1. Minecraft (approx. 600 hrs)
   
   
   
2. Age of Empires (probably approx. 500 hours)
   
   
   
3. Age of Empires II: Age of Kings (ditto)
   
   
   
4. Age of Mythology (ditto again)
   
   
   
5. Caesar 3 (ditto, yes, shut up)
   
   
   
6. World of Warcraft (I don’t want to think about this)
7. 
8. Guild Wars 2 (I don’t want to think about this either) 

   
   

9. Sim Ant (well over 300 hours of my life)
   
   
   
10. Oregon Trail 2 (sometimes I still dream about this game)
    
    
    
11. Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy (who the hell knows? 300 hours? More?)
    
    
    
12. Mount and Blade (>170 hours total)
    
    
    
13. Nethack (??????)
    
    
    
14. Star Wars: Republic Commando (ugh ugh too much time)
    
    
    
15. Mass Effect 1 (certainly more than 100 hours of my short, precious life)
    
    
    
16. Civilization 4 (same)
    
    
    
17. The Binding of Isaac (105 hours precisely)
    
    

Things that occur to me after assembling this list:

1. I used to play games for literally years at a time, as a kid
2. I no longer have time to play games for long periods of time
3. Although my favorite games today have strong stories, I didn’t play games with stories as a kid
4. When I play games with strong stories, I generally do not spend hundreds of hours playing them
5. Although RTSes do not even register on my list of favorite games genres these days, I have played probably thousands of hours of RTS games total in my life
6. The number of hours you spend playing a game has nothing to do with how valuable that experience is to you creatively or entertainment-wise