How long will you give a game to "convince" you?

[JonCole]

I've had a bit of a conundrum lately, especially since I've been going through what is a vast backlog of games. I have to admit, some degree of this question is built on value proposition but I'd like to sidestep that element as much as I can in the following question:

How long will you give a game to "convince" you?

With some games, I'll obviously give them a much longer stick. For instance, I'm a sucker for first-person shooters and western RPGs so I'm bound to tolerate some early mediocrity for the "good stuff".

Let's say I'm going to try a game that isn't typically in my wheelhouse but is critically or widely acclaimed. It's really hard for me to personally give a game like that my attention for longer than an hour or so before really wanting to put it down.

Trying to put this idea to a formula or something, I feel like I should reasonably give a game something like 10% of its total typical gameplay time before I throw it to the wind. So, for a typical 10 hour game I might give it an hour but for a 40 hour RPG I might give it 4 hours. This formula has already failed, however, as I've just tried to play Eternal Sonata and truly wanted to give it a rest after only 30 minutes.

Anyways, that's a very long winded way of me wanting to hear some other people's opinions on this matter. I feel like that as an art form, games deserve some degree of my attention no matter what they are. That said, I also play games for entertainment so I'd like to strike some sort of balance between those two forces.

[mikemariano]

I played through Bioshock and loathed every minute of it. But I kept playing, because I convinced myself that the game would "come together". Instead, it amplified its most frustrating aspects—longer hacking! The same enemies I already fought with more health! A lame boss fight!

Since then I have dropped a game immediately if it is not at least a little bit fun, even at its most boring.

I am currently collecting 20 bear pelts in Oblivion. It's the worst kind of fetch quest, but as I'm doing so I'm discovering new locations in areas I thought I thoroughly explored. So I keep playing.

[shammack]

I don't think I really have a consistent rule. At any point in a game, I'm willing to put up with some stuff that I don't like if there's at least one aspect of it that I'm really enjoying. But if I get to a point where there's nothing in particular that's holding my interest and then the game gets turned off for whatever reason, I probably won't end up coming back. I guess on average I'd say that I'd give a game around two sittings' worth of "playing but not really enjoying" time before giving up on it.

[Orv]

I don't have a solid rule. I generally operate on a "slow hook" procedure.

- If a game shows me something intriguing (cool looking, confusing, mysterious, bizarre) in the first half hour, I'll give it another half hour to...

- Shock me. Whether it be a "HOLY SHIT" moment, or something that just disturbs/disgusts me, or a "Huh, I... huh, okay, sure... huh" moment, if it can give me this, I'll keep playing it until I finish or something completely annoys me.

OR

- Give me a moment I will always remember. Doesn't have to be something big, just a little quirk or amusement I will remember for a long time to come. I then continue to play under the previously mentioned terms.

If a game

- Angers me

- Has terrible controls/UI (by terrible I mean totally incomprehensible or unusable, not just poor)

or

- Is simply broken

In the first half hour, I typically don't play it any longer.

Of course, all games are subject to exemption from any of these rules depending on how I feel that day, if it does something completely insane or any number of factors. The most typical exemption is a game just being fun for one reason or another, and I don't care what it delivers as long as I keep enjoying myself.

[vimes]

Last time I tried emptying my Steam backlog, I tried to give each game 90 minutes to convince me. I struggled with some and, of course, this rule doesn't apply to broken or overly bugged games, but this arbitrary times seems to work.

[a purple future]

if I'm going in blind, then the answer is maybe 1-2 hours. if, like Far Cry 2, Deadly Premonition, and many many more, that my friends swear there's something worthwhile waiting for me, I have almost infinite patience. It took 8 hours for Far Cry 2 to hook me.

[Thompson]

I just play the video game and then stop if I feel like it, I don't really have a rule.

[Woebin]

Like most people I don't have any hard rules, but in general unless I know there's something rewarding coming up I'll stop playing a game right away if I find myself not having fun at all. One example is Space Pirates and Zombies, which I'd heard good things about from various places. Pirates and zombies are both a bit overplayed, causing me to approach the game with a good deal of scepticism to begin with, and at the first combat encounter I quickly found that the controls and feel of it all was just terrible. Didn't even finish the demo.

