The lights are on
I'll preface this blog by admitting its contents could likely earn me an official diagnosis for obsessive-compulsive disorder. For some reason, I've always been obsessed with the "hours played" tally on my games. Some people actively avoid looking at their play time for fear of the "holy crap, I've wasted X hours of my life doing this?," but I'm the absolute opposite. If I'm about to go to bed and I see my hours tally for Mass Effect 2 is at 19 hours and 35 minutes, I think to myself "Well, if I just play 25 more minutes I'll be at an even 20 hours." Back in college, I even made a giant Word document in which I listed every game I could ever remember playing, and proceeded to estimate my hours count for each.I'm not really sure where this obsession came from. I think it comes from when I was younger and didn't have much in the way of disposable income, so every game purchase was a huge decision for me. When I would read a review that stated "Devil May Cry should take you 20 hours to beat," that made me more comfortable with a purchasing decision. If I knew I'd be spending at least 20 hours on a game, that made it much easier to talk myself into buying it. After all, I wouldn't want to relive my nightmare of paying $50 for State of Emergency and playing it for about two hours.When I look at my Borderlands play time and see 100+ hours, that makes me think "Wow, this game has given me almost a week's worth of entertainment...that's awesome." I don't think of it as time wasted, I see it as an objective reminder of how great a game is. If a game like Mass Effect 2, Oblivion, or Fallout 3 can keep me interested for 30, 40, or 50+ hours, that's a sign of an amazing gaming experience.Here's where it gets ridiculous. If I play a game for a certain amount of time and it's not going towards my official tally, I'll let the game run for the appropriate time when I am back on my profile. For instance, if I play Street Fighter IV for two hours at a friend's house, I'll leave mine on the menu screen for two hours when I get home. The most extreme example of this was when 220 hours of Soul Calibur data was mysteriously deleted from my Dreamcast VMU. Sure enough, I left it on the menu screen for over nine days once I started my new file (and then pumped over 200 more hours into the game after that).During the last generation of consoles, EA introduced a new feature called the "EA Profile." It was meant to track your stats, records, and play time across all EA Sports titles. I was thrilled when I heard this, and hoped it would be the first step towards all games tracking hours played. Unfortunately, it turned out that I was one of the only ones who gave a crap about the feature, as it quietly disappeared and was never heard from again.To this day, I'm still hoping for the next generation of systems to include an hours tally within the framework of the console. Current systems already add up your achievement points and trophies into one overall score (which has unsurprisingly turned into another obsession for me). Imagine being able to see your total hours played of gaming across the board, or even your hours spent playing a specific genre of game. Taking that idea even further, what about stats for total kill/death ratio across all games with multiplayer deathmatch, or total win/loss record throughout all fighting games? I think it would be amazing to see such a comprehensive array of stats that would display your gaming habits in such an objective manner.Or maybe I'm just going to turn into that guy who checks to make sure his door is locked 300 times a day.
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lol that's great! I always like to see my hours played but I don't think I've ever tried to keep records. I completely understand wanting to get your moneys worth for the various games though. Also, I like the idea of consoles tracking your stats. I enjoy programs like raptr or xfire that track your games but alas, none of them are perfect. I'm with you about consoles tracking your stats!
I do like to use xfire for my PC gaming to track hours, but now I guess there's raptr which tallies up time for everything on every system that you do apparently. But, I still do enjoy knowing how long I played a game. For example, I played guild wars for 684 hours. Haha.
I can definitely relate to this. Especially when thinking about buying a game. Oblivion was a game on PC in which i spent a huge amount of hours playing.
And seeing stats come together from multiple game would be awesome. My buddies and I and are usually always comparing stats and trying to one up each other. Being able to do that across multiple games would just make it that much better.
As I always like to say: if it can't be measured, there's no use doing it. I applaud you, Mr. Ryckert.
I'm afraid of how many hours I've put into Rock Band over the past two years... O_O
I can definitely relate to games back in the day taking 20+ hours and being happy about it. I remember how games at some point seem to have gotten shorter, and I remember being upset about buying a game and beating it in a day or two.
I'm still annoyed by that. The most recent example is Silent Hill: Shattered Memories, which I played and beat in about a day. I think my playtime was like... 8 or so hours. Lame.
@Vote 4 Pedro - hahaha I'm with you there! It's amazing how fast time goes by playing that game.
I love stats and would love to see this concept adopted in the next round of consoles.
i got fallout 3 the goty for christmas and play 3 times so far with 100+ hours each and still haven't done that much.now i like games that last a long time but if its good i don't mind the length,like uncharted 2 only lasted about 12 to 15 hours but it was great(goty oh yeah!).if its a bad game i'm not really sure if i want to play it forever though.
I woulld really love it if my consoles told me how much time ive spent playing all my games. Im probably not as obsesed as you are but I do like to know who much time ive spent on a game. I usually spend 60-70 hours a week playing games so I would really like to see how much I actually play.
Everyone loves records...
Kill counts are definitely neat, but I wouldn't be all for having a counter for the amount of time a game is on or being played.
I'm sorry to be the one to deliver the bad news, but you are DEFINITELY turning into the guy who checks to make sure his door is locked 300 times a day.
I was a little creeped out while reading this.
The blog started off innocently enough because lots of people like to brag about how many hours they invested in an RPG(...but don't higher numbers mean you suck at the game, or is it that you "take in the scenery" and "pay attention to the story"?).
...but then I read...
"if I play Street Fighter IV for two hours at a friend's house, I'll leave mine on the menu screen for two hours when I get home"
...and I suddenly got this strange chill up the back of my spine.
Maybe you need a little more fresh air in your day (leave the front door open?) or should take up a different hobby. How about smoking?
I have just recently become obsessed with getting achievements/trophies. I have a GamerScore around 10,000 and wanted to increase that. And when I went through all the games I have there were lots of achievements for playing through the game on a harder difficulty setting. But as I hate playing a game and dying countless times, this is going to be a hard thing for me to do.
As for the Playing Time obsession, I just saw that I had spent 15 or so hours on a playthrough of MGS4. And with me thinking that this game should take longer than that, I started a new game and am determined to take my time in this playthrough.
i agree, when i say a certain game is a waste of time, then its a compliment
i have six days logged into cod mw2, and halo 3 i lost count after week 3
i play 15 hours and thought i was obseseed with games
Heres the question.......drumroll........ How many hours have you played modern warfare 2? I want to see what the hardcore players out their clock in game time. Last time I checked I have 2 days and like 17 hours.
@cigarman1545
I'm a little shy of three days on MW2. A lot of those were spent on Spec Ops since I had to get 1000/1000 achievement points. Took forever.
Hold on...am I to understand that Raptr tracks hours for all my games? Getting this right now.
Well, when it comes to hours spent on gameplay, I really enjoy seeing a high number.
When I go to purchase a game, wait in line, then open my wallet and say goodbye to the bills I hardly knew, I do expect to get a certain amount of satisfaction. And I generally find that the "hours played" stat can say a lot about the quality and enjoyment I got out of it. So when I see that I, too, spent over a hundred hours playing Borderlands, I do feel a sense of personal accomplishment. However, I am embarrassed to share that stat with others. The term "nerd" has been tossed my way more than a few times.