How much time do you give a game before uninstalling?

Games
1

The way I treat games has changed so much over the last decade or two, and I found myself wondering if others might have changed their attitudes towards games as I have. In the 80’s, 90’s and 00’s, I would typically research all new games upon release to find out everything about them. Then, and only then, if it sounded like something I was interested in, I would research my local PC games stores (actual, physical stores) looking for sales on games. Very rarely would I buy a new game at retail price, but it was great fun to compare prices, and when a “bargain” was found, it was a moment of great celebration. So, when I did eventually buy a new game, it was an investment that I’d researched and was prepared to devote a reasonable amount of time to learn how to play because I’d devoted so much time to the research. It was extremely rare for me to have done this kind of research on a particular game, purchase said game, and not finish/complete… BEAT it.

Dat shit done gone, or Enter Steam.

Now, there are so many potentially great games released nearly daily that the research method is in my opinion a complete waste of time. Yes, I miss it. Very much.

The result of this change is that I now have near zero tolerance for games that do not entertain me and demand my attention almost immediately.

I like this, and I hate this.

Like: It is kind of fun to install, try for an hour or two, then uninstall a game just because it didn’t “grab me”. I am the god of my game library, and if thou dost not appease me, begone!

Hate: I’m sure there are many magnificent games I’ve uninstalled which I never realized were fun only because I didn’t give them enough time to realize their greatness. There are many titles in this list which some would berate me for, so I will not list them.

So, the reason for this thread is that I’m curious how much game play time others give to a new game before they consider it not worth playing.

I used to religiously stick to a rule of 1-3 hours, but I found myself bending that rule for some games, and in every single case, I was wrong to give it more time.

So, my rule: 3 hours maximum.

What’s yours?

2

Mine is maybe 2 hours. I often find myself questioning this limit because I do spend almost half a day, sometimes, waiting for the games to download. So, instead of research, I spend time dreaming in anticipation that this game will be good (while it is downloading) and when it disappoint me in the first hour, I get impatient and want to rid it off my HDD space. However, since I actually did spend time waiting, I usually give it another hour. If that second hour caught me falling asleep or rolling my eyes over the obvious corny lines/implementation of the games, I will have no regrets clicking “Delete Local Content”. Two hours is a luxury I will afford a game.

3

Back then I had no money and all the time.
Nowdays I have a little money and almost no time.

My limit these days is like 3 hours maybe less.

4

Anywhere from 5-110 minutes depending on the game. Steam refunds are a thing.

5

Man, these days I’m lucky to get in 3 hrs of gaming in a week. I don’t buy nearly as much, but I never return games.

6

If I don’t enjoy a game right away (let’s say, at the end of the tutorial, max), it’s gone, period. Time was a luxury of my youth, which I used aplenty playing tons and tons of bad games, to inform me into detecting crap presence in ludic material right away as an adult. There should be a degree for that.

7

Hear! Hear!
I can smell a bad game from afar - so much so I think I’m probably creating my own prejudice. But oh well, there’s tons of other games even if I have missed out a good one.

8

Going by the number of games on Steam I’ve spent 0.1 hours with, my guess is that much time. ;)

Sucks getting older as most of us have far less time to do what we enjoy, because of real life responsibilities. :(

9

I think I approach this by not trying new stuff. Everything I play is about the 17th in a series, so there aren’t many surprises.

10

This is not far off from where I am. I know I like Uncharted/Tomb Raider games, so I get those types of games.

Some devs like Naughty Dog are pretty much day one buys for me.

11

In essence I still do the research before buying. On the other hand I’ve outsourced that research. I rarely buy games until they are on a good sale so I use the discussion on trusted sites as my research. I’m sure I miss tons of smaller games that I’ve forgotten about by the time I might actually buy them but I don’t care as I have more than enough to play.

12

Aging has changed my approach too. I do like to finish a game if I can but if I have to replay a section over again because it has a poorly designed save system, I may quit on it.

Of course the ultimate answer is that it’s your money and your time, so do what you want.