On the other hand, I'm currently working my way through Neverwinter Nights 2. The writing is incredibly generic, the voice acting is excruciatingly bad, the engine really doesn't lend itself well to the scripted cutscenes that are frequently used, and the combat lacks the depth I've come to expect from DnD games (coming from the Infinity Engine games). Yet I push on, because I know that at some point I get to own and develop my own fort, which is the sort of thing I tend to really enjoy. And even more importantly than that, I've heard so many good things about the expansion, Mask of the Betrayer, that I just really want to get through the vanilla game so I can play that.

So I guess that's a lot of words to say that I don't spend a lot of time with a game I don't enjoy unless there are good things just beyond the horizon.

[Sno]

The only thing that immediately turns me off a game is if it's fundamentally broken in a way that requires me putting a lot of work into simply getting it running. (Or requiring me to sign up for a bunch of things before i can start playing, or gnarly DRM schemes, or whatever.)

For a time, when i was exclusively a PC gamer, i had a tolerance for that kind of stuff. Not anymore.

Once things get going though, i probably tolerate a lot more from games than most people do. I mean, i've generally found that the games i end up loving the most tend to be really obtuse and flawed, or slow burns with poorly explained systems.

To put it in relevant terms, the games i value most have not always been the kind of game you can know are "good" after only an hour or two. (Deadly Premonition, anybody?)

If a game is pissing me off, or if something feels like it's not coming together, i usually do a bit of searching online to see if i'm missing something crucial. Doing this, like 90% of the time i'll end up learning something that makes the game more enjoyable. (It's with some frustration that i consistently see people show adamant refusal to accept the "you're doing it wrong" argument, which i feel is often totally valid. Sometimes you have to meet the game halfway, you know? It is completely possible to brute force through a game without understanding half of what you're doing, and have a terrible experience because of it.)

I won't stop if a game makes me angry, whether it be clumsy control or crazy difficulty spikes. I'll beat my head against a difficulty curve for a good while before giving up. It has to be pretty spectacularly fucked to make me give up.

If i feel like i've given a game my due diligence and still ultimately just feel bored, that's the nail in the coffin. I'll put up with a lot of busted design to see interesting stuff, but if nothing in a game is clicking, there's no reason to put up with it the aforementioned busted stuff.

I apply no set time-limit on this or anything, every game is different. RPG's can be really tricky to gauge, given just how long they can take to wind-up. (Especially JRPG's.)

Like Woebin, i usually do a lot of research on any game i intend to play, avoiding spoilers as best i can while just trying to gauge what the game is about.

[Roderick]

I'm with the rest that my decisions on this are all over the place. Sometimes I only have to play half an hour to decide something's not for me, but in the case of, say, FF7 I played that for 40 (!) hours before finally giving up in disgust, just waiting and waiting for something to tell me why the whole world had gone crazy about this game.

But most of the time I pick my games pretty carefully, so I have a good chance of liking what I play. Even so, if I stop playing a game it's 90% of the time because I lose interest or forget to play it, not because I specifically don't like the game itself.

[twmac]

I used to play everything for around 2-4 hours before deciding whether I was going to continue. As a result there are a lot of games I didn't finish as something new and interesting used to come along and I would play that instead.

Of the games of that era that I feel like I made a legitimate decision to stop playing there would be Phantom Crash, Ikaruga and Spartan Total Warrior, of which all these ruined me on the final boss(es) and I never finished them.

Nowadays I don't think I ever truly give up on a game (although Operation Darkness is probably the closest I am). That said, for XBLA and XBLIG stuff that I am not sure about I will play the demo and if there is nothing in there that sparks my interest I won't buy the full game. In fact, now that I have regular internet, I might start applying that logic to demos of full games.

What I am trying to say is that usually once I have committed to buying a game I will eventually plan to finish it (my backloggery of 116 unfinished games says otherwise).

