38
votes
Do you have games that you play (almost) exclusively?
I was reading the recent post about strategy games, and I'm still astonished to see for how many hours (at least hundreds, often 1000+) people are playing these. I'm guessing that in these cases, all your gaming time is exclusively taken by that single game.
So, do you have (or did you have) games, or series, like that? Do you play solo or multi? What compels you to spend so much time on a single game? How do you feel about it?
Once I beat a game or get to the point that I've done the big stuff I wanted to do, it's over for me and I can't go back.
ADHD (I have enough to share to if anyone wants some) is the disease of novelty seeking. Being bored is like torture to me, and since it's always now o'clock in my world, a few minutes of boredom can feel like a really long time.
I am astounded that people can replay games or sink time into them beyond beating the main story. My friends go back and replay games with multiple endings while I move on and just Google the other ways it could have ended. I always want the next thing.
That said, there are just a few games that have truly captivated me enough for a replay or a long play.
Red Dead Redemption 2: Beat it and then started over to platinum it a while later when COVID hit. My platinum run went beyond platinum though, as I wanted to experience every single thing the game had to offer including the many secret events, Easter eggs, and hidden objectives. I collected every secret hat, saw every scary Easter egg, and explored everything thoroughly. It's the only game I truly know everything about. But now that I did that, I know I will never be able to replay it.
Satisfactory: I may finish this game and take a break, but I have several hundred hours in and haven't beat it yet. I don't know how to explain the hold this game has on me because I have never experienced it before. It's the first game that's ever made me want to take my time. I build factories and then rebuild them when I realize what I could have done better. I am intentionally taking my time because I'm afraid of beating the game and having the joy go away. Even if that does happen, they have DLC planned and I know for sure that I will play any new content in the future.
The Outer Wilds: Okay, you can't actually replay this one. It's a game where your progress is only locked by knowledge, and beating it once means knowing how to beat it again in less than five minutes next time. But I think about replaying this game constantly. It's my favorite game. If I could come at it fresh each time, it's probably all I would ever play. I included this game because it has caused me to hunt for similar games and play them obsessively. I have spent countless hours playing games that I find when Googling "similar to Outer Wilds." Just played one the other night, in fact. Side note: you will never capture anything quite like it again, but Return of the Obra Dinn, Portal 1 & 2, The Talos Principle 1 & 2, Qubed 2, SOMA, Subnautica, and The Witness are as close as you can get. Excellent games.
Trials Fusion and Trials Rising: I initially thought these games were stupid. A side scrolling dirt bike game is about the least interesting game concept I can imagine. Then, I saw a YouTube video of a guy playing a track on Ninja difficulty. The thing to understand about Trials is that it starts out as a racing game on easy and medium tracks, but this is just to teach you the controls and get you familiar with the physics. When you get to hard, extreme, and Ninja level tracks, it stops being about racing and starts being about physics, puzzle solving, and muscle memory. You struggle to finish the tracks at all. Then, you get super good and it becomes about racing again sort of. There is a trick though. This game should be paired with a great podcast or audiobook. It kind uses the same parts of your brain as driving or doing the dishes, so you can easily consume audio content. When you have both happening, you can achieve a flow state that actually feels like a high. The hours will melt away. I am careful to suggest this one though, as it has a fairly high barrier to entry. The better you are at the game, the more fun it becomes. It's a tough sell to say, trust me, once you get good at it, it clicks. Kind of like Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice.
I feel so seen. We are the same.
There's a handful of games I can come back to occasionally because something new is added or because of the nature of the game itself (Rimworld and Crusader Kings, for example) but the only recent game I've truly invested 1000+ hours into was The Long Dark, and that's thanks to it being a very slow, methodical, meditative game.
You say you can at least beat the games - my tragedy is I often learn the gameplay loop and then get bored of it quickly. Multiplayer helps stave that off because other people are interesting, but I also don't have time to invest in multiplayer games as much.
Oh, my list of unfinished games is long.
As a younger guy with more time I would often power through. Sometimes it would pay off when the ending was good or the content was overall thought-provoking. As I've gotten older though, and especially now that I have a toddler, I will DNF pretty much anything if I'm not absolutely hooked. Books, shows, movies, games, etc. are on thin ice with me at all times. A hint of boredom and it's done for me lol.
There are a handful of games that I wish I could somehow erase from my memory so that I might experience again for the first time. Subnautica is for sure on that list. Mystery isn't super central to the game, but there is a fair amount of narrative to it. I've tried to go back and play after finishing, but it just doesn't tickle the same neurons anymore.
I have tried to start Outer Wilds a couple of times, but both times the flight controls of the ship have frustrated me enough to make me quit. I'm not sure why exactly, because I've played lots of flight sim type games and enjoyed them just fine. I do hope to someday get over that hump though, as the concept of the game and the story seem like something I would definitely enjoy.
There is an autopilot!
And I promise, the flight controls are very worth learning. They end up being one of the most satisfying parts of the game. Perfectly accounting for acceleration and deceleration, considering gravity and orbits, and then nailing a tricky landing are the most rewarding things once you can get it to happen.
Is autopilot something that gets unlocked early on? I have been afraid to google anything about the game due to potential spoilers. š¬
You start with it (at least once you get to the ship), the game doesn't have any unlockables like that. You have everything you'll have by the end of the game (or the ability to get to it quickly in the ship) as soon as you first blast off. To use autopilot, you first need to lock onto something using either left click on mouse or L3 on controller iirc. I think a prompt should come up at that point telling you what button is the autopilot. The autopilot is still a bit simple, so it won't completely replace manual flying, but it should still help a lot while you get the hang of things.