13

Yesterday I played Layers of Fear for an hour before quitting and uninstalling.

Great game, but it didn’t grab me.

Today I played Resident Evil 7 for two hours before quitting, and I do not intend to continue anytime soon.

Great game, but it didn’t grab me.
I suppose I am finding out that haunted houses are not interesting for me anymore. I really hope Evil Within 2 won’t follow the same trend.

So it depends, but I think the longest I ever played a game before uninstalling it for good was 5 hours on Castlevania Lords of Shadows. 5 hours and it never managed to be engaging.

14

I also have the 2-3 hour rule, maybe even less, but once a game has passed that hurdle, I usualy complete all of it.

15

I can’t remember the last time I played a “bad” game. I generally will have a fair idea of what I’m getting into before I even start. Reading impressions from all of you right here on Qt3 helps a lot with that.

That said, I buy a game knowing damn well that I’m not going to finish it anytime soon. I’ll play a few hours right away, then a couple more hours maybe a week later. If I really get immersed, I’ll keep playing a few hours of it every week. But work has been getting in my way lately, so sometimes a month or two will pass between sessions, and sometimes, during that time, I’ll pick up another game and start it. It’s not uncommon for me to finish a game two years after I started it.

So I generally don’t uninstall games at all, unless I run out of hard drive space, which is rare because I’m not buying games nearly as often as I used to.

Oh man, that makes me sad to hear that. My girlfriend has been sitting behind me while I play that game, coaching me along, and it’s been just a fantastic experience for us. I’m a slow player though, and never in a rush to finish, and love soaking in the atmosphere and exploring. I do have to admit though that I probably wouldn’t be loving it quite as much if I were playing it alone. But with her, it’s been a total blast, as we’re kind of treating it like watching an extended horror film, yelling at each other and arguing about what I’m doing wrong, etc. I guess most of the fun comes from the fact that this is the first game in all of our years together that she has really enjoyed watching and helping me play. Until now, she could not understand the appeal of gaming in the slightest.

16

It depends. A Steam game that I got in a bundle? Maybe less than an hour. I don’t have the time to put up with a game I’m not really all that interested in anyway. A normal Steam game that I purchased due to word-of-mouth or hype? Two hours max because of the return policy. A Steam game that I really wanted because of the developer or because it’s in a series I appreciate? I’ll slog on for hours, but after about eight or ten, I’ll uninstall it with a bit of sadness.

Console games are a bit different. Obviously, the cheap bundle category isn’t really a thing, so that’s not even a consideration. I try to stick to discs, so I can get at least 50% of the game’s worth within a couple of days via reselling it. Mostly, it’s all old school research before buying because there’s not much of an option to get a full return.

17

If a game doesn’t grab me right away, I stop playing and tell myself I’ll come back to it later. Then weeks go by before I admit to myself that I have no interest in ever playing it. Now that Steam has refunds, I really need to stop doing that and make up my mind the first time I play.

18

Yup. I’ve gotten a grand total of 0 hours in the last month. So I would give a bad game 5 minutes, tops.

19

My record is probably 20 seconds, but there are a lot of games that don’t get more than 5 minutes or less. I usually know pretty quickly if something is going to fly or not, once in awhile a game makes it to the two hour mark before the Steam refund kicks in.

In the 80 and 90s, but especially the 80s, I played every game I bought to completion, the older I’ve gotten, the less tolerance I’ve had for wasting my own time. A component of that is certainly the sheer number of games available.

20

Yeah you have about your tutorial to grab me these days. The other thing that makes me uninstall is some cheap gameplay or unclear path that gets me lost or makes me restart a lot, or reveals repetitive gameplay. For instance, I was enjoying The Force Awakens until this garbage level. It was full of jumping puzzles, repetitive enemies and quick deaths.

Today its gone from rage quits to rage uninstalls.

“I got no, got no, got no time! No time! No time! I got no, got no, got no time!” - The Who, I think (Edit: The Guess Who )