it290 wrote:How about the overall length of time that you concentrate on a game, though (not just single session length)?
Depends on the game, but usually for a very long time considering I only get about 2 new shooters a year. I've been playing Strikers 1945 regularly for about 8 months now.
I played Darius Gaiden for about a year before I cleared it.
it290 wrote:How about the overall length of time that you concentrate on a game, though (not just single session length)?
Probably the game that I've spent the most time with is Gunbird 2. I've probably spent close to 30 hours on it. But this game is especially addictive to me; most games are merely a curiousity for me and I won't get serious with them.
On the serious side, more than 1 hour of the same game in a day is possible only if i have something new in my hands, i usually get games that can be cleared in 20-25 minutes, so it means 2-3 complete plays, as an average, or a few score attacks tries, in general.
If it's puzzle games, though, time becomes wildly relative, i often have hours of trance-like plays when getting a new puzzler...last episode, yesterday night with ZOOO.
"The only desire the Culture could not satisfy from within itself was one common to both the descendants of its original human stock and the machines [...]: the urge not to feel useless."
If I get a new game that I want to put time into, then about 2 hours per night for as many nights as I can for as many months as I can be bothered. But with work, sometimes even my best efforts to free up time only get me 2 hours per week in.I tend to concentrate on just one game at a time until I get bored with it or feel I have proved that I can do it. With such short time I have to make decisions about whether the extra effort is worth it.
For instance I concentrated almost totally on Ikaruga when I got it. I concentrated on it for 9 months or so, playing little else apart from the odd side game of something. In that nine months I racked up 32 hours game play! Not much and anyone with more time could have done that in a week. However, I managed to get within 8 seconds of 1ccing it. I got to the last boss with two men left. Using credit feeds I had beeten that boss loads of times in two men. However I was so stunned that I got there with two men left and was so excited about the prospect of beating it, that I forgot to watch the screen properly and one man died in just a second or two. Which meant, practically, that I got to 8 seconds of beating that last boss in just one man.
So I spat my dummy out, put the CD in its box and never played it again. I just don't have the time to put in the effort to get that chance again, it might take me another month of playing to get past that 8 seconds. I know that most experts at that game put in at least 100hours, and I know for sure that if I played it that long I would be regularly beating it. So play stopped and I moved on.
I then played DDPDOJ, evil game that it is, concentrated on that for a while and managed to get to mid level 1-4. I'm still trying but got distracted by a purchase of Ibara, Raiden 3 and ESPGaluda (all bought at the same time). But shortly it'll be back to DOJ. I only intend to do the first loop, I have no intention of putting in the stupid amounts of effort needed to do the second loop. I have little time and lots of other games to play!
CIT wrote:As I get older => more disposable income => more games => BUT also: less time
Dave_K. wrote:Older age = more committment = more money = less time gaming, but with more games
My wife just gave birth to our second child one week and one day ago. Needless to say my play time has shrunk drastically (ie: to nothing).
Before then I was lucky to squeeze 30 minutes every second day in. Weekends sometimes give me enough time for a whole hour of play, if I'm lucky.
10 years ago I could play 2 hours a day if I wanted. But that meant eating into my food/beer budget for the week for credits. An interesting dilemma - food or arcades? Needless to say I was a lot skinnier then than I am now.
It's ironic how life never gives you the money when you can have the most fun with it, and the time when you really need it. C'est la vie.
Oddly enough, my current job allows for an absolutely obscene amount of gaming time. I'm an intern at a theatre in Virginia (though I'm from Kansas. Don't ask), and my current assignment is to run the light board for our current production. It's an eight week run, with five shows a week. It runs for two hours, and since I'm using a modern ETC board, all lighting is controlled by a single button. What this boils do to is me sitting in front of my laptop, waiting for the Stage Manager to cue me. Since this show has started I've cleared 13 shooters. Not to mention getting back into the original Doom and Hexen.
Depends.
If I get a new game, I'll focus solely on it and milk as much gameplay out of it as possible. Just the way I am.
Otherwise, I'll play at least a few minutes each week. That's the beauty of shooters...you can play for as little as 10 minutes and still come away with a feeling of accomplishment.