Keep not googling anything btw. It really benefits from the spoiler-free treatment.
As @sparksbet mentioned, you can get it right away like everything else.
Side note: I understand that AI is fairly controversial right now, but it's really really good at giving spoiler-free tips like this. My wife and I use it when we want to check a fact about a show or game without spoiling. Just tell it to answer your question without spoilers and it will!
Note that the autopilot will just get you to the objective in a straight line. If the Sun is between you and your destination, it won't make a detour.
I tried to deliberately avoid spoiling this in my comment, fwiw. I think discovering this yourself is a more fun experience.
Iāve had the exact same experience. Iām not sure if itās an integral part of the experience that Iām failing to appreciate, or if the controls are actually simply just badā¦
Yeah, I also seek novelty from media. I know so many people who replay their favourite games or rewatch their favourite movies/shows and it doesn't really do it for me. Especially these days when we have so much media you literally can't consume it all if you tried.
The games I got closest to putting a lot of time into include maybe 800 hours of Apex Legends. I really liked it as something competitive, but I got banned for no reason and that put me off it.
Then I had like 1000 hours of Warframe before I completed all the content that was out at the time and got bored.
After that I got nothing over 350 hours (still a lot but not like the thousands of hours insane numbers.
Can I interest you in factorio? Iām the same way with being done with games as you. Factorio is my āgo back for moreā game though. Canāt recommend it with, especially for a satisfactory player.
Definitely on my list! I'm nervous because I tend to not like top-down games. But I think I'll enjoy it once I bring myself to start.
Just in case you're not aware: Factorio has a demo, so it's easy to check out.
I did not know and I'm super glad that I do. I've wanted to check out it but wasn't sure about buying.
I've put almost 1,100 hours into RDR2 and enjoy it as an idle exploration sandbox, it's refreshing to me to boot into an old save from early in the game and put borders on a blank map while being a natural survivalist.
This is unrelated to gaming, but since you so perfectly described the debilitating aspects of boredom and novelty seeking as a built in constant state of being, I was wondering if you had any fictional books you like? Or other media (TV shows, movies, etc.) ? I am stuck in constant paralysis and not enjoying anything and having that feeling dis-incentivize me from even trying to find things I might enjoy.
Often times even when I force myself to read something or even if I enjoy reading something, it is short lived, and then the book becomes unread, much like your unplayed games.
That's mainly why I wanted to make this post. Outside of World of Warcraft and Eve Online (that I stopped playing more than 10 years go), there is exactly 5 games that I have played for more than 100h, but not one of them ever became an "exclusive" game for more than 2 or 3 weeks. I'll probably still play Deep Rock Galactic and The Binding of Isaac in 5 or 10 years, but I don't understand spending all your gaming time on a single game.
And I'm absolutely not saying this in a derogatory way, I'd probably love to find a game so deep and interesting that it's worth investing that much time in it.
On The Outer Wilds: I assume you have played the DLC?
Yes! But I wish I hadn't because then I would have more OW to look forward to! DLC was incredible.
Interesting! Maybe this is meant for experienced gamers that demand more complexity and challenges but for me and new gamers I will argue this game is absolutely easy to into and one of my favorite plug n' play games. I don't play a lot and lose interest ridiculously fast when a game demands to much of me initially. That's why I often steer towards racing games or super simple Peggle like games. That's also why your description of how the goal of the game changes towards the psychics and muscle memory doesn't sit well with me. Maybe that's because I haven't played it enough to get to this level and by then the appeal will come naturally but frankly it doesn't sound very appealing to me.
Yeah, it does kind of sound like the higher levels aren't going to be your cup of tea.
Here's an example of how difficult that game can get!
https://youtu.be/fg4g-6cnwgY?si=Ud06VOxIKQUqg_6H
I have a collective few thousand hours in various Civ iterations, No Manās Sky, and for a while Cities Skylines, all to scratch the itch of continuous improvement. āJust one more turnā is real.
But lately Iāve been getting into narrative games for the same reason. I played Avowed, which I found overall disappointing as a sequel to PoE, then thought to go back to the original PoE or BG to satisfy that desire for revisiting something known, but my girlfriend convinced me to play Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous, which Iāve been loving. Iām on my second full playthrough with a few hundred hours in, and the world feels enormous, without any discomfort at whatās necessarily repeated between playthroughs. It very much does feel like a comfortable blend of familiar and novel, which is Iād guess why I have a few thousand hours in other games.
Interesting. I've been playing RPGs for ages and some of the old Bioware RPGs are my favorites. That said, I tried and failed multiple times to get into both Pillars of Eternity games. They just weren't fun to me. But I've recently finished Avowed, and while I found it lackluster overall I could at least still finish it, and even briefly considered playing again just to try more magic. I guess my expectations of Bioware have fallen so low that I wasn't disappointed.
I'd like to call out the guy I met on a plane recently. He was in the military, said he was a fast jet pilot and he liked video games.
I asked what he played and he said "Empyrion - Galactic Survival"
He gave me his steam ID and asked me to add him (I was never gonna add him) but I did check his account out of interest and he had 13,000 hours in that game.
That's almost 2 full years of game time. That dude must leave that game open on his pc because that insane.
