Without fail, every time I’m interested in starting a new game, I do the exact same thing. No matter how cool it looks, how much I vibe with the idea of playing it, or how keen I am to dive into its world and explore everything it has to offer, I head over to Google or ask any friends I can: ‘So, how long does it take to finish this?’
It’s not a bad question to ask, by any means. It’s important information to have out there. When buying new games, lots of people like to know how long they’re going to last in order to help justify the cost, and that’s okay. That’s not the reason I’m always insistent on looking it up, though. For me, it’s about knowing just how much of a time commitment I’m making when I load something up for the first time.
On paper, it makes sense. After all, if you’re faced with playing a game that takes 100 hours to finish and one that takes five, why wouldn’t you play the shorter one first so you can have that full experience faster, before diving into the larger one? That’s what I told myself for years on end, anyway, but as I stepped into the New Year and made the resolution to finish more games, I realized that I needed to stop doing it.
In over your head
The problem is that, frankly, big numbers are overwhelming to look at. As soon as I see that a game’s main story takes over 30 hours to complete, I start to get hesitant. It’s silly, because I’m inevitably going to spend those free hours playing something, but I can’t seem to shake the feeling that perhaps I should be putting my time into multiple shorter titles, instead.
It’s not that I don’t like longer games - I adore them. Last year I finally gave Persona 5 Royal a go after putting it off for years due to its length, and was captivated for the full 115+ hours it took me to earn its Platinum trophy. I’m not someone who rushes through things, either - my playthroughs of games regularly take longer than the average completion times, since I enjoy investigating everything I can, poking and prodding every object, and hoovering up every item I come across. Needless to say, I’m more than happy to sink my time into these things, yet I still seem to struggle with overcoming the mental block to do so in the first place.
So, why? What a question indeed, and one I’ve continued to ask myself every time this happens. Honestly, I think a lot of it boils down to the whole idea of having a backlog that needs to be beaten. I’m sure I’m not alone in feeling a certain sense of guilt whenever I put a game back on the shelf in favor of moving on to something else which has taken my fancy. The feeling of leaving something unfinished weighs over me - every time I go to play something new, I’m reminded of everything else I still have left, oftentimes those longer games, abandoned in the first 10 hours before I got in too deep.
Ticking boxes
Equally, with that mindset it makes more sense to prioritize shorter games so that more things can be ticked off the list. It becomes favorable to ignore the lengthier titles, regardless of their quality or how much you’d enjoy them, because why spend all your time on one thing when you could finish five others instead?
But really, what does it matter? At the end of the day, we play games to have fun - they were never meant to transform into some kind of expansive, never-ending chore list. If you decide you’d rather play something different, then who cares? It’s your free time. I know I’m guilty of it too, but this fixation so many of us have with seeing the credits roll adds an unnecessary stress to what should be a lighthearted hobby.
It might sound hypocritical to come to that conclusion after promising myself to finish more games this year, but with this fresh attitude towards completion times, I think that the two will go hand in hand. After all, if I’m solely focused on spending time on the games I love, regardless of how long they take to finish, I’m almost certainly going to be more likely to see them through, since I won’t have that self-inflicted pressure weighing me down. Incessantly researching game completion times was never going to help me get anything done faster, anyway.
Looking for more fantastic games to play? Be sure to check out our lists of the best PS5 games, best Xbox Series X games and best Nintendo Switch games.
