At this point, what is the increased convenience that consoles offer? Gone are the days of simply turn on and play. Installation, patches, front end menus, having to screw around with settings, etc.
And the PC has caught up. Gone are the day of fiddly controller support and special video adapters. You can plug in any common controller for PC games on your TV, hooked up with a simple HDMI cable. It’s not uncommon now to see setups with a PC tucked away under a TV just like a console with its wireless controller sitting on the couch. The “couch factor” is now reality for PCs.
At this point it’s pretty much just the momentum of the idea that consoles are easier and more convenient, carried over from the last 30 years when that was actually true.
All this apply if you are a single human living in your home, but as soon as another ape enters the equation, it gets trickier.
This also applies to control support, which is an incredible mess on the PC, being dependant on the goodwill of the game’s developer more often than not, and leading to exciting prospective multiplayer seances to be turned into QA reunions on behalf of the person who put this on Steam.
Finally, the fiddleness of refresh rates and such also yields to issues: after having experienced Bayonetta on the PC and thinking it was “meh”, I was blown away by how amazing the console experience was, all simply because of refresh synching and sound balance issues.
I am one of those people who has PC and PS4 Pro both connected to a TV and plays PC and console games from couch and actually finds PC gaming much more convenient (faster loadings, no fiddling with blurays…). But the fact still remains that PC is more complex and requires more fiddling and troubleshooting from time to time. With console, sure you have to sometimes wait for patches and updates but that’s about it. They are still much more moron-proof than PCs due to their locked down nature.
The amount of time people get to spend on games is amazing! Here’s my top 10 list of games played (not just those from the last decade) and my total playtime for these 10 games is less than what others spend on their nr 1 game. I’m jealous…
Grim Dawn clearly the winner though, even though it will have been left on overnight a couple of times. That game just has so much replayability!
Here goes. Obviously I mainly play tabletop and PC-games (and haven’t gotten around to Breath of the Wild on the Switch), but who cares since this is a completely subjective list of my top ten games of the decade (that I remembered to put in), unranked so ten points to each.
Gloomhaven So many hours of great tactical fun, with a persistent world that ties it all together. We’ve played it with a full group, and I can’t imagine having enjoying it as much if I had played it solo.
Dungeons & Dragons Fifth Edition I’ve been playing tabletop rpgs for at least 25 years now, and my favorite edition of D&D is (for the most part) the one I am currently at a table playing. 5e has really revitalized the game; bringing the focus back to the narrative, while retaining all the good mechanical ideas in 3e and 4e. It has managed to tone down the “complexity for complexity’s sake”-elements of 3e and 4e, but under the hood it offers a lot of flexibility for those who want.
Pandemic Legacy: Season 1 This is truly a modern classic. A great legacy game that introduces new mechanics and twists, with a story that matches.
Seafall I can understand that this game is not for everyone, and there are some mechanical issues in it. I think my group is probably an outliner in that we had a truly extraordinary experience. The game changes when new rules are introduced, and there are some jaw-dropping moments throughout the campaign. The combination of filling out the sea with stickers and the Choose Your Own Adventure-elements of the Captain’s Log is something I long for another game that does as well. Not for everyone, but one of the best game experiences I have had in the last decade (if not my life).
Into the Breach Such a fascinating set of mechanics. One of my favorite puzzle-games. The blend of theme, tactics and frustration is something I haven’t seen anywhere else.
Mass Effect 3 All in all I prefer this over ME2 and ME1. Yes, the ending has some issues. But the entire second act was for me the ending of an epic story that tied up the knots of the choices made in ME and ME2. Mechanically I found it to be the perfect hybrid of ME’s “CRPG trying to be a a third person shooter” and ME2’s “Cover shooter trying to be a CRPG”. The multiplayer managed to win me over from my initial “why are they wasting development resources on a game mode no one wants” by providing a great horde-mode that showed me that that is a mode of play I really enjoy – while at the same time expanding the Mass Effect-setting by letting you play as the different races and classes.
Offworld Trading Company A game I have not mastered, or even attained competence in. However, it is truly unique and incredibly fascinating. I need to play more of this.
Just Cause 2 I mean. Grappling hooks, and having to cause chaos in order to advance the plot!?! It is completely ridiculous, but such great satire.
Portal 2 I don’t feel that this requires any explanation.
