I think this video showcases an interesting aspect of gaming that I never really thought about before. In their case, they play more games for a shorter amount of time vs spending a large portion of their time in few games.
Personally I’m on the side of spending more of my time in a select number of games. By far I have put no less then 3000-4000 hours in Minecraft. Logged by Steam, I got 1300+ hours in both GTA V and American Truck Simulator
More recently I’ve been really into Rocket League and Trackmania. These games are notable because I am constantly working to improve and get better at the game. As much replay-ability as much I find enjoyment in succeeding.
From time to time though, I do really enjoy getting into shorter, more story based games. Great examples being Portal 2, Road96, and Firewatch. What kind of gamer are you?
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Depends on your stage of life as well. I’m 41 now and a dad, so I have max 2 hours per day. When I was still studying I played wow for entire days.
Now I enjoy shorter games like Firewatch and Lake. Just finished Beacon Pine. Xbox Gamepass is excellent for this as it’s full of these games.
I did play longer games like Mass effect legendary edition, and The Witcher 3, but I only play such long games if I really like them.
Thousands of hours in a game is unfortunately out of the question.
I’m 50+ and while my kids are old though to manage without me, I still have plenty of other responsibilities.
I don’t really “track” my gaming and I think the focus on hours spent is a bit silly.I play when I have time to relax.
It’s mostly WoW, single-player RPGs, Paradox Grand Strategy games, online chess etc - stuff that doesn’t need twichy coordination, too old for that.Mechabellum has been my latest addiction
I’m your age and I’m in a similar situation. I still play longer RPGs when I really like them but it’s definitely harder to do. My last forever game was warframe. I clocked in about 3300 hours.
2 or 2000 with very little inbetween.
Some of my most played games don’t use steam, or are on a console where I can easily track, but I know I have a few that are north of 5k, and then a lot more that are sub 10
There are 5 games on my Steam list over 100 hours, maxing out ~300 hours: Stardew Valley, Skyrim, No Mans Sky, Don’t Starve, Cyberpunk 2077
If we include Nintendo games it probably goes up to 8: BotW, TotK, Animal Crossing New Horizons.
So at the most, I’ll spend a couple months on a game before moving on - most other games I play are either quick weekend completions, or maybe take a couple of weeks to finish. Usually when I start putting months into a game I begin to seriously question whether I’m making the best use of my time and the “what am I doing with my life” itch makes me quit games for a bit. 😅
I think it comes down to whether a game’s mechanics are satisfying and whether the game is open enough to continue. Sandbox games like Stardew or NMS you can fire up, tend your machines or crops for an hour or so, and stop, like watching a rerun of your favorite show. Skyrim isn’t technically a sandbox, but similar, you can jump in, run a couple dungeons or repeating quests, and it’s just nice. No new controls or mechanics to learn, no wishing I had better gear. Like noodle soup on a cold day.
Skyrim’s been out for 12 years. 250 hours isn’t even a half hour a week. Not even 2 hours a month. Stardew Valley is 7 years old. 250 hours is barely 45 minutes a week. It really doesn’t take that much to rack up some serious hours.
I think you make great points!
Not sure why, but I tend to either be all-in on a game or not playing it at all; playing my Stardew saves for an hour would feel pretty unsatisfying because I wouldn’t remember what my plans were the last time I played and therefore wouldn’t feel like I got anything done. and Skyrim always ends up being “Modding: the game” because I set up mod lists, test them out, and then only play for a little bit before moving on, oops.
Judging from my Elder Scrolls Online experience, it takes me about 175-200 days played to burn out on something I’m really into. But nothing else has really come close to that since I quit about a year ago. I’ve been kind of bouncing from game to game, got a couple hundred hours into Guild Wars 2, a hundred hours or so each on Grim Dawn and Diablo 3, a little less than a hundred on Vermintide 2. Basically, when I find a game that scratches an itch, I will play it until I’ve squeezed every drop of content from the bottle. And it looks like I’ll give a new game about a hundred hours to hook me, if I can get past the first hour or so.
I kind of want to go back to ESO, but it’s 75% less fun for me without the subscription (the Craft Bag is BAE, and the DLCs are where I’d be spending my time), but I’m hesitating on the question of “Is it responsible of me to be spending $15/mo on a game I’ve already quit playing once?” And yet, nothing else has come close to hitting that mark for me. GW2 is really amazing, it’s got a lot of things I’d definitely miss if I went back to ESO, but… it’s not the same, somehow.
Racing games and multiplayer I can put hundreds of hours into, but it feels like single player games are too long these days. I prefer 20-30 hours for the main story although I do enjoy playing 60+ hour jrpgs occasionally.
I feel like it’s the opposite. It’s rare to find single player games longer than 20h.
AC Odyssey took me like 80+ hours, Valhalla apparently takes even longer. I feel like open world SP games take longer (and usually overstay their welcome)
Which for the price they ask i would say its the minimum. Recently i played “resident evil village” 10 hours, good game but very short.
Breath of the Wild can be done in under 30 minutes or take hundreds of hours. I’m about 120 hours in and have yet to finish. I could do the final battle now but there’s way more going on in this stunning world for me to enjoy.
I like a variety of experiences so 20 hours seems about the sweet spot for me per game. Except for multiplayer games, which I can play on and off for years. I’m sure I’ve accumulated a combined couple thousand hours out of Counterstrike, TF2, and Halo over the years for instance.
Haha this is about the same for me as well. Games like the NFS series, Doom, Sleeping Dogs, No Man’s Sky, Sniper Elite 4, all have between 20-30 hours.
