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Comment by jliptzin | Hacker News Reader

I haven’t played it, and I have no doubt it is an amazing game I would enjoy. But how do people have time for all these games? There are so many compelling games out there, each demanding hundreds or thousands of hours of time to fully enjoy.

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Every now and then you find some hours to play. I play games maybe less than an hour per day, some free days I play more, with my most played game being Factorio with 175 hours, and I'm proficient in it + feel like I've spent a lot of time playing it, but I also owned it since 2015 or something like that, so 2922 hours available, 175 spent on Factorio so around 0.06 hours per day, calculated that way.

I tend to prefer "complicated" games that require some sort of time investment to figure out (once figured out, they don't remain as fun for me), but there is no game I've spent more time on than Factorio, and it's "just" 175 hours over the years, which is very low if I compare it to others.

Summary is, you don't have to spend 100s/1000s of hours in any game in order to fully enjoy it.

I hate that I feel guilty for playing games which require a time investment. Factorio is exactly the type of game I would like to play.

However I'm "stuck" playing games with short matches and no long single player games. It's easy to put 5 minutes into Rocket League because it feels like just a burst of gaming but then you can do 20 games in a row and still put in an hour.

Don't feel guilty! At this time of year I can only find 30 minutes free here and there, and I'm currently playing Captain of Industry (similar to Factorio), the most important thing is to keep a text document with what you are doing, so you can iteratively get there across days, rather than just in one day. Basically a backlog for your own quests in the game :)

Thanks for the kind words :)

I don't even have kids and I have plenty of time so I need to get my mindset under control lol.

TMI here but due to a feeling of wasted potential because of inattentive ADHD (treated but still), I have guilt when I procrastinate and am not productive and long games don't allow me to lie to myself about it, if that makes sense.

Gaming isn't procrastinating on other stuff necessarily, it's just the way I feel often.

I definitely (and many others, particularly here on HN) feel you, I sometimes end up in feedback loops where I start gaming, feel unproductive so I start working on some side-project but feel like I should be relaxing after some minutes so I start doing something else, and the cycle begins again.

Sometimes that's OK :)

You should try “staying up late”! You wait for everyone else to go to sleep and then you get a solid 2-4 hours to fully immerse yourself in glorious escapism. The next day, in the midst of suffering from sleep deprivation, you wonder why in the hell you did that and that tonight you will be going to bed early! (And then you don’t)

No children, or children who are old enough, probably helps. As does not working more than 40h a week (or even less). In my case, it’s also home office (= no commute) that helps.

As a general rule, people carving out hundreds to thousands of hours for a game are not enjoying 'all these' games, they are enjoying specifically that one and maybe one or two more if they want a change of pace.

Also, I personally find that games like DF lend themselves well to having a podcast, audiobook, or twitch stream open on the side. It isn't like a big setpiece voice acted narrative game that demands your full attention.

Play it little by little when you do have time. Play whichever game captures your intrigue the most. Don't waste time on deciding which one to play.

I think the main trick is not having kids, plus remote work has given lots of people ~2 hours a day back.

Work-life balance, and selectivity.

Personally, I don't buy games until they're old enough to be on 50% sale and the reviews are in.

If you're interested in reviews and community based around limited time, I'd highly recommend reddit.com/r/patientgamers.

Most people dont. Thus the ever-growing backlog. This applies to movies, books, games... You enjoy what you can.

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