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[Iva Demilcol]

I'm a PhD student, I also teach physics to High School Students early in the morning and I'm learning two languages. I go to the university and to a language school from Monday to Saturday and I have to do home chores on Sunday. I play and own tons of long games. I've spent almost 350 hours playing both versions of Persona 5 (Japanese and English versions), I have more than 100 hours in Bloodborne and Dark Souls III, I replay the games I love (like Bayonetta), play multiplayer games like Splatoon, the last time I played a FF Tactics game I played over the course of a year, etc.

It's true, sometimes I just sit in front of the computer and browse GAF or just do nothing (for example, I haven't played any games the past three days). It's not even difficult to do, you are just enjoying a game and that's all.

 

[galvatron]

I think it comes down to your personality. I've heard people say that they have to be able to win at a competitive game to have fun. I'm not really wired that way, but I need to respect/agree with the type of play rewarded by a game to pursue it. I am totally content losing 100 times in a row if I am learning from each loss.

It's easy to imagine a person saying they just can't get into longer games when they'll only allocate 30 minutes at a time or know that they could be interrupted any minute by a crying baby or some other adult responsibility. I'm in my 30s and I still mostly play the types of games I did growing up.

TL;DR: To each his own...

 

[Oblivion]

Yeah, I used to use work as an excuse, but the reality was just laziness on my part. Not just laziness per se, but I'm also weird in that I have to be in a proper state of mind with no stress related external factors involved.

 

[MugiwaraCole]

I care and yes it does become a chore. Fantasy bloat is why I basically don't read fantasy novels anymore. Why read some 800 page monstrosity when I could read 2-3 other novels with that time?

Because you like fantasy novels? Lol this is easy

 

[Boss Doggie]

I don't get it OP, you said you used to play 200 hour games when studying, now when you have a job you listed games which can be completed in like 10 hours and fighting games...so what have you proven exactly? It's not like I disagree with the title either, I know plenty of doctors who play long RPGs, frequently watch movies/longer TV shows, just the other day one of my doctor mates finished Nioh and he also plays Skyrim, so it's definitely possible if you make time to unwind even if you aren't going to be doing many 5 hour gaming sessions like before.

I mean, should I have to bring up Breath of the Wild, or Guild Wars 2 (which I have been playing for years), etc.?

 

[hohoXD123]

I mean, should I have to bring up Breath of the Wild, or Guild Wars 2 (which I have been playing for years), etc.?

That would have made more sense yes

 

[Boss Doggie]

That would have made more sense yes

Ah fine

 

[Rickenslacker]

I agree, especially in regards to difficult games. If you have the time to play through multiple games in a content tourism manner, you definitely have the time to get the mastery of one. I get that some would rather feel like they're getting some progress done through any time spent in-game, but I always took it being a time factor aspect as a lame excuse.

 

[Scrumpert]

I think alot of what this comes down to is that the average gamer would rather play 10 games at 20 hours a piece rather than one 200 hour game. This then leaves a bad stigma around the 200 hour game.

 

[Dremorak]

It took me around 5 months to beat xenoblade, piece by piece, but I got there in the end!

I actually think a lot of the people who complain about no time aren't married. Dating takes too much time and energy haha.

I've got a wife, 2 kids, a mortgage, a full time job, etc etc. I still find around about 8 hours a week to play games. After the kids and wife are asleep

 

[ksamedi]

I have time constraint, a busy job and a wife. I work out as well and love to hang out with friends, yet I still clocked 160 hors into Zelda botw. I agree with the OP, but I must add that i cant play these games every month. I still play Zelda after the dlc came out and a bunch of other online games but if a game like Zelda came out every month I would skip them. I prefer to consume games fully before movong on to the next.

 

[DrFurbs]

As a BUSY academic I live, breathe work every free hour I have. It's really quite stressful the hours I work even when on scheduled leave. That said, I have been able to rack up nearly 60 hours so far on Witcher 3 and I am really enjoying it. It's my go-to thing when I'm stressed (which is almost constantly).

So I agree with the OP.

