This is a pet peeve of mine and I fully acknowledge this is probably only something that annoys a few people, but the fact most games seem to record playtime in weird ways really annoys me
A lot of games show your playtime on the save file, or at the end of the game on a stats screen, or on a menu somewhere, and this is something I do quite like to know
There is an entire website (How Long to Beat) that compiles how long games are, so I can't be the only person who likes to know how long a game takes to beat and how long it took me to beat it, but most games do this in one of several unhelpful and/or unintuitive ways
Now, unless I'm mistaken, and I may well be, the entire point of recording playtime is so the player can see how long they have played a game for. If this is incorrect, then my entire argument will fall down
Now let me list how games undermine this:
Load file when you die (example, Persona 3 FES)
When you die you have to reload an older save. This means your playtime isn't your actual playtime, as none of your deaths are counted towards the final figure. If 10 hours in, you get stuck on a boss for 2 hours and then beat it, your time hasn't moved forward 2 hours, because all your deaths result in the clock stopping. In real time you go from 10 to 12 hours played, but in game time, you move from 10 hours to 10 hours and 15mins played
Stop clock when you die (example, Strider 2014)
When you die you go back to a checkpoint, but the clock resets to the time it was at when you first reached the checkpoint. This works similar to the above, however it means you can just die the soon as you perform badly to return to an earlier checkpoint (and time)
This means you can basically undermine speed running the game by dying on purpose when you play badly to trick the game into thinking you beat it in a shorter time
I could beat Strider in 6 hours, then replay it and take longer to beat the game, but have the in clock time read as 5 hours
Clock doesn't work properly (example Nex Machina, Far Cry 4/Primal)
I started Nex Machina knowing I had 45 mins to play before me and my girlfriend needed to leave for a meal with friends. I played 45mins and turned the game off. The game says I've played an hour and 6 mins. Next time I play it's for under an hour, game is saying 2.5 hours. It's just wrong
Far Cry 4 and Primal also seem to get it wrong, by massively underestimating how much time I've played. I can play for 2 hours and the clock will have added 1 hour 15mins onto the time. I have no idea if this doesn't count loading or if deaths stop the clock. It doesn't say
Steam and some consoles have a universal timer for each game/app, but even this has issues as it doesn't stop the clock in menus or when you idle
If the point is to track playtime, then by using these methods above, it's not actually tracking playtime, so it's a useless statistic
It really shouldn't be hard to put some universal rules in place. Clock stops for loading and when paused, clock carries forward upon deaths
Ultimately this is something most people won't care about, but it seems like such an easy thing to implement, and yet it seems to be something most games get wrong
A lot of games show your playtime on the save file, or at the end of the game on a stats screen, or on a menu somewhere, and this is something I do quite like to know
There is an entire website (How Long to Beat) that compiles how long games are, so I can't be the only person who likes to know how long a game takes to beat and how long it took me to beat it, but most games do this in one of several unhelpful and/or unintuitive ways
Now, unless I'm mistaken, and I may well be, the entire point of recording playtime is so the player can see how long they have played a game for. If this is incorrect, then my entire argument will fall down
Now let me list how games undermine this:
Load file when you die (example, Persona 3 FES)
When you die you have to reload an older save. This means your playtime isn't your actual playtime, as none of your deaths are counted towards the final figure. If 10 hours in, you get stuck on a boss for 2 hours and then beat it, your time hasn't moved forward 2 hours, because all your deaths result in the clock stopping. In real time you go from 10 to 12 hours played, but in game time, you move from 10 hours to 10 hours and 15mins played
Stop clock when you die (example, Strider 2014)
When you die you go back to a checkpoint, but the clock resets to the time it was at when you first reached the checkpoint. This works similar to the above, however it means you can just die the soon as you perform badly to return to an earlier checkpoint (and time)
This means you can basically undermine speed running the game by dying on purpose when you play badly to trick the game into thinking you beat it in a shorter time
I could beat Strider in 6 hours, then replay it and take longer to beat the game, but have the in clock time read as 5 hours
Clock doesn't work properly (example Nex Machina, Far Cry 4/Primal)
I started Nex Machina knowing I had 45 mins to play before me and my girlfriend needed to leave for a meal with friends. I played 45mins and turned the game off. The game says I've played an hour and 6 mins. Next time I play it's for under an hour, game is saying 2.5 hours. It's just wrong
Far Cry 4 and Primal also seem to get it wrong, by massively underestimating how much time I've played. I can play for 2 hours and the clock will have added 1 hour 15mins onto the time. I have no idea if this doesn't count loading or if deaths stop the clock. It doesn't say
Steam and some consoles have a universal timer for each game/app, but even this has issues as it doesn't stop the clock in menus or when you idle
If the point is to track playtime, then by using these methods above, it's not actually tracking playtime, so it's a useless statistic
It really shouldn't be hard to put some universal rules in place. Clock stops for loading and when paused, clock carries forward upon deaths
Ultimately this is something most people won't care about, but it seems like such an easy thing to implement, and yet it seems to be something most games get wrong
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