They live wherever progression, milestones, and perceived momentum exist.
Platforms like 22Bit don’t rely purely on spectacle. Their appeal sits in structured advancement, visible progress, and the quiet reassurance that time invested isn’t drifting into nothingness. Whether it’s unlocking features, tracking streaks, or navigating layered reward systems, the same psychological rhythm hums underneath. Different arena. Same loop. Same logic.
Awareness Doesn’t Break the Spell
What makes grinding especially fascinating is that players know exactly what’s happening.
They joke about it. Meme it. Complain loudly while loading into the next match. Awareness doesn’t kill the loop. It often strengthens it. There’s comfort in shared absurdity — a collective agreement that yes, this is ridiculous, and yes, everyone is still doing it.
At some point, grinding stops being about rewards at all. It turns into identity. Discipline. Endurance. A quiet test of tolerance no one officially asked for.
Why Stopping Feels Harder Than Starting
Walking away forces a dangerous question: Was this worth it?
As long as the loop continues, that question stays unanswered.
So gamers keep grinding. Not because it’s fun. Not because it’s rational. But because unfinished effort feels heavier than wasted time. Because stopping feels like erasing meaning retroactively.
And because, deep down, there’s a strange pride in surviving the boring parts — even when nobody is watching.
Especially then.