Eternal Sonata is a tough one, the combat system doesn't even start to get interesting until later in the game, in fact this is what I said earlier. The second playthrough is when the game comes to life which is very cheeky if you ask me.

[Tanukitsune]

I have no time limit to convince me, but I happen to have a mirror on the closet door (this wasn't always my room) where I sometimes look at my face and see what expression I have when I'm playing a game.

Sometimes it's the only way I'll admit I'm not enjoying or hating the game, but sometimes I will continue to play until I can pinpoint WHY I'm not enjoying the game and then I'll keep that information and use it to avoid future disappointments.

And sometimes when I feel like quitting, I cheat to see if that make the game more fun or less of a slog, it can actually work in some cases...

[Malice Song]

This often comes down to expectations, doesn't it?

For example, I don't particularly care for adventure games, yet I still buy one once in a blue moon, if there seems something interesting to it and/or it's dirtcheap. In that case, however, I tend to have my judgment ready half an hour in at the latest. If it didn't something to wow me by that point, chances are it's not really going to hook me in, since I don't really relate to that genre to begin with. At that point the game and I just part amicably, it just didn't work out and we'll just be friends.

It's a bit more complex when expectations are reversed and for some reason I think I am playing a great game (or in fact do), but just have no fun, whatsoever. Those are usually the big ones everyone loves and where I am thinking "I should really enjoy this. Everybody else does and here are quite a few things I usually like.", but for some reason it just doesn't click with me. Usually because I am bothered by some details everybody else just doesn't give a shit about and if these things pile up enough, then it's probably just not my cup of tea. Most notable offenders in this category are probably Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time and Prince of Persia: Sands of Time (basically anything of Time, apparently). From what I can judge I near-completed both of them, just to have a moment where I asked myself: "self, what the hell are you doing? You're not having fun with this game and in fact never had. This game isn't for you, just move on. It's okay, you can always go on a message board later and pretend everybody else is wrong, you don't have to object yourself to this out of a weird sense of 'Games Everyone Should Have Played'".

And that's pretty much the mindset I stuck with since then, because let's face it: there's a lot of good games, if one starts out sucking, is it really worth marching on, when the start will always be that: just not fun? Of course there are examples of games being designed to challenge you a bit more and ditch the handholding. Afaik I am obliged to mention Far Cry 2 here? Also I still have to play Stalker and am semi-prepared for a similar experience, fully knowing that I will probably love pretty much everything about that game, if I give it a chance. But if it comes to perceived design flaws or the realization, that the game and I have different ideas how it should/could be played, I don't feel the need to hang around anymore these days. Terrible controls on the PC port? It was nice knowing you, Dead Space. Following a narrow narrative path instead of exploring the world and developing my character on my own? Make yourself at home in the toaster, GTA IV. Red Faction Guerilla? Space Asshole.

So yeah, every game can have a shitty part, but if it starts out that way, in my experience more often than not it is because the game just isn't my cup of tea or there's a fundamental design decision or premise I don't agree with, and no matter how much patience I am willing to show, it won't go away. And if it does, there'll always be the foul taste of the opening hours. How to put that into a number ... an hour maybe, I guess, tutorials not counting.

On a sidenote, whenever a game addresses me as "the chosen one" and expects me to take it seriously, it immediately flies out the window.

No regrets so far.

[Corelli]

I played about two and a half hours of Velvet Assassin, so I'd say roughly two and a half hours.

[elmuerte]

I do the same as Thompson; sometimes I return to a game months later.

But usually I put in hours and hours(*) before I consider to stop playing it.

It really depends on the game, some games I can play a long time; others I can only play for like 30 minutes in a row.

*) it feels like hours and hours, but sometimes it's barely an hour in total.

[Sno]

Ikaruga

I'm just going to say, you were going about this game the wrong way if it was only about beating the last boss to you.

[syntheticgerbil]

I don't usually quit games since I go by the designer and often find something decent or more. Sometimes I'll force myself through something for the sake of it, but that's often rare.

