Games Owned to Games Played For A Decent Amount of Time Ratio

[Patrick R]

After the last two Humble Bundles, the total number of games I own on Steam is 111. Of those, I count 26 that I've played for any substantial period of time (say, thirty minutes). That's about a 1 to 3 ratio of games I own on Steam that I've actually really "played" in any meaningful way.

 

I keep thinking I will get around to playing them, but I also keep getting more games whenever they go on sale. Am I a video game hoarder? Do you have this problem too?

[JonCole]

330 games owned, 69 played for more than 30 minutes. Our ratios are pretty close, but you're beating me. Add in the rest of my games on console and handheld, and it'd probably be right about in line with that.

[TheLastBaron]

Steam says I have 402 games and there are 70 games which I have higher that 0.5 hours played.  My list of "All Games" contains 244 items so I'm assuming thats real games and the 402 is counting all DLC as a separate item which means all the unit-packs for things like EU3 and other Paradox games are jacking the number up.

[Ucantalas]

So according to Steam I have 29 games. (Compared to you guys, I am a lightweight. But thats what happens with console gamers.)

So let's see...
Owned: 29
Played Decently: 16
Finished Storyline: 9

I have a real problem finishing the games I start. I get stuck and quit way too often.

[tegan]

I'm pleased with myself for keeping my Steam library at a reasonable 9 games. Oddly enough, I've only ever spent something like five dollars on Steam. People are just very generous with gifting me things. Out of all of those, though, I've only beaten 2 and played a semi-decent amount of 1 or 2 more. Some are untouched or played only once.

[clyde]

Yup. But I'm cool with collecting them. It's fun to have a library to look through. I had to put myself in check though. I now have a monthly video game budget with roll-over. It's actually really fun for me. Figuring out how much I have left in my gaming budget for the month, waiting til the beginning of the month to get something I've been looking forward to; I like to have some self-imposed limits. In some cases, I doodle about the games I'm looking forward to in my sketchbooks and speculate on how awesome it will be to play them. Before I had the gaming budget I would just buy them if they were already out. Now I got a hype train the size of one of those where the conductor straddles the engine. It's changed my gaming habits too. I play more iphone games and I believe that I savor my existing library a little more than I did. 

[Patrick R]

I think I am mostly fine with this as well, for similar reasons. But I also wonder if I'm essentially turning Steam into a Netflix Instant type of service where part of the perceived value of gaming potential is actually tricking me into spending more on games a month than I'm actually getting out of them (though trying to determine the "worth" of gaming experiences is kind of a ridiculous thing), and that it's less about fostering an eclectic library of potential experiences and more about chasing the consumeristic dopamine rush of seeing a title get added to my list.

 

It is no coincidence that I started to think about this while playing Little Inferno. Wildly thumbing through catalogues looking for quick hits of interaction and fun reminded me of my Steam library so much that I had to turn it off and think a while. That game is incredible and, like Candy Box, lays bare the baser pleasure chasing instincts in me.

[Ucantalas]

I dont really check Netflix stuff very often, is there a way to see which titles you've actually watched already?: Because that would probably be my ultimate downfall. Gotta Watch 'Em All! mentality would probably take over in me.

[clyde]

... and that it's less about fostering an eclectic library of potential experiences and more about chasing the consumeristic dopamine rush of seeing a title get added to my list.

 

It is no coincidence that I started to think about this while playing Little Inferno. Wildly thumbing through catalogues looking for quick hits of interaction and fun reminded me of my Steam library so much that I had to turn it off and think a while. 

That's awesome. And yeah, I get that too. 

Here is a weird permutation to that. Super Monday Night Combat is free to play and you earn in-game money that allows you to get more content by winning games. You can also just spend real money for the same content. The weird part is that when I win a game, I feel like I am winning U.S. dollars. Dangerous, I know, but I live for danger. 

[SecretAsianMan]

I probably have a similar ratio of games owned to games actually played as most, but that's only on Steam.  I've played every console game I own to completion, with a few exceptions and those I stopped pretty close to the end.  I think it's because in the case of a console game, I felt I owed it to myself to play it to the end because it took some amount of effort to get, either ordering it through Amazon, buying it in a store, or even going through Microsoft's annoying money->points system.  In the case of Steam, I see it, I buy it, and I suddenly have it.  It's absurdly easy and extremely dangerous.

[Zeusthecat]

Speaking strictly of Xbox 360 games.

 

49 games owned

46 games played for at least 10 hours

43 games played to completion and beyond

 

Games played for over 75 hours:

GTA4

Oblivion

Fallout 3

FF13 (I'm ashamed of myself)

Lost Odyssey

Blue Dragon

Burnout Paradise

Halo 3

Battlefield 3

Rainbow 6 Vegas

 

Games played for over 300 hours:

Skyrim

 

I've been on a fucking mission for awhile to clear my backlog and I'm almost there 

[Patrick R]

How can I edit thread titles? I think I was having a stroke when I thought GAMES OWNED TO GAMES PLAYED FOR A DECENT AMOUNT OF TIME RATIO was anything less than a violation of the English language.

[Gormongous]

How can I edit thread titles? I think I was having a stroke when I thought GAMES OWNED TO GAMES PLAYED FOR A DECENT AMOUNT OF TIME RATIO was anything less than a violation of the English language.

 

The only way to repent is to write each word on a scrap of paper and draw a new, rearranged thread title out of a hat.

