How Long Do You 'Give' A Game Before You Stop Playing?

[Ladylotus]

For me it depends. A game with a great story will keep me into it, and with those I usually finish. What keeps me into it, however, is the characters. Companions, side characters, villains, just people you spend the majority of the game with. The characters are why I go back to Dragon Age: Origins, why I've beaten it 18 times and bought five copies of the game over the past few years. It's also part of why I've beat Dragon Age 2 a combined total of two times.

The final thing for me is gameplay. Which is, again, why DAO was WAY more fun for me than DA2. It's why I found Saint's Row: The Third more interesting than #2, and why I loved Mass Effect 3 more than 2.

All and all, how long I give a game to impress me varies. If it's a huge open world game, or an RPG, I give it about 6 hours. If it's a shooter it gets an hour.

(Note: There are exceptions to my opinions, take Wasteland 2 for example. Companion characters really suck and the story is fairly mediocre, but the universe and tone in it is enough for me to come back to time after time)

 

[Something Amyss]

As long as I keep playing it.

I've spent hours on a game hoping it'd get better, and also given up within minutes of playing a game.

 

[Shamanic Rhythm]

I have a formula that goes like this: x(y-a)+b = T

Where x = price paid for game, y = number of positive reviews/lets plays/word of mouth I've found, a = number of times I have to replay a section of gameplay due to difficulty or bugs, b = how desperately bored I am at the time, and T = time before I give up (in hours).

 

[asdfen]

I usually play to games to end even if they are horrid in my opinion but thats because I play way too many games for all of them to be great.

 

[crazygameguy4ever]

i always do a lot of research before buying a game to make sure i'll like it before buying it,... and I always try to complete a game I get.. the only exception I can think of is Jack and Daxter 2 because it was so frustratingly hard that i gave up on it after only a short time owning the download on my ps3.. good thing I bought it with a gift card someone gave me cause I would have been pissed if I had paid my own money for it

 

[Tyris]

If the control scheme is counterintuitive, then it gets two minutes if it's lucky (not counting the intro cinematic) before never getting opened again. If it's the objective that's unclear, those two might become fifteen.

If it's deliberately frustrating (eg trial and error gameplay, or save points right before an unskippable cinematic) it might get anywhere between half an hour to an hour and a half, depending on mood.

If the story's bad or nonexistent, it might take a couple of hours to notice that.

If it's good, of course, it gets until it's no longer compatible with the hardware. RIP TIE95.

 

[Kungfu_Teddybear]

It depends on the game as others have said, but generally it's about 1 or 2 hours before I'll stop. Although Too Human holds the record for the fastest I've stopped playing a game which is about 15 minutes.

 

[lacktheknack]

Anywhere between twenty minutes and five hours, depending how much stuff I'm putting off doing.

The first time I played Spacechem, I lasted half an hour. The second time, I got completely hooked. That's the only time I've had to take multiple shots at liking a game.

 

[sageoftruth]

I haven't played a bad game in a long time, but a bad game isn't going to magically going to become good. So, not very long.

I used to. I used to try. I have FF13 14 hours of my life. I tried to like it. I tried to see the good in things. But there was nothing good there. I'm much less charitable now. I don't have time to waist on something that isn't fun.

I'd beg to differ on that, particularly when it comes to games with lousy tutorials. My all time favorite RPG, Persona 4, can take up to 2 hours of plot railroading and ultra linear, cutscene-riddled "gameplay" before the main plot has been established, the training wheels get taken off, and you get to actually decide what happens from then on. It's a blast from then on, if RPGs are your thing.

Good games can still have slow-paced, super boring tutorials hiding what actually makes them good. It sucks when that happens, but it also sucks to miss out on the good stuff because of it. Still, I'm not condemning you for giving up on FF13. 14 hours is really pushing it.

The beginning to Persona 4 was actually one of my favorite parts, haha. I don't think that "slow" necessarily equals "bad." Kingdom Hearts also had very slow start, but when it starts, it delivers. Those games,though, do a really good job of weaving the tutorial into the narrative, and both the story and game play are good in those titles.

My issue is with games that are legitimately not well made. A game with broken mechanics, bad graphics, and a poor cliche story aren't suddenly going to have great mechanics and a genre defining narrative half way through.

That said, I'm wary when I'm told that a game gets good 12 hours in. It usually isn't true, but even if it is, I have precious little free time to spare. I can't really spare twelve hours on a game to get to the good bit. If it takes that long, then it's usually a failure of the designer. The only exception I can think of is Dark Souls, since you need to understand it to fully appreciate it. Once it clicks, though, it's one of the most rewarding experiences out there.