Ah, I remember my dad leaving Sim City 2000 running at night on his computer, just to see how his city had evolved in the morning. There was probably 2 hours of real play time for 8 hours of idle time!
This game has sucked me in to such an extent, I decided to take up creating YouTube videos because of it. In essence, you can create your own spacecraft from an array of voxel blocks that you can then pilot and walk around in.
I'm a scifi writer, and this game allowed me to create the ships I had imagined for my books and actually experience them first hand. I can't tell you how much of a gift this was for me.
If anyone is interested, the channel I made is called cartel incorporated, and one of the ships from my books is the Liberator SX. I'm really proud of that one š
From about 2016/2017 - 2020, most of my time gaming was in Rainbow 6 Siege. I loved the tactical aspects. It was like an FPS chess match. I'd honestly still be playing if my friends still played, but one by one they drifted into other things and for about the last year or so I was mostly playing solo and I got tired of that, so I switched to Apex, and then mostly into single player games. I haven't played a competitive multiplayer game in probably 2 years now.
Part of it was I started grad school and couldn't sink the time in every season to get to play and above, and the game is so frustrating at levels below that lol
And yes, I would never willingly play with a console player. Just can't do it.
I was hoping Siege X would be a whole new game, because at this point I don't think I can just jump back into it, but I do regularly miss playing it.
Hey Iām one of the people from that thread you linked, with a couple thousand hours in EU4 and then a few hundred in CK3 and Vic 3. Besides that, Iāve been playing the football manager series since like 2010 and used to do about 1000 hours in each before the new one would come out, but now Iāve only done maybe 200-500 hours on each of the last couple of iterations.
So I would say that my gaming habits are anything but exclusive. I play tons of other games all the time. My favorites just happen to be the ones that I put the most hours in. But gaming just happens to be my main hobby. And it has been pretty much since I was a kid. So factor in maybe two decades of owning a gaming pc and you can see how the hours would add up. 2500 hours in EU4 sounds crazy, or ~10,000 hours in the FM series, but they didnāt happen over night. EU4 has been over like 10 or 11 years, while FM has been over 15 years.
They just happen to be my favorite games. Thereāll be months where I get the urge to play them, and end up playing like 60 hours in a month, and then I might put it down and not play it for another 6 months. Or maybe some new update or dlc dropped and I want to play and test out the new mechanics or content. And for those particular games, itās very easy to have something else going on on a second monitor. I canāt tell you how many weekends Iāve spent watching live soccer games in one monitor, and playing Football Manager on the other.
What things do you do to relax? Read books? Watch television? Play games? Iām sure if you add up all the hours youāve spent doing those things in the last decade or two then the numbers would quickly reach a thousand. My wife has seen every episode of Law and Order, which is on their like billionth season. Not sure how many hours that is, but it must be a lot.
Also, I had a lot more free time when I was younger. Now I have a career and a family to take care of , but a decade ago I was in college, playing games between classes at my universityās library or spending all weekend playing something because I had no real responsibilities. Damn I miss those times, lol.
I played Warframe for 1162 hours so far.
This is according to the in-game stats, so it only includes time in missions. It's probably double that in time I left the game open.
I play both pubs and solo, I lfg for relics if I really wanna get a rare part fast.
As for why I keep coming back...
The variety, in terms of equipment (there's like 60-ish warframes, and far too many weapons, 4 vehicules), locations (3/4 types of spaceships, overgrown forest, whatever the Cambion Drift counts as, Eastern Europe circa 1999 among many others), side stuff to do (fishing, mining, conservation, Duviri).
They also treat us well, pretty much everything gameplay changing can be farmed (there's a few exception but they're mostly seen as status symbols imo).
It's also pretty good to F2P, since you can trade Platinum (premium currency) so if you want more slots/cosmetics you can just farm tradeable items.
Mind, even with all this I still play other stuff since it's fine to drop WF for months/years and come back with no issue since there's no big FOMO even for cosmetics (they actually will rework paid systems if they feel it gets too predatory), and there's always 1 or 2 more games I play alongside it (I picked up Inertial Drift and got back into EA WRC last week for example.
It's Warframe for me too - I play other games in between Warframe sessions, but for 5 years or so now Warframe is the only game I've been playing daily, even if it's just for a couple of minutes to play a single mission.
It's like a warm comfy blanket now - I'm MR30 and have no major things left to do, but somehow it's still fun to me, so I keep coming back. Love the developer too - their streams on Twitch are always fun and I try to watch whenever I can.
I'm the same. I would play a lot for two months a year and then forget about the game. I came back for 1999, but I decided I have finally played enough. First time I stop before the fun runs out.
This is a whiny post so don't read it if you don't want to read whining.
I used to love warframe, I had best part of 1000 hours in it too. But standing killed it for me. I think when they first introduced it for Ostrons it was reasonable, because it was the only standing grind for their gear.
But last time I played was when they released Entranti and I was so done. Everything was a standing grind and it took so long to get to max because they forced you to come back every day like a bad MMO.
If I could just go grind it out in a day or two I think I'd be a lot less mad about it, but the fact they made me log in every day to get like half a bar of standing for one faction I was missing really got me. Otherwise Warframe has always been a really fun game lol.
