How long should you play a game before you truly understand it?
Thereās a certain contingent of PC gamers who believe you need to spend hundreds of hours with a title before youāre allowed to form an opinion. Especially in online spaces, itās common to see someone discredited for āonlyā playing 10 hoursāas if they just sniffed the box and walked away.
I get itā¦ kind of. If weāre talking about something massive and layered like Skyrim, then sure. One playthrough can take weeks out of your life. But is that the standard?
Take a glance at GOG, which often lists average completion times. Hereās a small sample:
- Kingdom Come: Deliverance - 41.5 hours
- Deus Ex - 22.5 hours
- Frostpunk - 10.5 hours
- The Invincible - 6.5 hours
- Project Warlock - 4 hours
Thatās a huge range. Why?
Mostly genre. The more RPG-like a game is, the longer it will take to finish. But the more arcade-y a game is, the tighter the runtime.
But thereās this mythāespecially among puristsāthat a ārealā PC game shouldnāt feel arcade-y. That PC games are meant to be vast, deep, and long.
Iāve been a PC gamer for decades. That ideaās nonsense.
When I had a physical Commodore 64, I could beat Uridium in under 20 minutes. Sure, the C64 is technically an 8-bit microānot a āPCā in the strictest senseābut I also played Dangerous Dave on DOS. That took about 30 minutes.
What about much more modern games? A few months ago, I played Virginia (2016). I was done in one sitting. It took me an hour and a half.
Which brings us back to the real question: what does it mean to āunderstandā a game? Is it the same as completing it?
I donāt think so. Plenty of games arenāt even meant to be completed. Take puzzle games. Tetris, for instance, never endsājust speeds up until you die. Thatās still a PC game, by the way. It launched on DOS before it ever hit arcades or home consoles.
And even for games that do have an ending, completion doesnāt necessarily equal comprehension. Whatās the point of dragging yourself through 30 hours of crap just to say you finished it? Iāve done that with bad gamesāand trust me, the only thing I gained was regret. Pongo, for example. I played that mess to the bitter end. I donāt understand it any better than I did five minutes in. I just feel cheated out of my time.
Most games tell you what theyāre about in the first five minutes. If itās unresponsive, broken, or filled with jank right out of the gate, thatās usually your cue to uninstall. And Iām not just talking about asset flips.
Elder Scrolls: Arena stinks. Itās got one of the worst control schemes Iāve ever witnessed. And even by the standards of 1995, it is an ugly game. No, I havenāt finished Arena, nor do I intend toāI have suffered enough. I gave it a solid 30 minutesāeveryone told me it was a greatābut some games are not worth it.
Granted, sometimes there are games that massively improve after the first five minutes. Star Wars Jedi Knight: Mysteries of the Sith is a good example of this. Initially, trying to figure out what to do is such a chore. But afterwards, itās pure bliss. And for this reason, I feel most negative reviews on Steam are wrong.
But Mysteries of the Sith is an exceptionānot the rule. Most of the time, if you like a game within five minutes of play, youāll probably like it 50 hours afterwards.
If itās bad at the start, it rarely gets better.āØāØ So noāhundreds of hours arenāt necessary to āgetā a game. You donāt owe your time to any title. Five minutes can be enough. And if that five minutes fills you with joy, then the game has already done its job.
After all, isnāt the point to have fun?
Sometimes you can spot a critical design decision that experience with the genre can tell you right off the bat it wonāt be for you.
Sometimes you have to play through it to realize it doesnāt meet expectations. A lot of the games I play are deep sandboxes that if I like Iāll sink hundreds of hours into, and often come with a very steep learning period. With those the problems can be subtle and take a depth of experience to understand. I have 108 hours in Civ 5 because thatās how long it took me to realize I didnāt like it at all, despite previously being a fan of the series. There are other games Iāve played for longer and wouldnāt recommend if asked because having developed a nuanced understanding of the systems I see how some design decisions undermine the fantasy the game is trying to sell. Sure I enjoyed it well enough at the time, but for someone who likes to engage with depth this sort of perspective can be appreciated in a review so you know the time is better spent elsewhere.
Thatās funny because Civ 5 is my absolute favourite in the series. I can play that game forever.
To me, Civ 6 is the one I felt profound disappointment. By no means is it awful. I just feel it didnāt reach the height of Civ 5.
But of course, everyone experiences fun differently.
No shade to Civ 5, it was just a case of I realized my tastes had changed. It took me a few games to be really playing it for that to be able to sink in.
Itās perhaps not the best example of the broader point, but I would have to write a literal essay to say why Iām lukewarm on Rimworld, and it would probably piss off the gamers.
Yeah, I think someone deciding they donāt want to take a review seriously if itās by someone who gave up on it quickly is fair. Especially if youāre poor and paying for games, you canāt get something new every day so youād often prefer something that takes a lot of time to fully understand and appreciate, even if that comes at the expense of being a slog for the early hours.
I also imagine that declaring a specific review invalid for this reason will more often than not just be sour grapes over someone trashing a game they love. Itās still not justified, but to some degree I get it. Maybe Iām visiting the wrong crowds but I think painting all of this as universally-applied mindless elitism, rather than as someoneās knee-jerk reaction to criticism for their specific passion, is itself overly dismissive. You can still call that out without presenting it as a caricature.