Looks like the JRPG crown goes to you. I was worried that I had seen all that the game had to offer at that point. I'm glad I didn't give up there. Anyway, I guess my argument is moot if you don't mind a slow pace. Perhaps it just seemed slow to me in hindsight, after playing it for the third time.

 

[Senzetzu]

Played the Witcher 1 for less than an hour before nopeing my way out of there. Conception II took a bit longer for me to realize I loathed it.

 

[Scootinfroodie]

I don't generally quit games, I just get distracted by something more entertaining. I've completed games I don't particularly like. It has more to do with understanding the game and its components than pure enjoyment at that point though.

If I quit a game it's usually because it's a multiplayer title that no longer interests me on a mechanical level, which is something that can take anywhere between a couple hours and a year

 

[babinro]

I've finally got around to playing Dead Space 3 and this one is really trying my patience.

1) It feels like all I do is walk down a 20 foot hall, kill a few monsters than ride an elevator for 30 seconds while it masks a load screen. There's so few stretches of actual gameplay and far too much waiting.

2) I suck at the game. Playing on casual up to chapter 5 and I've probably died 20+ times (I've always been bad at FPS games but this one is causing a lot more trouble than my experiences with the first 2 games). Thankfully the respawn points are super forgiving.

I'm sticking with it now in the hopes that I come up with a decent crafted weapon or that the story keeps my attention. If things don't happen soon then I'm done.

 

[Netrigan]

Stuff I buy, it's extremely rare I don't finish playing them.

Remember Me had me bailing about a quarter of the way through. I figured Dark Souls was not for me fairly early. I got maybe a third of the way through Halo and Unreal before being bored rigid (god-moded my way through Unreal though). I never did get very far into Unreal Tournament III.

Freebies on Playstation Plus... those can go pretty fast. I was doing a cull last night and I was deleting games after as little as five minutes of playing. Biggest turn-off, retro pixelated graphics and archaic control schemes.... because apparently there's a bunch of indie devs who think recreating their youth is fun for all of us.

 

[DaWaffledude]

I usually keep playing until something else drags me away. If I'm not hooked by then I just don't come back to it.

 

[Souplex]

I don't quit that many games because I know my tastes well enough to usually be able to tell if I'll like a game before buying it.
The only game I quit in recent memory was Dishonored.
I had gotten it free with Gold, and I was up to the section in the Golden Cat club, and determined that there was no way I could play the game without being stealthy despite it being advertised as an RPG.

 

[Mangod]

I haven't played a bad game in a long time, but a bad game isn't going to magically going to become good. So, not very long.

I used to. I used to try. I have FF13 14 hours of my life. I tried to like it. I tried to see the good in things. But there was nothing good there. I'm much less charitable now. I don't have time to waist on something that isn't fun.

Awww, way to quit before it gets good, man! If you'd just sunk six more hours of your life into that game it would have really opened up for you!

Granted, the last boss is almost immediately afterwards, but that's no reason not to sink 20 hours of your already limited lifespan into a game you don't like!

/sarcasm

Yeah, when a game requires you to sacrifice an entire day of your life BEFORE it gets good, that's when you microwave the game and feed the box it came in to a trash compactor.

 

[FPLOON]

Spoiler: In general...

Other than that, since I usually try to mini-marathon anything I'm playing for the first time, results may vary every time basically...

 

[Sigmund Av Volsung]

If I keep hearing about how good it is, then it's potentially unlimited. I'd want to try and find the value in it.

If it's with a normal game, perhaps about 30 min to grab my attention and about 2 hours before I stop playing it due to disinterest.

 

[John Santina]

I remember when I was younger. Getting a game was like an annual/bi-annual thing for me, so even if it was pretty bad or flawed I played it anyway because I didn't really have options.

Now...the amount of games I actually end up finishing is pretty sad.

Honestly, if a game hasn't blown my socks off by about 2 hours in I tend to give up and go back to games I know I like.

Not sure if this is a good thing or a bad thing. I'm sure I've uninstalled great games that got better later.

How about you?

My time is extremely limited, so I wish I could be more like you and walk away from games that, quite frankly, suck.

My problem is money is also tight, so I feel that each game is that much more valuable. I have far too many games to play, but I know that if I don't play and complete 1/10 of my games, that could have been 2 or 3 brand new titles I could have got on release day.

It is a really stupid way to look at it, because I waste my limited time playing a game that sucks just to "get my moneys worth", where as really all I'm doing is adding wasted time onto the money I already wasted buying the darn thing.

JS (aka Idiot)