Honestly fair, and the game's been adding more and more limited-access grinds like that (pretty much 1 new syndicate/expansion, weekly challenges in many forms, I guess even the ones limited on the rewards' side would count?), I personally am fine with it (this game attracts a lot of people who are willing to nolife an update into being completely done within days if given the chance) but I can see how many wouldn't like that sorta thing (hell, I usually hate battlepasses nowadays and waframe has 2 technically, and one's weekly).
I prefer gameplay to stories, so I usually just do a run of Binding of Isaac, FTL, or Don't Starve. For like the past year I've been playing Bloodborne almost exclusively when I have more time to actually sit down and play, and its going to be one I never really stop, I love the rally mechanic and the aggresive gameplay.
I also played a LOT of Borderlands 2, and still play fairly often when the mood strikes because I prefer the gameplay to the newer ones.
Finally Starcraft 2 and Grim Dawn (replacing Diablo 2). Im sure these games have been over 90% of what I've played since like 2012.
I've been playing FTL almost every day since its release in 2012...
Sheesh, I've been playing it almost 13 years. I've completed everything -- all achievements, beat it with all ships on hard, collected all the ships the hard way (via quests) -- but I still play all the time. It's gotten to the point where it's almost like playing solitaire; something I can do while only using half my concentration.
Pretty much every game I play, I play solo, and to the exclusion of all other games.
The ones that drive me are those that involve exploration, and in which I gain capacity in-game from what I learn as a player, not just as a character. The Outer Wilds and The Witness have been mentioned elsewhere in this thread - they're masterworks, but the first one to really scratch this itch for me was Riven back in '97.
I'm currently enjoying Pacific Drive. My first four hours were essentially me shouting "Aah! What? No! Gitoffmycaryouwierdfuckingthing!" at the screen, and my wife and son laughing at me in the background.
I'm approaching the endgame now, and all the strange experiences have accumulated to make navigating the anomalous realities feel like being a cross between Steve McQueen and Hunter S. Thompson. Good times.
Oh man I had such an obsession with Myst, Riven, and Myst III! I even read the books!
Those games were so different and interesting at that time. They kind of spun up their own genre for awhile there.
I have tried to go back and play the remakes and they lost their power over me. Maybe because I already did it all and spent so much time on them in the past? Or the gameplay just isn't as compelling anymore? Anyways, I was a little sad about that.
I was gifted the roomscale VR remake of Riven, and the folks at Cyan did an excellent job of adapting the core ideas to the medium.
Visiting some of the places was almost sublime - the temple near the beginning was the moment where I had to stop playing and swim in a little pool of nostalgia. I'm certain that the designers anticipated that some of those "set pieces" were what would attract original players to that world.
The solutions to some of the puzzles were also revised, with almost a wink and a wag of the finger.
There is a spot where you anticipate one of the biggest such set pieces, and they judo-flip your expectations... and it was there that I actually started grinning under the hat.
It was that same sense of initial "WTF?" turning into "Oh! I understand!" that made the original game so good... and the folks at Cyan delivered.
I tend to consume most long form media one at a time. One book at a time, one game at a time, one TV show at a time. I don't watch a lot of TV or movies anymore, mostly read and game.
The game I have probably spent the most time in is No Man's Sky. I will go back to that and play it along side another game. For example, there's a new expedition out and I'm working on that a bit. But once I finish the expedition I will probably put it down again. I have 1500+ hours in NMS.
The game I'm currently playing though is Marvel Snap. I have 800 hours of that tracked on Steam, but that is probably about 1/2 of my total playtime if I had to guess. I played on iOS for about a year before I got the Steam version.
For me, I like to just really get into a game or book and find it hard to put the same level of effort or attention in when I'm actively reading or playing two at the same time. I will occasionally interrupt a game or book with another one, then go back to the first one.
I think this has something to do with the kind of obsession I get for things, but also due to my limited amount of free time at this time in my life. I also have no issue dropping something if I don't enjoy it or it doesn't turn out to be what I thought it would be. Younger me would've powered through something just to finish it and say I did. Older me realizes time is finite so why waste it?
Rocket League - 2000 hours in and thereās still so much to learn. Iāve never before found a game where skill progression is so tangible. Thereās nothing to unlock (save cosmetics) or power up, you just gradually get better and better at controlling your car and reading plays. Itās certainly the closest online thing Iāve found to replicate the feeling of playing a traditional sport, both in terms of mechanical skill and game sense & intuition.
I, too, am a degenerate. I'm at about 1,400 hours and have hit a bit of a plateau both in playtime and skill but, of course, those two are pretty directly proportional. I love that the game is about how good I (or my garbage teammates who are definitely the problem) am at the mechanics of the game. Learning situational awareness and field awareness has made me better at following real life sports.
Iāve been like that for a few games in my life and Iām mixed on if I like that style of gaming for myself or not. The most recent was Destiny 2, in which I played 1300 hours between August 2022 and July 2024 (and still play, but only about 100 hours since July) and while I did have periods in that time where I wouldnāt play for a few weeks and where I did dabble in other games, I could have exclusively played that game without complaining. As much as I did and still do play that game, it at least doesnāt feel like an addiction to me like some games did when I was younger, I just really like the game and I have a few dozen friends that play, which helps to keep me interested even in stale seasons/expansions.
In the past, mostly between the ages of 28 and younger, I had periods where I almost exclusively played (to the point of a clear addiction), World of Warcraft, League of Legends, and StarCraft 2.
