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
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.
When did people start tracking how many hours they play? I used to play games for hours a day. I loved getting lost in them, but I never kept track of hour many hours I spent. Now I’m a dad with a full time job, so I only get to play a little bit every once in a while. But when i get an hour to play I really enjoy it a lot!
The only reason I know how many hours I have is because steam & other stores track how many hours you have in games. Minecraft is one game that doesn’t global counter, however & I agree its nice to just get lost and enjoy playing with friends.
some games also track it in game, like in Elden Ring loading a character you will time spent.
This is an interesting question. I never thought about it until platforms started showing it. I bet I have shockingly low hours on games from my childhood that I consider my “formative” or “beloved” games. I act like I spent years playing Ocarina of Time but was it actually like 20 hours?
2 or 2000 with very little variation.
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.
The hours I dump into games varies wildly. Certain games, mainly Splatoon 2/3, Final Fantasy 14, Factorio, Satisfactory, and anything with a level editor I’ll happily dump hundreds of hours into. According to Steam, the game I dumped the most hours into as of this post is Distance, with the majority of that being spent in its level editor.
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.
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.
I’ve put it down and picked it back up 2 or 3 times; looking forward to starting Necrom tomorrow, but once that’s done I’ll it it down again I think.
I think it’s generally an amazing game, but I don’t do much of the multiplayer content, so each time I’m away for 1.5 to 2 years to let content build up and get myself out of the grind.
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.
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.
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 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.
As far as single-player games are concerned, I realized I have a sweet-spot of ~100 hours when I get somewhat tired of it, and ~150 hours when I’m just done. I don’t know anything about the story of Xenoblade 3 after the snow area because I crossed that threshold and just stopped paying attention. I just wanted it to be over. I had just played the Live A Live remake before that and I realized how much I miss the pacing of classic RPGs.
On the other hand, I’m closing in on 500 hours in Monster Hunter Rise. I have no problem casually grinding out games that aren’t a long-term story-commitment.
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.
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.
I’m a big fan of replayable games, esp things like Roguelikes. I usually have one “main” game at a time, and sink in about 100 hours or so until I feel like I’ve got the “meat” all eaten and transition to something new. Multiplayer games also serve a great role for me since they are naturally varied, and I’ll easily put 200-300 hours in my initial kick, and occasionally come back for shorter stints over time.
Occasionally, a game really grips me. I’ve got ~700 hours in RimWorld, I was depressed and unemployed and it kept me going. I’ve also got about that much in Binding of Isaac, IMO still the greatest Roguelike made and has metric tons of content. I also have like 800 in Stellaris, but that’s because I used to play it full time during my WFH call center job, I never play it on my own time haha
