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Study shows 36% of console gamers and 40% of PC gamers spend less than 5 hours a week gaming

Your Weekly Gaming time?

  • Less than 10 hours

    Votes: 133 51.0%
  • 10 - 20 hours

    Votes: 68 26.1%
  • 20 - 30 hours

    Votes: 31 11.9%
  • Over 30 hours

    Votes: 29 11.1%

  • Total voters
    261

Shifty1897

Member
I do between 5 and 10 hours a week. I don't watch any TV or movies, so outside of podcasts and music it's the only media I consume.

Back when I was single and childless, I would play like 3-4 hours a night after work and 10-20 hours just on the weekend.

My gaming time now is definitely more special because it's rarer and I find myself enjoying gaming more because of it. Back in the day I enjoyed it but it was more just a way to make time pass that didn't involve alcohol.
 

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Or is it just one of Phil's balls in my throat?
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My man LectureMaster LectureMaster on an average day

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Hot5pur

Member
I've only recently cracked 70+ hours in 2 weeks on Steam thanks to PoE2.
Now I'm in the 20h neighborhood. Coming off PoE2 had a bad rebound effect or there just hasn't been a game to grab me like that since.
 
I usually play at least 1 hour a day and usually one day of the week I get some more hours in. When the first Hades came out I did play that way more than that though. Like a Dragon 7 was the first Yakuza game I played. I played that heavily for a few weeks. Besides, AAA single player narrative games take me like half a year+ to complete. I mostly play short session games now
 

Northeastmonk

Gold Member
there’s a difference between playing for the sake of playing and playing a game because you want to progress, eventually finish the game. I’m not sitting there in multiplayer lobbies queuing up the next match. Those days were 9-10 hours and I didn’t have a job.

Is there suppose to be a problem with this. What’s the problem with a few hours versus 20+ hours a week? Someone can finish a game and still live their life. People spend a couple hours watching films or an hour or two listening to music. An hour or so reading. Video games have save points and checkpoints.


Thank goodness I don’t have a family, kids, or a spouse, because that’s when the gaming fun apparently stops.
If you ever do, there will be even better video games on the market. People think gaming goes away. lol yeah right.
 

MikeM

Member
Gamers are getting older and have more time demands. I feel it being a father of two young kids while still going to the gym consistently.

Gaming is just not the priority it used to be.
 

KàIRóS

Member
Lmao we all know it's the casual gamers lowering the numbers big time, if it was just hardcore gamers I'm sure it would skyrocket to 80+ a week.
 

Humdinger

Gold Member
The article makes some good points about the competition for time and the need for shorter games. However, I have often heard gamers complain about games being too short for the asking price. "Why should I pay $60 for a game that only lasts 15 hours?" I heard a lot of that in the PS3/360 era. So now we have all these open-world bloat fests, 80 to 100 hours. Who has the time for that? Not me, and I'm retired and single, with all the time in the world. I'm still not going to spend it on things that waste my time, which a lot of games seem ready to do.

It's not clear to me whether it's a better choice (for the developers' sales) to make a well-edited game that runs 15 hours or add lots of "content" to boost that to 40 or 60 hours, so people think it's worth the price. I know what I prefer as a gamer (short, well-edited games), but I can see why developers want to pad things out.
 

Bond007

Member
I got kids. I also make time for myself.
That time is usually late as fuck and im already tired. So i "try" to get in atleast an hour in daily (Mon-Fri) - two at most.

Weekends can be a crap shoot. If i got time great- most weekends im busy.
 

Bond007

Member
The article makes some good points about the competition for time and the need for shorter games. However, I have often heard gamers complain about games being too short for the asking price. "Why should I pay $60 for a game that only lasts 15 hours?" I heard a lot of that in the PS3/360 era. So now we have all these open-world bloat fests, 80 to 100 hours. Who has the time for that? Not me, and I'm retired and single, with all the time in the world. I'm still not going to spend it on things that waste my time, which a lot of games seem ready to do.

It's not clear to me whether it's a better choice (for the developers' sales) to make a well-edited game that runs 15 hours or add lots of "content" to boost that to 40 or 60 hours, so people think it's worth the price. I know what I prefer as a gamer (short, well-edited games), but I can see why developers want to pad things out.

Shoot- 15hrs for $60 sounds like a sweet spot to me and i rather pay that instead of $70+ and 100hrs i have no intentions of reaching.
 

ReyBrujo

Member
I play one or two hours just before sleeping every day, however on weekends if I'm free I might put several more hours, especially if I'm crawling a dungeon.
Also, I can imagine where this is going: splitting 30 hours games into dlcs, base story with the game itself and then pay extra for the extra time. It should be a win-win situation, you can finish a game quickly and go on with the next one and only if you really liked it you would cash the rest of it.
 

Humdinger

Gold Member
Shoot- 15hrs for $60 sounds like a sweet spot to me and i rather pay that instead of $70+ and 100hrs i have no intentions of reaching.

Yeah, me too. I'm just thinking of how incentivized developers are to pad out their game, to justify the sales price. I don't think they care so much whether people play the content, as long as they buy the game. And a lot of gamers won't pay full price for a 15 hour game.