Nowadays my relationship with WoW is normal and I go back to it from time to time, but itās the game that makes me question how much I want to put into a game. There was a period of my life where I was depressed, going through a gender and sexuality crisis, was poor as fuck, failed out of college, was losing friends, had an alcohol dependency, and instead of solving my problems, I hopped into Azeroth for 4+ hours a day almost every day.
My relationship with Destiny 2 has been much healthier, though, and I donāt mind if a game hooks me like that where itās all I play, I just donāt wanna go back to my 2015 addiction levels that I had in WoW.
I feel you for WoW.
WoW is not a game, it's a community where you solve challenges and want to feel like you're part of something. I've never met a casual WoW player that put in thousands of hours while not raiding or doing PvP. These casuals "play" WoW, the others that get hooked are part of a community that hooks them in, be it either PvP or PvE, it's the social aspect that's important.
I quit WoW in 2018 after playing it for 10 years (~350 days of /time). I fucking loved it, but ultimately, what kept me playing all these years is the community and the challenges I overcame with the community. When I realized that I could apply these same principles in my life with my education, my friends and my family, it was very easy to quit and not come back.
But dear god, I would give everything to go back there and be my character. But it's only infinite pixels where the end doesn't exist, and I can't play a game with no ending or else it becomes a life itself.
Since 2017 I played a few thousand hours of Factorio, at times close to exclusively. First a bunch of differently themed vanilla bases, then many of the big overhaul mods.
Currently this fixation has passed a bit, and now I have an on-going serious case of Noita, although it's not as bad as it was with Factorio. I still play quite a few other games in parallel to it, at the moment KCD2. But Noita keeps on giving, it's a fantastic game.
Are there any overhaul mods for factorio that you'd recommend? Totally asking for a friend and not to burn another few hundred hours
š
I think the popular ones are all really good, but after checking a few of them I just saw that many are not available for Factorio 2.0 yet. It might take a bit of time till they are updated.
Did you already play the Space Age DLC? I think it's definitely worth the money.
In terms of available mods for 2.0, I liked the BZ mods by brevven. They all add one or two new materials which lead to more complicated setups and are also compatible with Krastorio and Space Exploration. Some of them are already available for Factorio 2.0, so they could be a good start for more complex playthroughs.
Then of the bigger ones apparently Bobs Mods have been updated in the past week for Factorio 2.0; here's a reddit post about them which explains them a bit more.
And if you want complete overkill and invest more than a 1000 hours: Pyanodons is already available for 2.0. This is a great modpack, but extremely complex. I have only started it and played 30 or 40 hours, but if I would want to play now, I'd probably start this one again. š
Otherwise I played these, but they are not yet adapted for 2.0:
Krastorio2 is a nice start with modding since it's not super complex and mostly enhances the vanilla mechanics a bit.
Space Exploration is great, but lengthy and it's basically necessary to understand the circuit network to manage rockets effectively. This will take upwards of 200 hours for a playthrough. It might also be a good idea to wait for its next version 0.8, since that will greatly enhance the mod.
My favorite is probably Nullius, because it had a really nice progression and needed a lot of balancing of its different products. The setting is also different, since it sets you up as an android who has to seed life and terraform a barren planet.
Hope you'll find something!
I have a tendency to flit between games and not often finishing them. I used to be fairly dedicated to the hobby when I was younger up through my college years, but for various reasons I tend to nowadays play a game just long enough to get a "feel" for it and end up putting it down for another one. This used to upset me a little bit when I realized I was falling into that pattern as I age, now I don't really mind it because it's just a hobby and I am too old and covered in obligations to dedicate time and energy to something that's not making me have any fun.
All that said, there have been 3 games over my life that I went sicko mode on and only played that game for a long time:
Dota (and eventually dota 2...). I played this pretty exclusively for at least 2 years of highschool and most of college. I don't play anymore, mostly because I just don't have the damn time, but yeah there's nothing close on logged hours.
XCom Enemy Within or whatever (not 2, not the originals) with the long war mod.
A buddy of mine put a TON of time into this game, and I also did (although no where near him). Probably one of, if not the, best tactics games i've ever played? Lots of classes, a ton of different ways to build things, lots of interesting decisions and reasons to rotate your units, and as long as you're clever you can make just about anything work.
The only real issue is the time commitment (which can be shortened but is still severe) and the air game (which can be turned off). I'm still annoyed XCom 2 was such a "meh" addition to the series, and then Terra Invicta was impressive, but something else entirely.
I came here to post my Dota 2 addiction. It's by far my most time-played game on Steam, at almost exactly 3,000 hours. The runner up is Spelunky at a "mere" 356 hours.
I haven't played much the past few years, as my current situation isn't really conducive to that kind of game, but it (Dota) is still one of my all time favorites.
The other stand outs by playtime for me are AudioSurf 2, Crypt of the Necrodancer (I like roguelikes...), and Kerbal Space Program.
I also played a lot of Leage of Legends through high school and into college, but I don't have a record of hours. I quit LoL when I made the jump to Dota.
Playing games for > 100 hours is the norm for me. For my all-time favourites, I have > 1000 hours on them, and it's common for me to have > 400 hours. Over a whole series or franchise, I might get > 2500.
