How long does it take until you're "done" with a game?

[nageov3t]

usually about a month, whether that means I beat the game or got bored/sick of it (after which I'll play something else and return to it down the road... which reminds me, I really need to finish Oblivion one of these days. I was playing it nonstop during Hurricane Irene this summer, but haven't touched it since)

 

[RandomSanity]

I think your poll is meaningless unless you change it to be measured in gameplay hours. Some games will take me a year to go through, but that doesn't mean I play them more than an hour here and there.

 

[shortylickens]

I think your poll is meaningless unless you change it to be measured in gameplay hours. Some games will take me a year to go through, but that doesn't mean I play them more than an hour here and there.

No I think what the OP was getting at is real time, not game time.
He was asking how long we typically give a game before ignoring it.
I been playing Max Payne once a year since it came out, but I dont spend thousands of hours on it. A single run through only takes about 15 hours and I dont keep redoing it. I could honestly say its been entertaining me for 10 whole years though, even though it hasnt occupied as much time as some other games.
I do a game of KOTOR 1 and 2 at least once a year, and when I do each one sucks up about 50 hours.
Whereas Starcraft 2 I played intently for the first few months after it debuted and then forgot about it. Havent even logged in for some time. But when I did stop I easily had over a thousand hours on it. Maybe closer to 2000.

Morrowind occupied a thousand hours and then I left it behind to do Oblivion. Even though I have issues with it, Oblivion has probably occupied more time cuz I keep going back to it frequently.
Fallout 3 a lot, and New Vegas even more cuz its overall a better game, even though you'd think by now I'd be tired of the mechanics.
But I havent even owned New Vegas one whole year yet.

Age of Mythology is old and not really awesome but its easy to get in to. I do at least one skirmish every day and have been pretty consistent with it for years.
Crysis I played all the way through once and then never went back.

So you see there are games that give us intense entertainment for a relatively short while and we may put many hours at once into them, or not.
And theres games that give us long term entertainment cuz we play them a little each day for years, or replay them once in a great while over a period of years. You can rack up a shitload of hours on those games, or maybe not.

 

[RandomSanity]

No I think what the OP was getting at is real time, not game time.
He was asking how long we typically give a game before ignoring it.

So you see there are games that give us intense entertainment for a relatively short while and we may put many hours at once into them, or not.
And theres games that give us long term entertainment cuz we play them a little each day for years, or replay them once in a great while over a period of years. You can rack up a shitload of hours on those games, or maybe not.

I don't think this is a very good measure. When I love a game I tend to play it a lot right away, and when I dislike a game I tend to play it a little over a long period of time. If I spent my money on a game I'm going to finish it eventually whether I like it or not

(Note this does not apply to extremely cheap steam games I bought on a whim)

If you were to look at my steam profile you would see I picked up duke nukem forever on launch day and I've been playing it for two months. If you look closer my total game time is about 4 hours. If you take a look at Space Marine you will see I played it for only a week before I stopped playing, yet my total game time is 40 hours. Which game do you think I enjoyed more?

However I suppose if you looked at Fallout 3 or Morrowind you would see I've been playing it on and off for years with hundreds of hours of game play so I suppose I can see what you're getting at

 

[tedrodai]

Hmm...I don't know how to measure it in time units. The games I have on Steam, I'll either play through it once and I'm done--so that varies by the length of the game--or I'll play it off and on for eternity...maybe months or years between picking it back up. Non-Steam games aren't connected to any sort of playtime measurement tool, so lord knows.

 

[Possessed Freak]

Bad games, less than a week. Good games, half a year. Great games, over a decade.

 

[Wardawg1001]

Depends on the game. I like RPGs that I can sink 40-100 hours into (these fall into the 1-3 month time frame for me), but I also like RTS's and FPS's that I can spend hundreds of hours in online play over the course of months or years.

 

[Schadenfreude]

I think your poll is meaningless unless you change it to be measured in gameplay hours. Some games will take me a year to go through, but that doesn't mean I play them more than an hour here and there.

No I think what the OP was getting at is real time, not game time.
He was asking how long we typically give a game before ignoring it.

Yeah, I'd say I was asking for a little bit of A, a little bit of B: the thing is, I used to be able to just sit down and play for hours on end; so in effect a game like Arkham Asylum - let's suppose that it's a game that'd take about 10 hours for argument's sake - would take about 1/2 a week at most to beat. Nowadays it'd take about a solid month before getting anywhere near the end of the game.

Add to that on RPGs/games w/ stat building I have a tendency to be a quasi-perfectionist, especially if it's good; almost 1/2 way I inevitably find that my build was not as optimized for the game in hand as much as I like, so what do I do? I start over, from scratch! I think I have a subconscious phobia about finishing games that I really like, as I tend to start over (as mentioned), grind and hoard items and gold when not necessary - and this happens only in games that I like. Anyhow, that happens to me in retrospect so I'm going to put a stop to it . . ..

 

[Jesusthewererabbit]

I'm done with a game when I get bored with it. Some games I get about halfway through, I've gotten all the upgrades and I'm tired of doing missions, and I'm finished. With others, I play it all the way through, do everything I can possibly do, and still want to play it more. With most games though, I seem to get kinda bored after about 25-30 hours, unless there is a really good story.