It’s all Fun and Games, until....
It was while on a school trip to the French Alps in 1974 that I discovered video games – care of a coin-operated ‘Pong’ console in the hotel's games room. Over the week or so we were there ‘learning’ to ski, I spent most of my holiday money in that room. Since then, I’ve been playing video/computer games on and off on various coin-ops – my 2nd Year @ Uni was spent living in the ‘seaside’ resort of Morecambe where I spent far too much time and far too much money in the arcades – and on borrowed and, later, bought PCs. Over the decades I’ve played a fair few games over a LOT of hours. Primarily I’m a reader but I’m also very much a gamer too.
My games generally fall into 3 large categories – FPS (First Person Shooter), RTS (Real-Time Strategy) and RPG (Role Playing Games). Over the decades I’ve enjoyed all 3 types, from Doom (FPS) to Age of Empires (RTS) to World of Warcraft (RPG). In the last 15 years or so the pattern has been playing a few hours each night with gamer friends (who I met at work in our IT Department), plus a few extra hours during the day at weekends and holidays. I also had ‘Gamer Days’ - generally on Christmas Day and New Years when I knew no one (or far fewer people) would be around due to family commitments. On those days I’d generally play from about noon (or before) until late at night.
Looking through my Steam Account logs it’s interesting (to me anyway!) how some games really took off for me – and the guys – where others fell flat. Fortunately, most of the games purchased have been fairly cheap (or on sale) so the outlay hasn’t been enormous. Plus, when you’re getting hundreds of hours of entertainment out of something, the odd £25-35 doesn't seem very much. Until recently I was playing Warthunder (FPS but with tanks) during the day and, most recently, Generation Zero (FPS) with my primary gaming friend in the evenings. I’ve now switched to playing Gen Zero exclusively. So, what are my stats I hear a lone voice asking.... In no particular order (actually alphabetical order!) they are:
10 Miles to Safety 26.9 hours
Aliens: Fireteam Elite 21.2 hours
Besiege 6.1 hours
Borderlands (Game of the Year Edition) 108.2 hours
Borderlands 2 1,276.6 hours
Borderlands 3 574.9 hours
Borderlands the Pre-Sequel 228.8 hours
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 136.7 hours
Cities: Skylines 8.1 hours
Company of Heroes 2 1,205.5 hours
Don’t Starve Together 41 minutes
Dorf Romantik 13.6 hours
Guns, Gore and Cannoli 2 7.8 hours
Livelock 3.2 hours
No Man’s Sky 585 hours
Northgard 32.1 hours
Oxygen Not Included 499 hours
Plague Inc: Evolved 88 minutes
Stellaris 38.7 hours
Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands 74.5 hours
Tropico 5 24.6 hours
Two Point Hospital 161.3 hours
Dawn of War 2 342.3 hours
DorW2: Chaos Rising 130.7 hours
DorW2: Retribution 655.5 hours
Most recently:
Warthunder 745.7 hours
Generation Zero 81.8 hours (with 52.6 hours in the last 2 weeks)
So, yes..... I’m a GAMER LOL.
6 comments:
It's a small world. In 1974 I was part of an audit team assigned to our client Bally Manufacturing in Chicago. They owned a subsidiary that made Pong arcade games and it was there that I became acquainted with that game. However, I never cauhgt the gaming bug so have no experience with any successors.
Quite a coincidence!
Indeed!
@CK, how did you like Tropico? That series seems like one I'd get really into, but I only ever played the first game and it was just drowned by competition at the time.
I look a look at my own Steam stats, and...man, count me dubious. Very dubious. I think it must count hours that I spent alt-tabbed out of the game, or it's not properly logging when I close a game.
Mafia 2: 851.3 Hours. Okay, I've played Mafia 2 a lot but not NEARLY that much.
Hitman: 346.1 hours: Considering how many times I've played and replayed the Italian maps, this is fair.
Sid Meier's Civ 3: 199.2. Many many many more hours before steam, I assure you.
American Truck Simulator: 193
Sid Meier's Pirates: 153
Farming Sim 19: 153
Euro Truck Sim: 144.5
Among Us: 112.9
PC Building Sim: 90.1
Sid Meier's Civ 5: 54.7
Hitman 2: 50.3 There is NO WAY IN HELL I've played Hitman 2 more than Blood Money. Problem is Hitman 1, 2, and 3 are all kind of the same thing on steam.
Hitman BLood Money: 43.3.
Mass Effect: Andromeda 34.6 Nope. Nope. Nope. I've played this like 40 minutes.
Max Payne 2: 34.4. Nope. I installed this once, it wasn't optimized well for Windows 10, so I've never really played it.
Game Dev Tycoon: 32.2. I think I've played this and Cites Skylines FAR more.
Cities Skylines 28.5
Papers Please: 27.7
Plague Inc: 16.8
Command and Conquer Remastered: 15. 9
Of course, god knows how many hours I've logged on RDR2 since 2019, and The Sims 4 thinks I've logged 10K hours which is definitely logging alt-tab time. They're always pushing updates that break mods, so I tend to leave the game alt-tabbed out all the time. Not sure if GOG's platform logs time or not.
I thought Tropico 5 was OK. I was looking for something different from the usual run 'n gun stuff and it fit the bill. I did get a bit annoyed with it after a while when it said I'd failed to put down a revolt... which I thought I had as all of them were dead... Then something better came along...
Steam's stats are a bit... questionable, agreed. Personally I'd love to know my WoW stats. I spent a LOT of time on that sucker!! [lol]
I never got into MMOs..probably because I didn't have broadband until almost 2008. Did you ever try 'Evercrack'?
'EverQuest'?, No. I think WoW was my first (possible) MMO. I resisted for ages but a few of my friends were playing, so I joined in. They thought I'd just be a support character for the 'real' players, but I really got into it.
Generally I'm far more RTS and FPS than RPG. Really liking Gen Zero ATM. I'm finding it VERY atmospheric.
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