For me, the draw is multiplayer PvP. The thrill, the fun, the dopamine, whatever it is, it is just always there, and I can keep coming back again and again for that "hit". It takes a lot to dislodge me from that, like major, game-breaking bugs, or the playerbase being overrun by cheaters. Even the first few hundred hours, the time spent getting to the upper tiers of skill and ranking, are fun for me in and of itself. Doing the research, reading wikis, chatting in Discords, honing your characters, stats, ships, whatever. The practicing, the training. All part of the enjoyable journey and experience. Joining communities, guilds, groups, etc. in these games further cements one's involvement in and commitment to a game. You chat via text or voice, and form teams together, and win together.
I do play single player games, but those only last a few hundred hours, usually. I will say this, though: If a game is known to only offer < 50 hours of play, with no replayability, I just pass on it, unless it's gotten really rave reviews, and is on deep discount. I expect to get > 100 hours of a game I spend money on.
I almost always play a single game exclusively until I'm done with it. Open up Steam, start that game, finish the session, close Steam. Repeat at next session. At most, I might open a second or third game, but that's it.
To answer your question about "what games", to name a few:
That's an interesting take. I had similar views when I was younger, I wanted a "return on investment" for my games. Now that I have a bit more disposable income, but less time, I want to play solo games that I can finish, or that don't demand a huge investment (like roguelikes). And absolutely 0 competitive games.
I don't know if I've ever exclusively played a game, but I do have a few that I've played for years. Naturally, these are MMOs or online games.
I'm a single guy with no kids. As a working adult with a MF 9-5 job, it's "easy" for me to devote tons of time to gaming. Even long ago in college, I was probably -- OK, definitely -- gaming more than I should've been.
From 2013-2017 I pretty much exclusively played ArcheAge, a horrible Korean online casino MMO. I think at final count I had something like 20,000 hours logged, though much of it was AFK. A friend of mine has similar time logged on steam with a single do not recommend of "don't you even dare"
From 2018-2024 I pretty much exclusively played Final Fantasy XIV, though much less frequently as I discovered other outlets. But I still have close to 10,000 hours on it, with a good majority coming during lockdown.
But during that time I also was able to take breaks, I spent around 175 hours in Cyberpunk and the DLC, 150 hours in Euro Truck Simulator 2, and recently about 300 hours in Satisfactory. Though the last release of FFXIV was enough to make me take an extended break and during this time of not having a primary game, I've been kind of lost. Floated around lots of games, Control recently but also more Satisfactory, Minecraft, MSFS, etc. sometimes even in the same night. Strange times indeed...
I had a period of about 2 years where I played almost only iRacing. Expensive subscription based online racing, but the best of its kind. Could play my whole week of evenings around the schedule of races. Was fun while I lasted, but I lost interest. Took a single month of subscription a little while ago to see if I could reignite the spark, but it didn't hooked me again. Think the competitiveness wore me down. Now whenever I turn on my gaming computer, I just relax with podcasts and American Truck Simulator or Euro Truck Simulator 2. But none of these have reached 1000 hours, just in the 100s.
Not video games, but board games.
With my friend group, we're probably inching close to the 2000 hours with Spirit Island. The second closest game is Gloomhaven or Frosthaven with around 150-200 hours for both.
For some time, we used to meet up for "boardgame nights", with a new boardgame every time or every other time for maybe a year. One day, we whipped out Spirit Island, then the next time, and the next time after that... then it just became "Spirit Island days" and has been this way for years. We've tried literally hundreds of boardgames and nothing comes close to the depth, difficulty, replayability, variability and work of SI. There are some games that come close, but they all fail in one aspect or another. Spirit Island is just king. We've played easily thousands of games each and there are still some games where we pull out a combo we've never done before. The fact that there are 30+ spirits (or 40/50+ if you can aspects individually) and they're all different makes it that there is a good chance that if you play 2-3-4 spirits, it may be the first time you play them all together.
Oh, I've also played 350 days of WoW (~8000 hours) from 2008 to 2018. It was just an alternate life, that's all. I've achieved everything I wanted there and realized that the time I put in WoW felt like a job (at the time, in 2018, it was just grinding the artifact points for your legendary I think?). I used that time to play other games and get my life together (it worked!).
I wish I could get a group just for Spirit Island. It's my favorite board game.
I eventually got so burned out playing at least one new game every session with my previous groups. I'd much rather find one to play over and over (to me that's the sign of a good game).
I wish you to find one!
I've also played tons of games of SI on digital and TTS too, so that's always an option if you want.
If you have no one, hit me up, we'll play games on TTS.
I've rotated between a few. In young adulthood, TF2 was my sink. I could play it all day every day and never get bored. A lot of it was the people I played with, with TF2 just being a backdrop for voice chat.
Lately, roguelikes usually do it. NoĆÆta is an awful, terrible game that I've played endlessly and highly recommend.
Sometimes I'm interrupted by an in-genre gem (e.g. Lies Of P), but other than that, it's Fromsoft Souls games (Demon's, DS1, DS2, DS3, Elden Ring) and Monster Hunter games (I regularly return to 4U, Gen U, World and Rise), currently Wilds is taking all my time.
Sprinkle a bit of Minecraft in there, and that's pretty much it. Skyrim comes around every year or so to say hello for a bit too.
I have about 3000 hrs into Ark - Survival Evolved. I love taming dinosaurs (there are about 300 and I've never tamed them all), building bases and exploring the maps. Some of them are equivalent to 64 square miles. There are about 10 official maps. I have never done a boss battle. The one time I tried (well, about 4 attempts, restore from backup and reload), it glitched and teleported me and my 20 tamed dinos to a random area on Lost Island about 300 ft in the air killing me and half my dinos. Haven't had the interest in breading a dino army for a specific boss since.