 

[irrotational]

yeah you don't know the behind the scenes of libraries, especially academic ones

That's a pretty bold statement. If you've never done the job you probably shouldn't be making assumptions like that...

Fair enough - I am intrigued now What goes on behind the scenes in academic libraries that makes it a hard and stressful job?

If you're responsible for a large budget, and/or managing a large team of people then that can be hard and stressful (but I wouldn't necessarily describe your job as librarian then)

 

[Not Drake]

It's satisfying to finally beat a long game after a long time. This year it took me a month to get through Horizon and 5 weeks to get a platinum in Watch Dogs 2. Right now I'm playing FFXV for the third straight week and I'm still in chapter 3. Loving it. Short games are good for people with less time, but long-burners are where it's at.

 

[Boss Doggie]

Fair enough - I am intrigued now What goes on behind the scenes in academic libraries that makes it a hard and stressful job?

If you're responsible for a large budget, and/or managing a large team of people then that can be hard and stressful (but I wouldn't necessarily describe your job as librarian then)

shit like acquisitions, requests from users which includes student and faculty (if you think faculty are different from students, you haven't seen them lol), stuff not happening because of reasons, materials getting damaged, etc.

and generally the attitude of the users

 

[jahasaja]

I agree that it is not about how long the game is. However, I would argue that certain types of games demands long play session and they are not good when you have little free time.

If I only have 30 min to play and I have to watch a long cut scenes and/or walking from point a to b I feel very unfulfilled.

However, long games like BOTW, souls, monster hunter, you can sit down for 30 min and have great experience every time.

 

[mickagau33]

It is really hard to generalize like you did OP. It would mean we are talking about sam-ey persons with sam-ey jobs. It depends on who you are, what kind of jobs you are doing, what you are seeking in a hobby, what you have to deal with outside of your job and so on. Personnaly I just don't like stressfull games anymore or don't have the will to play when I had a really busy week (For various reasons : mostly eyestrain since I work 7 days a week in front of a computer or just being super tired)

If people with a job want to play time-sink games, good for them. If they don't, good for them too ;-)

 

[irrotational]

shit like acquisitions, requests from users which includes student and faculty (if you think faculty are different from students, you haven't seen them lol), stuff not happening because of reasons, materials getting damaged, etc.

and generally the attitude of the users

That all sounds pretty crappy :-( To be honest though, it doesn't sound much better or worse that tons of other jobs...maybe it has a bit more of dealing with shitty customers...but a lot of jobs have that too.

I'm probably being an ass by going on about it, but I still think there are an awful lot of jobs that are a lot harder than yours, sorry :-(

Mix in having partners, kids etc and some people will really struggle to have time to do anything...including playing games.

Anyway - I hope people are less crappy in the future!

 

[kyser73]

I'm married with kids, f/t job and I even play VR games, which apparently if you have kids isn't possible if some comments in VR threads are to be believed.

Most of my gaming takes place after the kids have gone to bed tho. This is because:

1. Lots of my games have age-inappropriate content for a 7 & 4 year-old.

2. While they are starting to get into gaming, gaming is 'my time' and I don't really appreciate the distraction and 'My go now daddy' stuff

3. I share the lounge TV and my wife really doesn't do gaming at all.

Time sink games still work, although I've had to change my playstyle and stick to one at a time so I can retain the higher control/inventory/crafting systems in my head. I usually alternate between a couple of side quests and a story mission in say, HZD, and then the next night have a blast on some Housemarque, then the next night a VR session and so on...

Gaf impacts my gaming time more than work & family TBH.

 

[Soar]

Interesting thread. I work on multiple projects and teach in campus and online but have enjoyed some long games recently like Persona 4G and 5. The only change from when I was not so busy is that I could not do gaming marathons so will take a few months to finish up. What I do now is to cycle between games and enjoy the various types of immersion when I get to it.

The only real problem with this is that my muscle memory suffers, so for instance my recent attempts to play both Nioh and Bloodborne simultaneously with two other RPGs ended in tears. Have shelved them for when I have a block of uninterrupted time blocks when I can focus on gittinggud.