To be fair, it's not like there's much to do after retirement :messenger_grinning_sweat:

You'd be surprised. I've been retired 6 years, and I am surprised at how busy I am. "Busy" is relative, of course, but I've got a lot of things going on, a lot of things to keep me busy - creative projects, home improvement, relationships, classes, games, videos, books, nature outings, doing research, relaxing, wasting time on GAF...
 

Wildebeest

Member
There are plenty of smaller and more digestible games out there, but few play them because there is less hype and even if "influencers" look at them their coverage is over in a blink of an eye and nobody notices. If you have limited time and information, are you going to gamble on some shitty small game or on the huge popular game everyone is playing?
 
Fuck the whole notion of developing shorter games. Gamers would not buy more games if they were shorter. That is completely asinine. Elden Ring, BG3, Cyberpunk are some of the best selling games this generation, and all of them are 100+hrs. It is the hardcore gamer audience that convinces the casual gamer to buy games. Catering to casuals won't do shit but harm the industry

If I'm paying 70$, I'm expecting at least 25-30hrs of content. Unless, the game is doing something truly special, like Doom or Astrobot. Even then, I'll usually will wait for sale

If games become shorter, it is no different than publishers raising prices from 70$ to 100$. They are just gouging gamers incrementally
 
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Here are the problems:
1 - The darn kids!
2 - The job
3 - The GF (we're an old couple, so honestly she's happy to get the break when I go play)
4 - The house is falling apart
 

Paasei

Member
At the very moment it's the same for me. Spending a lot of time doing desk work, so I can't be bothered to use my PC at home anymore for the day. I'm also more in my reading "phase" lately than gaming. Will swap over time as per usual.
 

Fake

Member
Depends of the game of course.

Games like BOTW, Witcher 3 and Elden Ring make most of the gamers spend way more time that the other niche games.
 
It's going to be hard to pin down exactly what the gaming market wants when it's not so easily defined. Sure, some want shorter games, but many want longer ones as well. Then you have a sizeable portion happily playing their forever gaas games that don't even have an end. For production, sure, you could trim down a bit to save money, but in the end the "problem" is more that there's just so (too?) many games available.
 

Impotaku

Member
Usually a couple of hours a day while at work during my breaks and about 4-6 when I get home depends on my mood or if other stuff needs doing. On weekends can easily hit 10+ The joys of switch ownership, portable and easy to continue where you left off means I can enjoy my games wherever and whenever I have a chunk of free time.
 
I tend to get burnout playing long games so i tend to take breaks and finish them throughout the months. I still haven't beaten metaphor because of how long it is and how much you have to do in it especially during ur free days in game. So my gaming habits have definitely slowed down from what they were when i was a kid/teen.
 

dcx4610

Member
Seems about right. Gaming used to strictly be a kids thing and now it's more of an adults thing. I get maybe 5 hours in a week if I'm lucky. As a kid, it would be 5 hours a day.
 

poodaddy

Member
Thank goodness I don’t have a family, kids, or a spouse, because that’s when the gaming fun apparently stops.
Gaming without a family, kids, or a spouse is so much less fun though. I've literally, and I truly mean this, never laughed as much or smiled as much as the time when my daughter was on a week long break from school that lined up with a week off for both me and my wife as well, (somehow), and one day my daughter and I played the Marvel VS Capcom collection together for literally like three hours straight, maybe nearly four actually, and it went by in the blink of an eye dude. We didn't stop smiling once that whole time, and I don't think I've ever had so much fun. She's 13 now, so while I get precious little time to play, the moments with her are better than any I've ever had alone.
 
I force myself to get in an hour everyday. I work too much. A couple years ago I went about half a year without playing a single game and didn't even realize it. We need hobbies and we need to engage in them regularly to maintain some sanity.
 

Rambone

Member
I get a few hours to game a night and half of that time is spent dicking around on the internet and/or deciding what game I want to play.
 

Jinxed

Member
I'm pretty much there. I'd say about 5 hours a week on gaming and another 5-10 painting/assembling miniatures or gunpla. Rest is adult responsabilities...

Really hard to finish a game the last few years.
 
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Crayon

Member
I'm really uneven. Most weeks it's less than 5 hours but I'm always looking to go on a binge. If a game is good enough, I'll make time for it.

I was just thinking about this last night - when you are passionate about a hobby, at least for some people, you need to make an active effort not to dump too much of your waking hours into it. Playing a game is screentime at the end of the day. If you are saying no to go out with your friends to stay at home and play, you got to examine that. I am passionate so if the game is AMAZING, I'll do that sometimes. But the impulse to stay in with less than amazing games is always there and I have to check myself.

Over the last several weeks, I've managed to put 10 hours on a few of the weekends and some time after work because. Got to check that though because I have car chores! Just flipped out an abs pump that took me all of 40 minutes and I put off for months. That's my fucking brakes lol. I can tell you I thought about doing it several times before sitting down to a game for a whole morning.
 

reinking

Gold Member
I am now in the 10-20 hours a week if I do not count the phone games. Even counting those I doubt it gets much higher than 25. I have become a casual gamer and I am okay with that.

stuart smalley its not going to be perfect but thats okay GIF by Saturday Night Live
 

m14

Member
It would be fascinating to see how these numbers stack up vs the amount of time spent doomposting and otherwise obsessing about Xbox.
 
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