I'm usually rotating between the following:
All of them are games with high replayability. There are always different classes, races, strategies, characters, maps, mods, play styles, etc. to try out so they never stop being fun. Until they inevitably do, at which point I just play a different game on that list and the cycle repeats!
Generally, no, thankfully. But there have been a handful of games I played for hundreds of hours. Notably, Worms: Armageddon (not on Steam), Binding of Isaac: Rebirth, Rocket League and Beat Saber. Looks like I have more than 584 hours in Beat Saber now - that's a decent amount of physical exercise!
EDIT: Minecraft is also in the hundreds of hours, likely more than a thousand. Yet another game without Steam statistics.
Heroes of Might and Magic - if you know, you know.
Ozymandias is the only game Iām currently playing. I got all the achievements, which means I won as at āscholarā difficulty (or harder) as each nation on each map. Then I bought the expansion maps and Iām going through them.
Why? I like the pacing (games take a couple hours) and I guess I donāt feel like searching for a new game. I considered buying Civilization 7, but it has mixed reviews, and Civ is a much longer, badly paced game.
For years I play online chess exclusively. I am completely addicted and not improving. My rating is extremely low. It's got to a point that I am using self blocking programs to block myself from major chess websites and apps for 22 hours a day. And I'm 100% playing chess for the remaining 2 hours.
I got into playing Shogi (Japanese chess) for quite a while. I got my first Shogi set about 40 years ago, and learned the game by myself.
It was extraordinarily humbling to try and play online, as all the players were really rather good and I... am not!
Not much in the way of computer Shogi to play against, or at least, there didn't used to be. Haven't looked at that angle in 20 years. Maybe I will !
Yes, Shogi and chess share a common ancestry. If Shogi did not exist, I bet Japan would be a force in chess.
I don't have anyone to play against offline. I am an amateur, and not a good one. I found a chess club in my city but it was very focused on real competitions and drama. There was lots going on besides chess, and none of the extremely good players had an interest in teaching someone like me. To make matters worse, every single game was blitz (usually 3 minutes for each player) so I could barely discern what was going on. It felt chaotic and intimidating. They were so much better than me that I could be playing Magnus Carlsen and wouldn't feel any difference (from my perspective as a very weak player).
My first goal in chess was to beat my dad, which I did at 16. After that, I did not play for 15 years. I don't have a strong drive to improve, but a rather mild one. There are many things in life more important than chess, and I'm not giving this game the absurd amount of time and effort it requires for someone to get really good. So while I do wish to get better at chess one day, a chess club is way too intense for me. I wish to stop playing obsessively, but I can always study and do puzzles. In my experience that does lead to an increase in rating.
I usually am drawn to a small number of games that I think are exemplary and have a hard time getting into their competitors. Was really into Blizzard RTS (sc1, wc3, sc2), Halo 1, 2, 3, Reach for multiplayer FPS. After a certain point a switch in my head seemed to flip. I think partly because it seemed like those series had run out of ideas (good ideas at least) and it felt like all they could do was remake the same stuff with better graphics. I had almost no interest in video games anymore. While I did play and enjoy a few other games like Gears of War and Bioshock, I was just kind of done with the gameplay loops.
At that point I got way into Magic: the Gathering. Spent tons of time reading MTG subreddits, made and moderated an MTG "circlejerk" subreddit to make fun of the bad takes on the other subs. Bought cards to play Modern and started playing every week at the local game store. In 2019 they power leapt the game. With the pandemic I couldn't play much in 2020-21 but following online, each new Standard set was printing problematic cards that needed to be banned, and they were slow to acknowledge and take action. 2021's Modern Horizons 2 set introduced a bunch of powerful cards that I hate, and I decided to stop playing in 2022 (keeping an eye on the format in case they could bring it back to something I could enjoy again, but they haven't).
After that point I've been getting back into video games. I got a Steam Deck, which felt like a device I've been waiting for forever (fuck console exclusivity!). I also got way into Slay the Spire (becoming obsessed with getting A20 heart kills with each character) and Celeste (bouncing off at certain difficult things and being drawn back later to overcome them due to how much I like the movement). I have been trying out a bunch of other games that I "missed" while MTG was all-consuming. It's also just so nice that you can get old games for really good discounts on Steam and free stuff on Epic. I was also a bit obsessed with Balatro, but the itch is not so strong anymore after getting Completionist++ on android.
tl;dr: I do tend to have favourites that I play a lot. Had a huge period of my life (around a decade) where I was pretty much only interested in MTG, but came back to video games recently. Still have some favourites I get obsessed with, but overall trying a lot more things.
I have a long history of gaming exclusivity.
It started with Half-life, then TFC, then CS, which was before my son was born. It wasn't necessarily the games so much as the competitive nature of them and the community that kept me there. Being quite competitive, we had matches twice a week and training almost every day - but it was the bants that mattered most.
Got in to WoW during the open beta and played exclusively through until the first xpac released, took a break for a couple of months but came back and played through for a few years until pandaria released, and I switched to GW2 for a year or so before going back to WoW... Where I stayed until the end of BFA, which was 2020 ish? When the latest xpac released, the thought of keeping 8+ toons raid ready filled me with apathy, and I quit. If you have a group of friends that you play with, the challenge of beating bosses at the highest level in MMOs is something you can't get anywhere else. 20 of you working at your best, learning together, failing together, and eventually winning makes most other gaming content feel pointless.
