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Find out how many hours it would take to finish your Steam backlog

M

mclem

Member
Timedog said:
The fact that I don't play any games yet keep buying them and now I have data to show me quantitatively how stupid my actions are...it actually makes me want to spend MORE money at the Steam sale using the Steam client made by Valve software who make great games including the wildly popular smash hit Richochet that the media can't stop raving about.
Click to expand...

Goshdarnit, now I can compete for a highscore!

That's how this works, right?
 
L

Lafazar

Member
Arthea said:
I'm not sure I own that much games on all platforms, including old games that don't run on newer OSes anymore with newer versions of them. (><)
Do you plan to play all of them?
Click to expand...

It depends. The vast majority of the games come from indie bundles where I'm interested in at least one of the games. I plan to definitely play those game(s) I bought the bundle for and intend to at least take a look at the others.

Since I refuse to be pressured by my backlog I'm in no particular hurry to rush through my library. I usually focus on one single game at a time and take my time to finish it. Thus I tend to acquire games much faster than I can play them.
 
U

Unai

Member
mclem said:
I'm thinking a simple ability to toggle off games and see the updated numbers in the top of thread would be nice for tailoring it to your own tastes (or indeed games you feel you've 'completed' faster than the site thinks you should!).
Click to expand...

This would be neat, indeed.
 
M

mclem

Member
UnaiGamer said:
This would be neat, indeed.
Click to expand...

One corollary for that that springs to mind: If, say, I was to spend a thousand hours playing Cthulhu Saves The World (a game that's got a completion time of around ten hours): Would that be read as subtracting *ten* hours from the total, or *a thousand*?

I think it should be ten, but I'm wondering if the algorithm does a thousand, because when thinking through the logistics of how you'd do this, that's the mistake I thought of first!


The argument for ten hours (i.e. not using the 'player has played'

Consider a Steam library consisting of two games.

Skyrim: 500 hours to complete. Player has played 0.
Cthulhu Saves the World: 10 hours to complete. Player has played 1000.

Total time to complete: 510 hours. Total time played: 1000 hours.

If it does the simple - and I'd argue incorrect - calculation, it may conclude that the time to finish the backlog (i.e. play through Skyrim) is -490 hours. If it caps Cthulhu at 10 hours, the resulting numbers come out correctly.

But more than that, I'm thinking it might be smarter if the calculation handles it further - and in doing so goes on to make the previous suggestion easier to implement. Have games with a 'complete' state. If a game is complete it is *completely* excluded from the calculation; does not contribute to the time to play, does not contribute to played time.

Have games where time played > time to complete default to being flagged as complete. You could even go a step further and poke the achievements API for a given game if there's a clear 'you have won' achievement that can be probed, flag those by default as well. That'd require expanding the database, however, to allow the ability to cross-reference a game with the 'you win' achievement (and that'd need human intervention to mark all those; a big job)
 
W

whyman

Member
g88gNx8.png
 
S

Slightly Live

Dirty tag dodger
That's 108.98 days!

Name Slightly Live - Dani
Games 234
Hours to beat main stories 2615.61
Hours for completion 5537.21
Hours played 2408.70
% of main stories 92.09%
% of total completion 43.50%
Worth $2969.00

Feelin' good!
 
K

KeRaSh

Member
Name
ke_ra_sh

Games
58

Hours to beat main stories
664.62

Hours for completion
1770.65

Hours played
201.70

% of main stories
30.35%

% of total completion
11.39%

Worth
$720.00


Not that bad actually, especially compared to others here. A fair amount of my library consists of games that I have already finished on another platform so they are also skewing my stats.

Apparently Final Fantasy XI counts as more than 3000 hours for just the main storyline.
 
Q

qq more

Member
Is it possible to have it so it has a tally for just the unfinished games (main story)? And maybe have an option to mark what games you've completed and whatnot? Just suggestions since I think they would motivate people more.

Would love to know how many hours I have to put into the games in order to clear the rest of my backlog.
 
A

Amneisac

Member
Sq4hKW0.png


I am actually pretty impressed with my completion percentage compared to a lot of other people. I assumed I was one of the worst offenders of not playing games. You guys really aren't kidding about not playing your games!
 
R

Ryuuga

Banned
Amneisac said:
I am actually pretty impressed with my completion percentage compared to a lot of other people. I assumed I was one of the worst offenders of not playing games. You guys really aren't kidding about not playing your games!
Click to expand...

Right? Half the time I play with some Gaffers they wonder why I don't post as much. Too busy completing them games!
 
S

ShockingAlberto

Member
Imran's Steam library would take approx. 2460.81 hours to complete.
That's 102.53 days!

Name Imran
Games 217
Hours to beat main stories 2460.81
Hours for completion 5651.62
Hours played 1440.90
% of main stories 58.55%
% of total completion 25.50%
Worth $2743.00
 
V

Valkendorm

Member
Awesome app!!

Valkendorm's Steam library would take approx. 2395.19 hours to complete.
That's 99.80 days!

Name Valkendorm
Games 197
Hours to beat main stories 2395.19
Hours for completion 5327.17
Hours played 744.70
% of main stories 31.09%
% of total completion 13.98%
Worth $2584.00
 
M

mclem

Member
SenseiJinx said:
Hmm...some games do appear to show multiple times on some Steam accounts. I've got multiple Civ IV's for instance. Do you mind sharing your Steam ID, so I can look into why those games are showing up multiple times? Civ IV does because I believe the Mac and PC version have different appids for some stupid reson.
Click to expand...