Story and immersion is my focus from games so I was surprised I can juggle a few RPGs without issues whatsoever.

 

[CecilRousso]

Except knowing how good a game is usually requires actually playing (and buying) it first. With longer games, they'll often not ramp up for numerous hours also. It's like comparing watching a movie to a TV show. A disappointing movie is often no big deal because it was only 2hrs. But a disappointing TV show may take a whole season before you realise it's not really going anywhere.

But the point up to the realization that you don't care where it's going, with both tv shows and movies, should be worth something, shouldn't it?

 

[cucuchu]

Very good points and I agree. I have a full time job+, 5 year old daughter & 5 month old son, share responsibilities equally with wife so no gaming during the day, and usually spend an hour or so at the gym plus commute time. Thankfully I have many years of working on a watch floor in the military with some crazy schedules of switching days/nights every week so I'm now able to live on 4 to 5 hours of sleep a night. I just wait for everyone to go to bed around 10 to 10.30pm and then I'm up until 1am usually on week days (3am weekends).

You can easily burn through long games in a reasonable amount of time but you just have to use your time well. I tend to enjoy longer, open-world games on harder difficulties so each game eats up a fair chunk of time. I like to play shorter games on the side so even if a game takes me a month to beat, I still knock out one or two other games in that time-span and I can feel like I'm making some kind of dent in my backlog. It also keeps me from burning out on the longer game.

 

[StayDead]

I have a full time job as an IT Support technician. The first thing I do when I get home is sit down on my comfortable office chair and play me some video games.

I really don't understand the "I spend all day at a computer, why would I want to play games on a PC at home". While it's not directly related to the OP, it's still another fallacy that I've heard in a similar vein.

I personally play a lot of longer games also, but they need to be gripping, if not my attention gets taken by multiplayer games.

 

[Danneee]

I came to the conclusion that I can't play long, grindy games (mostly RPGs) on anything but handhelds. Elite Dangerous is the exception.

 

[arcticice]

i have like 5-6 hours at home during weekdays for gaming, watching TV shows, to spend with family. I use 2 of these hours almost every day to play games. Yes, that's slow AF but what i do these days is i only play games that i really wanna play instead of picking everything up.

Following are the games that i finished in last 4 months and almost all of them were pretty fuckin long

Persona 5: 105 hours
Nier Automata: 36 Hours
Yakuza 0: 35 Hours
Resident Evil 7: 5 hours
Horizon Zero Dawn: 30 Hours
Dark Souls 2 plus DLCs : 64 Hours
Witcher 3 DLCs only: 32 Hours
Titanfall 2: 4 hours

 

[Synth]

But the point up to the realization that you don't care where it's going, with both tv shows and movies, should be worth something, shouldn't it?

Not really. I guess it depends on how long you're willing to give something the benefit of the doubt before you discard it. I remember watching an anime (Ergo Proxy) years back, and thinking the first two episodes of so were awesome. It fell of quickly after that, but I watched a LOT more of it (maybe all of it.. I can't even remember at this point) in the hopes that it would return to being as interesting as it had started off. People don't tend to drop longer experiences immediately due to brief downturns within them. If the next episode of Game of Thrones is complete trash, how many people do you think will drop it there? I'd likely need to be consistently shit for the duration of a season or more before people lose hope for it.

Sometimes this works out well. If I'd been one to drop a game at the first sign of not feeling what it's doing, I'd have noped out of Bioshock Infinite within the first 3 hours, but I'm glad I didn't as I really enjoyed the way it ended, and especially the Burial At Sea DLC that followed. If they'd been shit though.... guess how I'd have found that out?

 

[EmSeta]

I work full time and have a kid, yet I love deep games.

However, some games tend to just purposefully waste the players' time with repetitive gameplay and busywork on order to pad the length.

 

[Raptomex]

So I'm gonna sweep this idea that apparently when you have a job, you somehow can't play "deep" or "long" games. Screw that.

