Why I Rarely Complete Long Games

[Sarge]

The best only path to victory in Master of Orion. Crush your enemies beneath your heel. Orbital bombardment? Yes, please.

[Ack]

I highly recommend McNamara's book In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam. It makes for some excellent light reading.

[MrPopo]

The best only path to victory in Master of Orion. Crush your enemies beneath your heel. Orbital bombardment? Yes, please.

Orbital bombardment? Stellar Converter followed by reforming the asteroid field into a new planet free of the taint of your enemies.

[marlowe221]

Orbital bombardment? Stellar Converter followed by reforming the asteroid field into a new planet free of the taint of your enemies.

No need to waste the time! By the time you have a Stellar Converter you can just turn the planet into dust and move on.

[MrPopo]

Orbital bombardment? Stellar Converter followed by reforming the asteroid field into a new planet free of the taint of your enemies.

No need to waste the time! By the time you have a Stellar Converter you can just turn the planet into dust and move on.

Sure, I could turn it into dust, but it's more fun to then reconstitute the dust into a new planet. We want this space but we want to make sure it's clean.

[samsonlonghair]

I would consider 10 hours too long.

A hundred hours? That just sounds ludicrous - you may as well say "a million bajillion" hours.

I would honestly have a hard time playing any game for more than three hours.

Don't want to sound like I'm judging you or anything, just curious. But do you honestly mean that you tend to get bored of any game you play after 3-4 hours? You just don't like doing the same thing for too long, or am I misunderstanding what you mean?

You got it, Eco. There's no misunderstanding here. I do honestly mean that I tend to get bored of any game I play after 3-4 hours. Yes, even good games.

True story: I played the first three hours of Bishock: Infinite, and I really enjoyed it a lot. Then I got bored and handed the controller to my brother in law to play for a "little while". I drifted off to sleep, and when I woke up I found out that "a little while" means that he played all night without me. At this point, I had no idea what was happening in the game, so I lost interest in playing any more. I damn sure wasn't interested in starting the whole game over again either. This kind of thing happens to me a lot.

On the other hand, I could pick up a fighting game, and play for an hour, learn a few combos, and have a nice time. When I'm done playing, I set the controller down and walk away, or I play a different game, or I watch a movie (but not a Peter Jackson Movie; they're too long). This is why I enjoy short arcade games way more than story-driven games.

[Ack]

Samson, do you have the same issue with books, long movies, television shows, or other forms of entertainment? Or is this just specific to video games?

[samsonlonghair]

Samson, do you have the same issue with books, long movies, television shows, or other forms of entertainment? Or is this just specific to video games?

It's more of a generalized short attention span. It's just more pronounced in video games, because some folks have the idea that a ten-hour game is "too short" for them. For instance, I have never really sunk my teeth into Deus Ex. You know why? The tutorial takes more than an hour. If I'm not having fun within an hour, why waste my time?

I don't like Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings movies for the same reason: They're too darn long. The fact that every one of these movies gets an "extended cut" on DVD baffles me. A cursory google search indicates that Jackson's first Lord of the Rings movie runs 3h 48m. Who the hell says, "three hours and forty-eight minutes is too short for a movie; I need to buy the extra-long version!" By the way, I really like the Rankin and Bass animated Hobbit movies. You know why? They're not too long.

I had the same problem when I tried to read Lord of the Rings come to think of it. I read the first hundred pages, and they hadn't even left the shire. Seriously. Tolkien wasted a hundred damn pages blabbering on about the habits of hobbits, and the genealogy of hobbits, and the funny words they use, and pipeweed. After a hundred pages the story hadn't even begun, so I put the book down and read a Hemingway book instead.

You know how people talk about "marathoning" a show on Netflix? I think that's nuts. I can maybe stand to watch three or four episodes in one sitting, then I have to change my focus to something else.

How do you find the time to play an eighty-hour game anyway? Are you orbiting a little to close to a black hole where the massive gravity is altering time?

[noiseredux]

A cursory google search indicates that Jackson's first Lord of the Rings movie runs 3h 48m.

I'd assume that's the extended cut's running time?

You know how people talk about "marathoning" a show on Netflix? I think that's nuts. I can maybe stand to watch three or four episodes in one sitting, then I have to change my focus to something else.

I like to watch seasons of shows, but I'll stretch it out. Like, we watch 1 episode of something (The Office) during dinner. And we watch like 3 episodes of something (90210) on Friday nights. I watch an episode of Ninja Turtles on the treadmill.

How do you find the time to play an eighty-hour game anyway? Are you orbiting a little to close to a black hole where the massive gravity is altering time?

I generally game in 2-3 hour sessions, a few times a week. But if I'm into a game I have no problem sticking with it for weeks. It took me 2 or 3 weeks to beat XCOM 2 for instance which ended up taking me 40 hours. I tend to enjoy getting really hooked on a game and sticking with it for weeks or months. I've been actively playing Heroes Of The Storm for almost a year now. And I've gotten in the habit of doing the Spelunky Daily Challenge as daily as I can.

[Exhuminator]

How do you find the time to play an eighty-hour game anyway?

Play it whenever you've got a spare hour or two. Play it one hour at a time if need be. Chip away at the experience bit by bit, and enjoy the ride.