Consolation Prize

I was playing through a few games of
Catan on the 360 the other night, working towards the “Knight of Catan” achievement. It’s easy enough to get, you just have to finish the game ten times with the largest army card but I’ve never focused on the largest army before, preferring a road building and settlement strategy with a dose of knights for protection. As is usual with an Xbox Live Arcade game I always have a quick look at the leader boards to compare how badly I’m faring against the rest of the world.On the single player leader board I noticed that all the top players have easily logged over 2000 games and the leader of the pack is way out in front with over 5000 games played.

Now although that’s an impressive feat it raises the question of “how much time do you invest in a game?”. With Catan as an example even if you set it to the easiest AI, three players, and a capped victory point condition of seven instead of the usual ten then I would reckon a game would last between 10 and 15 minutes and therefore just to play 2000 games you’d need to invest somewhere between 300 to 500 hours. This is a serious amount of time dedicated to one game and although Catan is a good game I would find it extremely difficult to play the same game so often as to rack up this kind of tally in a year.

Of all the games I’ve played only one springs to mind that kept me entertained long enough to breach the 100 hours game-play mark, namely
Oblivion. A fantasy RPG game with a highly detailed world that captured my imagination and proved to be a very immersing experience. However, even with a game as good as Oblivion there came a point where I felt I’d had enough and it was time to move onto something new.

Oblivion is the exception not the rule in my case and I’d say 15-20 hours is the general amount of time spent per game. Of course when considering the number of games I’ve played over the last year I can easily imagine I’ve spent hundreds of hours in total playing games, thousands of hours when looking back historically over the years. For me the saying “variety is the spice of life” is certainly true. Although I always aim to complete a game I’m forever looking ahead to latest and greatest offerings on the horizon and I very rarely go back once I’ve moved on.

So dear reader, what game have you played the most and for how long?

For RPGs I might get to 40-50 hours if it is really good. Otherwise, unless I really like the multiplayer for a game I don’t play it much after beating the single player. However, I’m in the 50 hour range for RS:V 2 according to LiveEye.

Yeah RPG’s by and large tend to require a lot of time to complete and it’s a genre I’ve generally avoided for the last few years because of this.

That’s a great question… I’d say I usually log 20 to 30 hours in a typical game, with RPGs probably more towards 40 or so. Three notable exceptions to that are Halo, Halo 2 and World of Warcraft.

I probably put in well over 50 hours into the original Halo, and then at least a few hundred into Halo 2, counting singleplayer and multiplayer.

WoW is definitely the champ though. I’ve been playing it for two years now, and I would estimate I’ve put in at least 1,000 hours over that span.

That’s impressive Adrenis! MMORPGs seem to be on there own level with regards to “time investment” and from what I’ve heard require dedication (if you’re a serious player). I have been tempted by WoW over the years, it looks great, but I know that once I start playing then what was left of my free time would just be sucked dry! :o)