The games I’ve played for the most hours, cumulative, in my entire life, arranged in descending order

20 Apr, 2013

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. Guild Wars 2 (I don’t want to think about this either)
8. Sim Ant (well over 300 hours of my life)
9. Oregon Trail 2 (sometimes I still dream about this game)
10. Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy (who the hell knows? 300 hours? More?)
11. Mount and Blade (>170 hours total)
12. Nethack (??????)
13. Star Wars: Republic Commando (ugh ugh too much time)
14. Mass Effect 1 (certainly more than 100 hours of my short, precious life)
15. Civilization 4 (same)
16. 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