Nowadays, I get the single player version of that challenge from souls games (DS1, DS3, ER, Demon Souls, Bloodborne, Sekiro) and Monster Hunter games. Other games I've sunk ridiculous amount of time in would include Minecraft, PokƩmon, Zelda, actually many Nintendo franchises are games I love to pieces, but I wouldn't say that I play any of them "exclusively".
Oh, and FarmRPG. Because of a Tildes thread. It's gaming crack.
I have a small collection labeled "Forever Games", that I play in a rotation and occasionally break from to check out new stuff. On really rare occasions I'll find something to add to the list. The list has a few entries within the same franchise, but in general it's these:
STALKER
Monster Hunter
X3 (Terran Conflict/Albion Prelude)
Souls/Elden Ring
Diablo 2
SimCity (/Workers and Resources/Theotown)
Kenshi
The deciding factor a lot of the time is depth of systems and spontaneity. No two games of STALKER go the same way if you're doing warfare mode. Monster Hunter has a tremendous amount of content and each game is a bit different. X3 is massive, lots of different ways to play (I used to play EVE, it suffices as a substitute with less spreadsheets and more piracy). Souls/Elden Ring is just engaging in a way I don't get tired of. With those and monhun, sometimes I play just to see if I can do the same thing better. Diablo 2 needs no explanation. City builders and Kenshi will generate stuff to do as you're in them. Any of these, I could just pick up and enjoy at any time, so they serve a role kinda like watching reruns of a good TV show or rereading good books. Being games specifically, there's a dynamism to them that brings me back where I might rerun a show/reread a book once in a year.
In general I don't play multiplayer. I will do cooperative play with randoms in souls/monster hunter, but that's about it. I used to play more competitive stuff, but the friend group I did that with dispersed over time and I don't really enjoy doing that without them. With souls/monhun, I solo a new game first and then go help folks out with stuff I struggled against or what I see folks talk about in their communities/discussion forums. X is me trying to relive EVE without committing to EVE, I was a space pirate in that game and X lets me have pirate fleets lol. With the city builders/kenshi, they're so oriented around spontaneous stuff/systems that it doesn't matter if I lost track of what I was doing, I'll either find it pretty fast or find a new track as things develop. With Diablo and STALKER I'll usually make a new guy each time and just do a run until I'm dead.
At one point in my life I would just play dawn of war: dark crusade on 8 player maps over and over and over. Always Vs the pc. No I never got very good at it. I had a similar thing with the first left 4 dead for a few months, this is a few years after the second came out. Can't really explain it, I normally can't stick to any form of entertainment that long.
Minecraft probably has the highest hour count for me. It's almost like several games though, since I will cycle through the different updates and also modpacks to keep things fresh.
My second most played game is No Man's Sky. I have over 500 hours logged. My play has significantly dropped over the past year, but I could easily see myself coming back to it in spurts for the next several years if it continues to get updates. The open nature of the experience generates a lot of fun roleplay style gameplay for me, and I will find myself diving into an invented narrative and spending hours until I'm satisfied.
I'm relatively new to Deep Rock Galactic, but I can also see myself coming back to that regularly. There is a lot of past content to unlock, and the weekly missions give it a lot of staying power. We'll see if I feel the same way once I fully level all of my dwarves, though.
Iāve played basically only Helldivers 2 since, like, last summer. I had a brief bout of playing Metaphor: Refantazio but after I stopped to travel for Thanksgiving couldnāt pick it up again. (Common issue for me with JRPGs where once I lose momentum I have no will to restart).
I have over 1000 hours in The Long Dark and 800 in Fallout 76. I love me a sandbox.
Do MMOs count? Because for me it's Guild Wars 2.
Prior to GW2, I was playing single player offline games. However whenever I finish a game I will feel sad, so I wanted a game with no ending. GW2 fills that need, plus it can be casual enough to play like a single player game.
It will be 10 years this year since I started playing GW2, hands down the only game that can keep my interest consistently because of the satisfying fast paced combat. The lack of subscription fees helped too.
Another big thing about GW2 is the horizontal progression. No endless level and gear grind. Equipments are still relevant years later so if players take a hiatus, they can jump back into the game without missing much.
After grinding in Korean and Chinese MMOs, this is such a breath of fresh air! Hence it managed to retain my interest for these 10 years.
I have a lot of hours in Stardew Valley, Animal Crossing, Necrodancer, and Overcooked. Probably Just Dance, as well.
While there are probably some overlaps of genre, mechanic, etc. what I think is the commonality is these are games I play with other people. In the case of Stardew Valley, it has enough achievement based and aesthetic based reasons to play the game over and over again, and playing it with other people is reason enough to play it twice. It also has a very healthy Mod community, and updates, so it's no surprise it gets heavy play, even to this day. Animal Crossing had a similar vibe to SDV, but not nearly as good/pleasurable the whole time. Animal Crossing became a game I hate-played, but SDV was never that for me.
With games like Overcooked or Just Dance, there is motivation to do platinum completions, but also desire to outperform yourself through things like Personal Bests. These platforms also get regular enough updates to keep them on your mind, but the real glue is playing with other people.
Necrodancer always has a random/new dungeon released everyday with a scoreboard, so the motivation is obvious there. I also almost exclusively play as co-op.