If I do give up on a game, like trying newer games I might enjoy, I usually give it to the halfway point at least. Just check a walkthrough if I'm not enjoying it and figure which checkpoint I should make it to. If things don't turn around I'm done.

I feel like 30 minutes of time is just not enough to fully understand a game or give it a fair shake. Many story driven games tend to start out slow, but that could just be from years of adventure gaming confirming so for me, while others like to be wowed more instantly. If a game is not going to appeal to me, I just figure it out ahead of time by watching videos and trailers before I even waste time installing it.

[twmac]

I'm just going to say, you were going about this game the wrong way if it was only about beating the last boss to you.

But I wanted to see the end!

Admittedly that is a bad example, I love me some bullet hell but I also like to finish the game and then delve into its particulars afterwards. Ikaruga just kicked my arse.

I have repurchased the game on XLA, for what it is worth I am getting really, really good at the first level score attack.

[Sno]

But I wanted to see the end!

Admittedly that is a bad example, I love me some bullet hell but I also like to finish the game and then delve into its particulars afterwards. Ikaruga just kicked my arse.

I have repurchased the game on XLA, for what it is worth I am getting really, really good at the first level score attack.

When i bought the XBLA version, it just made me feel really, really sad. I couldn't keep up with it anymore. (I've heard hardcore types denounce the XBLA version for some subtle pattern changes, though i doubt that played into me being terrible at that version. The XBLA version is also missing a ton of stuff from earlier releases, it's not as immaculate as some of Treasure's other XBLA stuff has been.)

I had gotten pretty averagely capable with the gamecube release a few years prior. I could baseline S-rank the first couple stages and have enough extra lives off those chains to carry me through to the insane final two stages and then still totally bone it up on the final boss.

Which was good enough for me, i think that was as good as i was ever going to be at that game.

Ikaruga is hard.

/thread derailment.

[Brannigan]

For me, it varies a lot. Genre is definitely part of it, I can stomach an action game and some rpgs for a while before deciding to stop. MMOs are a very quick decision for me. I don't try many out these days. But if I do, and I see similarities to WoW within the first 10 minutes, I'm probably done. It's not that I hate WoW, I played it for quite a while. It's that I already played WoW and do not need to do it again. This can apply to single player games too, I'm looking at you Kingdoms of Amalamadingdong. Other than that specific example, a game has to seriously offend me a lot for me to quit it early, more in actual design than bugs, if bugs are an issue I'm willing to check back when things may be fixed.

[juv3nal]

It depends on a lot of things, but if I put down money for a game (as opposed to some freebie indie/web thing), I try to give a title at least a half hour (above and beyond character generation and/or tutorial level if those are applicable).

I've also given up much later into a game (due to an insurmountable difficulty spike, for instance), but a half hour is kind of a minimum (barring straight up bugginess/technical problems).

[Donk]

My mind is already made up when I buy the game, I too have a huge backlog and made myself stop buying games on release a long time a go. When I finally do buy games I have months of podcasts and forums opinions to go by. It's been years since stopped playing a game because it's just a turd game. Last game started that I didn't finish was Condemned 2 but that was because of a save game wipe bug

[Tanukitsune]

I just had a "convincing" moment right now, I was playing Crusader: No Remorse and enjoying... at least at the beginning, when the game was starting to get needlessly tedious.

When I reached the elevator I thought the end of the level was near, but no, I still had quite a way to go, so I quit...

[Sno]

Oh, that makes me sad to hear, Crusader is such a great game.

[robc]

I don't think I have a general rule. I think if the game remains unfun for a couple hours and doesn't show any signs of improving, then I will quit. If I think it is just do to a learning curve I would stick with it.

I stopped playing the Diablo 3 open beta weekend early because I have grown tired of clickfest gaming and Diablo didn't offer up anything to keep me going (story, interesting strategic choices, etc). I also stopped playing the Valley With No Wind demo after an hour or so because I wasn't enjoying myself. If it is something I paid for I am probably inclined to give it a bigger chance.

I used to have a harder time giving up on a game and felt compelled to complete it. If I have already put in a lot of time and am getting close to the end I may be inclined to stick with it unless it is horrible.