My steam ID is 76561197971989534

I have a hunch it's specifically for games where you purchase one thing but it has multiple entries on the games list. Ys I + II Chronicles+ is a good example there; that appears for me once in the list where it *does* have completion data and once in the list where it does *not*. I purchased one item but it's represented as two games; it appears that the version which does have completion data actually represents Ys I while the version that does not represents Ys II.

This is particularly noticable with the Telltale episodic titles; I have five entries for Sam & Max: The Devil's Playhouse, presumably with one entry representing each individual episode.

Now, I'm wondering how the Steam API represents such games. My hunch - and I stress it's a hunch - is that it does the following:

Each appid represents each item on your games list.
There is an associated string which represents the object on the store that it identifies - this, I suspect, is what you're currently displaying. Multiple appids can be purchased with a *single* store purchase; all those would have the same string associated with them in this slot.
My hunch is that there's *another* associated string which represents the label that appears on your game list for a given title. That is (for example) different for all the Devil's Playhouse episodes; Looking them up, on the list they're represented as "Sam & Max 301: The Penal Zone"; "Sam & Max 302: The Tomb of Sammun-Mak", and so on.

If I'm right, displaying the latter details instead of the former may aid in distinguishing between titles. Not sure if it'd interfere with HLTB integration, though.

SenseiJinx said:
Oh crap, I've almost hit my daily quotas for the day already, 7 hours into the day. 0.0 I really didn't think this many people would be interested in it. At 4,840 Steam IDs queried and 10,518 total queries. Upping my billing limits so it hopefully stays up.
Click to expand...
It's a really useful tool, because one of the things that bothers me about Backloggery and its ilk is the sheer workload in getting a large collection into it in the first place. Something which automates huge chunks of it is quite a boon.
 
C

Curufinwe

Member
FEAR 3 is the only Steam game I need to finish. I bought the FEAR pack last summer, and never got around to playing it. FEAR 2 was a struggle to get thru, so I needed a break before playing the next one.
 
M

mclem

Member
Tropico Reloaded also fits the pack/episodic theory; it's actually a retail bundle that ended up on Steam in full bundle form; it consists of Tropico 1, the expansion pack (which I don't think has its own ID, but I could be wrong) and Tropico 2 - hence why it has two entries; one for the first game, one for the second.

Similarly, Tradewinds works like this:

Tradewinds Classics on the store contains Tradewinds Classic, Tradewinds 2, Tradewinds Legends
Tradewinds Caravans + Odyssey on the store contains, uh, Tradewinds Caravans and Tradewinds Odyssey (!)


I think it's explicitly for games that are primarily sold in a pack form - so as to distinguish them from bundles, which are games normally sold individually instead handled as a pack (Hence why there's no entries, for instance, for the various indie packs I've purchased from the sales; those are all individually listed). You cannot buy 'Tradewinds 2', you can only purchase "Tradewinds Classics", which includes Tradewinds 2.

Conversely, see the Precipice of Darkness titles. Episodic in form, but explicitly sold individually, and as such they have their own distinct entries in the database.


Edit: Just noticed another oddity: DLC. It's certainly meaningful to have completion times for things like the Fallout: New Vegas DLC content, but there's also things like a whole bunch of Magicka skins that don't really fit! Amusingly, there's the implication that I should take 10.84 hours to complete 'dressing up my wizard in a science fiction skin' :).

This does raise a fair point, going back to the New Vegas ones, that those won't have an associated completion time - it'd all be wrapped up in the time spent playing the original product... but on the other hand, it may be worth distinguishing between 'Fallout: New Vegas' and 'Fallout: New Vegas plus DLC packs X, Y and Z". Hmmm. What I'd probably look into doing is adding DLC as a subsection below the game it's DLC for - at least then they're grouped together. Does HLTB list DLCs individually? Maybe it could adjust the 'Time to beat' for a given title based on the quantity of DLCs you have for it.
 
M

Mugaaz

Member
Name Mugaaz
Games 90
Hours to beat main stories 1151.62
Hours for completion 3337.72
Hours played 1095.30
% of main stories 95.11%
% of total completion 32.82%
Worth $1026.00
Last update - Update Now 09 Jul 2013 14:57:29


What backlog?
 
T

Tymerend

Member
Name: Tymerend
Games: 325
Hours to beat main stories: 3655.08
Hours for completion: 7858.17
Hours played: 647.20
% of main stories: 17.71%
% of total completion: 8.24%
Worth: $3711.00


This is supposed to help deter me in spending any more on future sales. Really, the possibility of coming anywhere near beating all of these is so out there, that it really doesn't matter and I may as well just keep collecting them.
 
U

UpperCaseN

Member
This is cool idea, OP. My backlog is only 12 deeo so I manually made a total a few months ago. Would be cool if you could somehow get it to work with HowLongToBeat or Backloggery.com so that it's not limited to Steam only, there's console games to be included as well!
 
DietRob

DietRob

i've been begging for over 5 years.
Probably close to $70k worth of games ITT..

HOLY SHIT.

I can't figure out what my steam ID is or what the URL to my profile is.
 
O

Omegasquash

Member
Name: jdlewis1979
Games: 93
Hours to beat main stories: 988.78
Hours for completion: 2818.86
Hours played: 383.70
% of main stories: 38.81%
% of total completion: 13.61%
Worth: $984.00

I feel like I need to lift more.
 
M

MBR

Banned
Name LillMikel
Games 98
Hours to beat main stories 1058.72
Hours for completion 2958.75
Hours played 255.40
% of main stories 24.12%
% of total completion 8.63%
Worth $1307.00

That's 44,11 days!

Got my first gaming pc in 2011 after my first couple of jobs that summer, so I guess it's a pretty good amount of games that I've bought.

I've realized that I'll never get enough time to finish my backlog on Steam, but I guess that's a mission I can give to my future kids.
 
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