Inaccurate in game clocks

[Menegrothx]

Many games track your played time when you save the game, but I feel that many times those in game clocks are inaccurate. I started playing Persona 3 last Thursday and my save file says I've spent 21 hours in the game so far, given that I've had to load a game file again after getting a game over at a boss quite a few times already, I think it's pretty accurate. On the other hand the last time I played through System Shock 2, the in game clock was showing a little over 10 hours on my last save before SHODAN, but to me it felt like I had spent a lot more time playing the game as I spent like 4 days of playing 3-5 hours straight twice a day. There's a lot of quick saving and loading in that game, but I've felt the same while playing games like Jak and Daxter and Psychonauts where generally I only load a save when I power on the console.
Do you ever feel like you've played the game a lot longer than the in game clock is telling you? Do you think that some games are inaccurate in measuring time? It's also worth noting that different games measure played time differently. In Final Fantasy 9 the game time is ticking even when you are fiddling around in menus (which you do quite a lot in that game), while some games don't do that. The difficulty curve in some missions in Jak and Daxter 2 is really stupid, so I guess it makes sense that your played time increases at times very slowly when you die again and again in the same mission, and by the time you get it done you've spent 2 hours of real life time trying to get it done, just to do 5 minutes of in game progress.

[SamuraiMegas]

I have had the problem when playing MGS4. I knew for a fact that I had played 10+ hours and it said seven.
Then it shows how many times I beat the game, it knocked the amounts down 1/2

[Gooseberrysoda]

My PS3 constantly resets itself to be 10 minutes slow, but that probably isn't what you meant.

[AppleQueso]

The problem with in game clocks I think is that there's no standard on what it's 'counting'. Sometimes they count cutscene time or time spent in menus, sometimes they don't, etc.

[ZeroAX]

Am I the only one who read game docks?

[Menegrothx]

The problem with in game clocks I think is that there's no standard on what it's 'counting'. Sometimes they count cutscene time or time spent in menus, sometimes they don't, etc.

Yeah, that's why I mentioned the FF9 example. I've the same way in very straightforward games where it should be easy to measure time, like in Silent Hill 2 and 3.

[Stark]

Am I the only one who read game docks?

Yes, I think so.

And man what a boring conversation that would be. Would that be whether the dock could exist in real life? How many games even have docks? There is one at the beginning of Sleeping Dogs.

[flojocabron]

I do know that some games clocks stop the minute you press pause. And some keep going no matter what.

So maybe when you pause a game to do stuff, like making a sandwich or taking out the trash, or going to the crapper.

That clocks gonna keep on going. Thats probably why you think there's a time difference on the game.

[ZeroAX]

Am I the only one who read game docks?

Yes, I think so.

And man what a boring conversation that would be. Would that be whether the dock could exist in real life? How many games even have docks? There is one at the beginning of Sleeping Dogs.

Well as a person who lives in a dock town, I can say that the in game docks are very sparsely populated, badly organized and there are not enough piers for the volume of traffic you'd expect from such big in game cities.

Not to mention the dock missions never take advantage of the awesomeness of dock cranes for gameplay features.

[MrPopo]

HL2 had the crane you could use to drop a car on Metro cops.