If I’m not enjoying the game that much I usually leave it by the 4 hour mark though.
What I enjoy about CS is everyone starts back from the same level on each map in terms of loadout and budget. Yet every game is different in one way or another, with different people in matchmaking or even different macro or micro decisions by familiar players. So even playing the same 5 maps means they are different each time you play. It’s why I’ve been playing CS since 1.0 and have logged just shy of 2000 hrs in CSGO. I can’t remember how many hours I have played of CS in the pre-Steam era but it used to be 4-5 hour stints I reckon. Now I play 1-3 hours or so max, and that only 1 or 2 times a week.
Definitely more time in less games. It makes me seem like I don’t like them but I get burned out yknow
Most story games I play once, however long they take. Only a few get the “privilege” of a re-play.
Multiplayer games or games that don’t really have an ending I might put in more, like 200h in PUBG, 420h in Satisfactory (so far), 400h+ in Monster Hunter World, different roguelikes with 100h+, etc.
On Steam, the two games I’ve put in more time than almost all others are Nioh 1 and 2, with a combined 1200h. That’s not even multiple characters.
Only looking at Steam, it’s probably pretty even between story games and these “forever games.”
Then there are Blizzard games, which I’ve played more than basically anything else. I have probably over 25k hours in WoW, thousands in Diablo 2 and 3, hundreds in Heroes of the Storm and Overwatch. Their games pretty much always do it for me, which is a shame, since it was revealed how much of a shitshow the company is, so I currently don’t play their games.
I don’t have much to add except RIP Heroes of the Storm 🥲
I’ve been playing Runescape since grade school. I’m approaching a bit shy of 25,000 hours played (a little under 3 years). As an AFK’able “second monitor game” a good half of that is just “I’m at my computer anyway” but the other half is actual investment/more active playing.
I don’t bother playing a game if I’m not going to invest a significant amount of time into it. I aim for 100% completion or reaching the top 0.1% of players if there is a competitive ranking system. It’s extremely rare for me to play a game that I don’t dump a minimum of 500 hours into.
My play time is less now than it was when I was a teen but it’s still skewed towards the higher end due to me being fortunate enough to work from home with a FIFO queue of work. If my work is done - I can game during work hours if I want to. As long as I keep close tabs on my queue and handle anything as it comes in. This gives me 8~ hours of potential game time that I otherwise wouldn’t have. Since I need to be near my computer in case any work comes in - I’m pretty limited with activities I can do. I can lift some weights, browse the internet, cook a quick meal, or play video games. But I can’t really leave the house, go swim in the pool, etc.
RuneScape is a great second monitor game, the game allows you to be very active when you want to and have time for that, chill semi-afk content when you also want to watch videos’ on the side, and even ‘click once every five minute’ style gameplay. I have a bit over 9000 hours on my ironman.
After Runescape, my second most played game is definitely Minecraft, then Skyrim with about 550 hours, Fallout 4 with 300 hours and everything else is 115 hours or less.
I generally prefer games that are more open ended and that let me hang out in the world working on something. Games like Skyrim, Satisfactory, Reshaping Mars, ETS2 and ATS, for example. I will play longer games that are more on rails, like Rise of the Tomb Raider or Horizon Zero Dawn, but I’ll tire of them much quicker than others. Something about being forced to move on to the next thing too many times makes me nope out of it after a while. The other games I mentioned have progression and goals, but there isn’t really an off-switch and you’re not really pushed to complete them. A game on rails will end, and I get my enjoyment from being part of the world, really.
Other times, I like playing games where you can do a quick mission or something and call it a day. I’ll think I have a lot of hours in them, but I’ll usually be shocked by how few it really is. I’ve played what seems like a lot of Phasmophobia, just doing one or two solo runs and calling it good for a few days or a month or whatever. I have maybe 40 hours in that game. Another example is Deep Rock Galactic. I like them and will come back to them, but I normally only play them when I have an hour or two at most to put into them.
Apparently my average play time is 34 hours. It’s probably because I play games without a definite end like rougelikes. They’re easy to pick up for a short session since there’s little to no story.
It varies wildly. I’ve got about 2000 into Path of Exile, a couple hundred into fallout 4, 100 or so into each Souls game, but I had literal years of play time put into WoW before I quit playing in Wrath.
I normally play single player games. I prefer story focused games and games like factorio, banished. Typically I spend 50h per game if I enjoy it.
For my favourites I have spent close to 400h on the Witcher 3, 200h on cyberpunk 2077, probably just as much on Skyrim and dishonered and Satisfactory.
However many it takes to beat them. I typically don’t replay games, and I don’t play into those insane multiplayer games that require hundreds if not thousands of hours. I beat one, I move on. The only exceptions are NHL and MLB, I play those on Friday nights with some beers to decompress from the week so I have a disproportionate amount of hours in those, but I also don’t buy new ones every year; maybe every 4-5 years. I really bounce off of games that are too long or too big, though. No game needs to be 100 hours long. The last time I did one of those was Assassin’s Creed Odyssey and that’s the last time I’ll ever do that.
I prefer a nice contained 25-30 hour game most of the time.
That doesn’t stop me from having 700 hours in Total War: Warhammer II. But it takes a really special game to grab me for more than 60 or so hours.
@Thebazilly @Mister_Bald I agree, 20 hours is fine, 30 hours is max. Unless the game is really good and sandboxy, then I might get trapped in there for hundreds of hours.