The Wolf Among Us Easily my favorite of the Telltale adventure games. Incredible atmosphere, with the soundtrack, art style and voice acting contributing to a great experience.
I found it hard to decide which of my contenders should go on the list. Some of these could easily have been replaced. My ranking probably has a bias toward the more recent games. I decided against considering digital version of games released outside of the decade (such as Twilight Struggle).
You’re right that it is a quirky aspect of human behavior, but I think your posts may be glossing over some nuance in game design; games have payoffs in different ways, not all people play games for the same reasons, “hooks” are spaced unevenly, etc. You don’t get one ‘happiness unit’ per hour per game etc.
I mean, the splash phrase for this review of Dreadhalls is “get me out of here”:
…yet it’s a “gold standard”.
What about the point that certain games seem to linger in memory more than others? Are more personally impactful?
Distilling everything down to hours played is an interesting metric, sure, but it’s not the last word.
I think SamS thinks they’ve found a contradiction, and from that has had a huge epiphany. But actually they have just found some signal noise.
I played loads of games over the last ten years, loads. The 400 hours into Stellaris is not statistically significant, it’s a one off anomaly. If you created a list of all the games I’ve played for more than 10 hours and compared it to the list of 61 games I loved enough to consider for my top ten list, you’d find you had two versions of the same list with a couple of games different on each list.
The other big problem is that a player isn’t always choosing to do one thing over the other; not all games are created equally, so a comparison can be pointless. It takes three hours to get through Gone Home, yet that game made a few people’s lists because those three hours are super duper memorable and affecting. Three hours into Fallout 4 is not even enough time to have some of the core mechanics revealed to the player.
But that’s okay, because they’re different types of game. If you were drawing a comparison only between genres, or within an identical genre, you could perhaps make the argument about stated versus revealed preference. Gaming, fortunately, is a lot broader than that.
Speaking of time investment, I’ve been playing Elder Scrolls Online with a buddy and just hate the huuuuuuuge time sink it takes to level up anything. Basically I’ve given up and just tag along with my mate and every once in a while and get like 1% increase over a 12hour session or something. He basically plays 3 hours a day and is miles ahead of me and still not maxed out.
In the “proper” Elder Scroll games like Morrowind / Skyrim it actually feels like you are progressing and the game adapts accordingly without needing to play 200hours per level.
Heh. Reminds me of when I played my one and only MMO back in the day. Dark Age of Camelot. I was fine with the progression until I hit, I think it was 36 or something. And then getting level 37 took me approximately the same amount of time it had taken to get from level 30 to 36. It was ridiculous. That’s when I stopped playing. Well, eventually. Maybe not right that day.
I played Assassins Creed Unity. I enjoyed many aspects of running around Revolutionary France, and had issues with others. But I did enjoy much of my time.
And then came the final mission which pissed me right the hell off. On top of a design that was tedious, the bugs meant that many of my successful runs, ones where 20 minutes in I am closing in on completion after neutering the bullshit sniper fest, and I clip through a floor, or get stuck on the scenery. After about the 7-8th time of losing 20 minutes of progress, and please note my total video game time last year was less than 100 hours (probably closer to 50), I was fucking livid. I beat that stupid game, but was hating it at the end. It really soured me on the total experience.
DAoC was the only MMO that hooked me of the several I tried and I think that was because I found a really good group in my guild to run with regularly and then went from like level 40 to 50 and Realm Rank 5 rather quickly. DAoC would definitely make my top 10 of the previous decade.
I’ve been tempted to try ESO but no way can I afford the time sink. Bad enough trying to make progress in single player RPGs and Ubi games.
Here’s another example: I loved Dragon Age II - no, really, I did - right up until the last third or so of the game, due to some really stupid plot choices and an ending I don’t even remember but remember hating. I finished it and definitely enjoyed the 30 hours or so it took to get up to the point where my opinion changed. Could I have quit at that point? Sure, but I had already committed so much time, I figured I would see it to the end. Also, I was hopeful that something would change my mind about where the game was headed.
I think the only time I quit a game is when it really rubs me the wrong way from the start. There are lots of games that start off with a bang and end with a whimper. Or outstay their welcome. I could think of a dozen or more JRPGs that could have been much better if they were 30 - 40% shorter. And there are games that are great except for some stupid mechanic or other (JRPGs come to mind again - as much as I adore Final Fantasy IX, the constant random battles really grate. Everything else about the game, I love).
