How much time do you give a game before uninstalling?

That’s perhaps the douchbagiest replay in the thread, you win! Who are you to decide what people should do with their time? When I buy a product, I don’t owe the creator anything - much less my time.

Yep, but there are plenty who will defend their right to give games 5 minutes and that’s it as their “right”. Heck, 25% of my own neg reviews for my games are 0.3 hours or less (which is 5-15 minutes roughly). IMHO, it’s jaded and a tad bit disrespectful, and I felt that way even before I was a dev myself. I give games at least 30-60 minutes, maybe more depending on the type of game.

Good games take a bit to learn and grab you, much like good movies do. I could have quit The Godfather after 5 minutes saying “eh, it’s just a bunch of people at a wedding party and a little whispering in a dark room”, but i’m glad I didn’t!

To further explain my above statement, if people want to participate in some type of review / scoring system I think they should play enough to have an informed opinion about the game. I’m sure there are games bad enough for technical or other reasons that a player could decide in 15 minutes - but think the majority of games need to be played longer. If not for potentially hurting a games sales because I left a review on a game I didn’t have an informed opinion on. Beholder is the game I’ve played the least and left a negative review at 2.4 hours.

Above, I was defending that that the player is under no obligation to meet any time threshold with a game before deciding to put it down for whatever reason - not that they should review such a game.

Back when I did MMO reviews for PC Gamer, my benchmark was 22 hours. That is basically the first season of a TV show. Even if the game got better after those 22 hours, I still graded it down. You can’t tell someone to suck it up for the first season of a show because the second got better.

For a single-player game, that benchmark was four hours. It took Spartacus 4 episodes to get going, so I would give a 15-20 hour game that long to capture my interest.

If it’s got “Star Trek” in the name, you sure can. It’s practically required!

Or in the case of Blackadder, just skip the first season! Hurray for standalone seasons!

I don’t think most big budget (non-MMO) games actually offer 15-20 hours of singleplayer gameplay these days, though?

When I pay $0.99 for a game, I’m not going to give it more than $0.99 of my time. When I pay $60 for a game, it gets a few hours, usually. The race to the bottom in game prices has effects on how players value them as products.

This was in the early 2000s, when games were longer. That said, it usually takes me around 15-20 hours to finish a game. Each of the Uncharteds I was in the middle of that range.

Ubisoft laughs at a mere 15-20 hours of content*.

*Content not guaranteed to be engaging.

I’d say my patience with a game is inversely proportional to the time it’s been since I’ve bought it (i.e. time spent in “the backlog”) and directly proportional to its purchase price, but in a much smaller measure.

This deserves an equation.

That said, my backlog has been called a baby backlog by a friend, it’s like 12 games or so. How about you guys with 200 games in the backlog?

Hm, let’s see … I’ve got over 1100 games on my Steam account, about 300 on my Xbox, maybe 250 on GOG, and then a bunch of handhelds, iOS and previous gen games. Wait, what was the question?

My shortest record was Myst: Masterpiece Edition because it CTD’d within those first five minutes.

I played Mask of the Betrayer for a couple hours, but the game is ugly, the engine is clunky, and learning high-level D&D is a PITA.

Usually I complete any game I start, however.

I usually give a game 45 min to an hour to prove itself, but starting the XBL game pass made me even less tolerant. I think Ultra Coin Squad (or something like that) didn’t even make it to 20 seconds of play because I hated the jumping mechanics that much. Bard’s Gold didn’t last much longer for basically the same reasons.

My record was Styx master of thieves ( I think that was is name). I wanted to change keyboard bindings and it wouldn’t let me being a key while it’s was bound to another action. It’s a small thing but still annoying so I got a refund.

Yeah, I had the same thing happen with PS+. I usually give each game I buy at least one hour, or at least I try, before writing it off. But there were just so many PS+ games I’d accumulated that I wanted to at least try, so a lot of them didn’t even get a full minute from me. For some of them, this was it: “Ugh. Pixel Art. How fast can I uninstall this?”

Hmm. I didn’t take into consideration actual game reviewers paid to review games (QT3: Duh!), games received in dirt-cheap bundles, and/or technically deficient games.

Game reviewers of course have their own set of rules.

For myself, games not really desired, but included in bundles I’ve purchased: I don’t categorize them the same as games I’ve truly wanted to play and purchased . These I’ll give much less time to grab me, although it can vary greatly, and I personally have no real “rule” on them. I install every game I ever purchase very soon after purchase, and try to start it. Sometimes, they do not start, and that’s an instant uninstalled, forever ignored game. If they install and seem to be playable, I’ll usually uninstall and backlog them until I find the time (haha) to play them.

Games that simply “don’t work” upon startup I also do not include in my 3-hour-max criteria. If I simply can’t play the game, I uninstall immediately. But, that doesn’t really count as a game I tried to get into, but found it lacking. It’s just an unplayable game.

I should insert the caveat, 20 seconds of actual gameplay. You must build a boat was easily 20 seconds or less, maybe 10.

I’ve uninstalled/refunded a few games in less than 30 minutes just because playing them they immediately just felt… bad to play. It’s so weird to describe, but you know how every Blizzard game feels “right” to play even if you dislike the genre? Like Overwatch feels fun to play and like a good FPS, even though I don’t play FPS and have no interest in Overwatch, I still tried it during a free weekend and I get why people are into it. I get it, it feels right. Well anyways, that feeling, but the opposite. Those kind of games get uninstalled right away.

Anywhere from ten minutes to an hour. If I don’t feel any fun within that time, it’s gone… I might go a little longer if I am playing with someone. If there is horrific voice acting, I’ll be lucky if I can go a full ten minutes before wanting to stab my ear with a pencil, and it’s uninstalled.