I kind of agree. I never understood this either. So it's long. Just take the time to beat it if you really like it. You'll still get to play whatever you think you're missing out on when you're done. There are so many games across so many systems, whether you have a lot of time or no time, there's no way to keep up.

 

[MushroomSamba]

I'm a librarian. Now before you say anything, no, librarians have it hard especially in the academic setting. You truly haven't faced the fury of a holier-than-thou graduate thinking he is above rules for his precious dissertation. Or those incapable of following basic rules. And such and such.

Haha, I'm actually an academic librarian, too. I gotta say though, my life has been WAY easier and happier now that I'm out of corporate. As a professor, we get crazy benefits and tons of time off. Dealing with students and faculty are a piece of cake (partly because I simply enjoy dealing with them in the first place), especially compared to the folks I used to work with.

...buuut back on point: I find myself preferring "quickie" games these days more than anything else. I guess it helps that the indie scene is just so damn good right now. There's something about time-sink games, where you have to invest 100+ hours to see it through, that is a bit overwhelming/off-putting for me. I guess that only matters if you care about the end...I do enjoy the process, but closure is a nice thing as well. And putting 100 hours into one game means less time playing others. At this point, I enjoy variety more.

 

[Synth]

I kind of agree. I never understood this either. So it's long. Just take the time to beat it if you really like it. You'll still get to play whatever you think you're missing out on when you're done. There are so many games across so many systems, whether you have a lot of time or no time, there's no way to keep up.

This is also not true. Back when the Xbox 360 first hit I was splitting the majority of my time between Dead or Alive 4 and Ridge Racer 6 online, later getting pretty invested into Phantasy Star Universe. Later when I was done with regularly playing each of those I took more notice of Chromehounds... but by this point the game was already dead, and not dead as in almost nobody was playing it anymore... dead as in the servers were gone. There are a lot of gaming experiences that are actually time critical and can't simply be experienced later, and even those that otherwise may become so if for example you have a social group that will likely only play the game at a given time. This again goes back to the fact that "not enough time" is basically a universal truth. As you say, there's literally no way to keep up, so in order to have time for anything it will prevent you having the time for something else. And you can't just return to everything later, because games are constantly released, and you're going to die before being able to return to everything that you would have wanted to play.

 

[Raven117]

I really enjoy the time-sink games (and I have a full, long hours gig).

I get about 1 hour or so a night to enjoy games. Having a nice time sink games, can really help you relax...and settle in after a long day.

I have been playing Persona 5 since mid-April and am just now in the closing stretch.

 

[Raptomex]

This is also not true. Back when the Xbox 360 first hit I was splitting the majority of my time between Dead or Alive 4 and Ridge Racer 6 online, later getting pretty invested into Phantasy Star Universe. Later when I was done with regularly playing each of those I took more notice of Chromehounds... but by this point the game was already dead, and not dead as in almost nobody was playing it anymore... dead as in the servers were gone. There are a lot of gaming experiences that are actually time critical and can't simply be experienced later, and even those that otherwise may become so if for example you have a social group that will likely only play the game at a given time. This again goes back to the fact that "not enough time" is basically a universal truth. As you say, there's literally no way to keep up, so in order to have time for anything it will prevent you having the time for something else. And you can't just return to everything later, because games are constantly released, and you're going to die before being able to return to everything that you would have wanted to play.

Oh, multiplayer. I'm always talking from an SP perspective. I don't play online much, myself. In that regard, yeah, I guess you're right.

You know what bothers me? People that say they don't have "enough time" when they have plenty (I'll elaborate). Like if you have a family, full time job, maybe school, and/or other major responsibilities, I totally understand that. You've got a full plate. But if you don't have a lot of responsibilities like that and just prefer doing other activities (let's use reading for leisure as an example), and then tell me you "don't have time", that annoys me. You have plenty of time, you're just not doing it. You prefer to read or do whatever else it is you enjoy doing. And that's perfectly fine but I think the proper response would be "I prefer to do this" or "I have other interests". I just felt the need to vent this. I know several people who tell me they "don't have time" and I think I spend enough time with them to know they have plenty.