[Patrick R]

Games To Time Games Ratio Owned For Amount Decent Time Of Played does have a pretty nice ring to it.

[elmuerte]

My steam hour/game ratio is wrong because I have games listed on steam which I never played via steam. For example, I've played the Wallace & Gromit and Back to the Future games before I received them via the the humble bundle. Also game I played which are now listed on steam but I didn't play : AaaaAaaaa etc., and yet it moves, bioshock, borderlands, braid, broken sword 1, 2, 3, 4, commander keen, crayon physics deluxe, darwinia, doom 1,2,3, heretic, hexen 1, 2, mirror's edge, max payne 1, 2, multiwinia, on the rain slick precipice of darkness, oddworld, quake 1, 3, jedi knight 1, 2, 3, 4, dark forces, syberia 1, 2, trine, wolfenstein 3d, the wonderful end of the world. So of the 300 games steams lists on my profile, quite some I've played for a couple of hours (or much more) but have zero hours listed. About 150 of them received at least 0.5 hours of attention on steam.

[Sno]

It seems like a lot of people have a fundamentally different relationship with physical media, relative to the games they "own" digitally.

Myself included, i look at my Steam library, and it's a weird hodge podge of things i like a lot and things i've barely touched. (If at all.)

But then i look at my 360 library, and of those that are disc-based games, there's maybe 5-10% that i haven't played through to completion.

[Zeusthecat]

It seems like a lot of people have a fundamentally different relationship with physical media, relative to the games they "own" digitally.

Myself included, i look at my Steam library, and it's a weird hodge podge of things i like a lot and things i've barely touched. (If at all.)

But then i look at my 360 library, and of those that are disc-based games, there's maybe 5-10% that i haven't played through to completion.

 

And if I remember right, you have over 200 games? If you've played 90-95% of them to completion then I just don't know what to say. Except you win at video games.

 

P.S. As a collector I am very jealous of your game count.

[Sno]

And if I remember right, you have over 200 games? If you've played 90-95% of them to completion then I just don't know what to say. Except you win at video games.

 

P.S. As a collector I am very jealous of your game count.

Hold on, hold on, it's not that crazy. My 360 library is like half-XBLA and half-physical media. I haven't been nearly as thorough with those XBLA games, which furthers my point about the digital media thing. (Edit: Oh no, oh noo. I just counted, i have severely underestimated how many games i own for the 360. I feel terrible about myself now.)

 

I don't think my collection is honestly all that impressive, nor did i set out to collect a lot of games, i've just been a 360 owner since 2006, it's a long time to end up playing a lot of games.

I'm kind of a chronic Video game hoarder, i realized early on that i always regreted it when i sold my games, there are painful gaps in my SNES/90's-PC library.

[Twig]

I just don't buy physical games because they're a waste of space and I have literally zero emotional attachment to them. Digital reigns supreme, because they're digital products. It's like how I don't give a rat's ass about wallpapers or whatever as Kickstarter rewards, but I'll eat up a piece of art that I can actually hang on my wall. "games played" vs "games not played" also was pretty much the same ratio for me when I DID own consoles and frequently buy physical copies of games. Which is kinda something special, 'cause back then I couldn't get a dozen games for the price of one new game on a biweekly basis. Heh.

 

And then I get my 3DS stolen and weep because I bought all the games digitally.

 

Also.

 

This is embarrassing.

 

http://steamcommunity.com/id/twig/games?tab=all

 

655 games. Most of them rarely, if at all, played.

[SecretAsianMan]

I think part of it is also the nature of the console versus the PC.  When I turn on my Xbox or PS3 or Wii or whatever, I usually do it with the intention of playing a specific game (or maybe Netflix).  And that's all I'm doing with it.  Even in the case of downloadable games, I still usually know what I want to play before I turn it on.  That may change with the PS4 and Xbone. 

 

In the case of a computer, I end up doing a lot of other things either before or after playing, like checking my email, browsing the web, messing up Wikipedia, posting on forums, etc.  Sometimes playing a game is almost incidental.  I'm already at my computer, might as well play something.

[sclpls]

I think record collecting isn't as interesting as it used to be, so the collection of games I have on Steam kinda fulfills the same purpose. It's really nice to be able to look at a well curated collection of games even if I don't get around to playing many of them in any substantial way.

[elmuerte]

Collecting ones and zeros isn't fun.

 

Collecting amarays isn't much more fun.

[thestalkinghead]

241 games on steam (http://steamcommunity.com/id/thestalkinghead/games?tab=all ) , top 50 all over 4 hours played (top 10 over 35 hours), next 50 all over an hour played, next 50 all over 0.5 hours played, next 50 not very long then i have some it says i have never played, but they are either ones i got in a package, ones i got before steam tracked anything like time played and some i have played but not on steam (try before you buy    or i own the disc or i own it not on steam and it later gets added to steam), i generally play the game i just bought and i have only been buying games on steam the past 2 years or so (it took me a long time to believe it wouldn't just go away) but I'm not a completionist i play a game until i am bored with it, but the good thing about steam is that i don't have to search through hundreds of actual disks to find the game if i have an urge to play a game and i don't have to find patches so i have re-bought quite a few just for convenience, basically steam is only a small section of my gaming experience so it isn't that accurate and some records are just wrong for some reason, maybe ofline play???