You finally sit down on a Friday night, crack a drink, and look at that massive RPG you just bought. The back of the box—or the Steam page—says it takes 40 hours. You’ve got a life. You’ve got a job. Maybe a kid or a dog that needs walking. So you do the math. Five hours a week means you’ll be done in two months. Easy. Except it isn’t. Three months later, you’re only at the halfway point, staring at a quest log that seems to grow every time you blink. This is the reality of the time to complete games. It is a metric that is simultaneously the most requested piece of information by consumers and the most misunderstood statistic in the entire entertainment industry.
Honestly, we’re obsessed with value. In a world where a "standard" AAA title now retails for $70, we want to know what our hourly rate is. If a game is 10 hours long, that’s $7 an hour. If it’s 100 hours, it’s 70 cents. Simple, right? But this transactional view of gaming ignores the fact that "time" is a slippery concept when you’re dealing with interactive media. Unlike a movie, which is 124 minutes for everyone from the person in the front row to the person in the back, a video game is a rubber band. It stretches. It snaps. It bunches up in ways you can't predict.
The HowLongToBeat Effect
If you’ve ever searched for the length of a game, you’ve ended up on HowLongToBeat. It’s the gold standard. It’s a community-driven database where thousands of players log their playtimes across different categories: Main Story, Main + Extras, and Completionist. It’s a brilliant resource, but it also creates a psychological trap.
👉 See also: Pillars of Eternity 2 Companions: Who to Actually Bring on Your Boat
When you see that Elden Ring takes about 58 hours for the main story, your brain treats that as a hard deadline. But that number is an average of thousands of different playstyles. It includes the "souls-borne" veteran who speedruns the bosses and the newcomer who spends six hours just trying to get past the Tree Sentinel at the start.
The site basically proves that "average" is a myth. For a game like The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, the gap between a "Main Story" run and a "Completionist" run is over 120 hours. That isn’t just a difference in playstyle; it’s a completely different experience. One person played a political thriller; the other person lived a second life as a monster-hunting herbalist with a gambling addiction to Gwent.
Why developers lie (sorta) about playtime
Marketing departments love big numbers. They really do. When a studio announces a game, you’ll often hear quotes like "over 100 hours of content!" because it justifies the price tag. Techland, the developers of Dying Light 2, famously caught heat when they tweeted that it would take 500 hours to fully complete the game. People freaked out. Not because they were excited, but because they were exhausted.
They had to clarify that the "main story" was much shorter. This highlights the tension in the industry: developers feel pressured to inflate the time to complete games to satisfy the "value" crowd, but they risk alienating the "I have a life" crowd.
What they don't tell you is how much of that time is "friction."
Friction is the stuff that isn't really gameplay. It’s inventory management. It’s walking across a map because fast travel isn’t unlocked yet. It’s watching unskippable animations. In many modern open-world games, up to 30% of your total playtime is just "travel time." Is that "content"? Technically, yes. Is it why you bought the game? Probably not.
The nuance of the "Completionist" tag
Let’s talk about the 100%. To a developer, "completion" often means every single collectible found, every achievement unlocked, and every secret boss defeated.
In Batman: Arkham Knight, the difference between seeing the "ending" and seeing the "true ending" involves finding hundreds of Riddler trophies.
For most players, this is busywork. But for the metric of time to complete games, it counts. This is why we see such massive disparities in reported times. Expert players often find that "Main + Extras" is the most honest metric because it accounts for the stuff you’d actually want to do, like side quests with actual stories, rather than just collecting 100 feathers for a trophy.
The hardware factor: Loading times and the SSD revolution
We don’t talk enough about how hardware affects the clock. Before the PS5 and Xbox Series X, loading screens were a massive part of the experience. If you played Skyrim on a PS3, you spent hours—literally hours—staring at smoke and rotating 3D models of cheese wheels while the game loaded.
Modern NVMe SSDs have practically deleted this. A game that took 50 hours to beat in 2011 might only take 45 hours today simply because you aren't waiting for the world to load every time you walk through a door. It sounds small. It adds up. When we look at the historical time to complete games, we have to acknowledge that older games were often "longer" because the tech was slower.
Different genres, different clocks
You can't compare a Roguelike to a Narrative Adventure. It doesn't work.
- Narrative Games: Think The Last of Us or God of War. These are mostly linear. The playtime is predictable. Most people finish within a 5-hour window of each other.
- Roguelikes: Think Hades or Balatro. How long do these take? You can "win" a run in 30 minutes, but you might play for 200 hours to see the "final" ending. Here, the keyword time to complete games becomes almost meaningless.
- RPGs: The biggest offenders. Baldur's Gate 3 is a monster. Larian Studios claimed the script has more words than the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy. Your playtime depends entirely on whether you talk to everyone or kill everyone.
Honestly, the genre dictates the honesty of the timer. A racing game like Forza doesn't really "end." You just stop playing when you're bored or you've won every trophy.
The psychological cost of "Backlog Guilt"
There is a dark side to our obsession with game length. It’s called the backlog. We buy games on sale, check the time to complete games, realize we don't have 80 hours, and tuck them away for a "rainy day" that never comes.
This creates a weird "playtime anxiety." You start rushing through a masterpiece just to see the credits so you can move on to the next thing. You stop enjoying the scenery. You start skipping dialogue. You’re no longer playing; you’re managing a task list. This is the antithesis of what gaming should be. Some of the best experiences are short. Portal is about 3 hours long. A Short Hike is about 90 minutes. Both are arguably more impactful than a bloated 100-hour Ubisoft map-clearing simulator.
Skill vs. Time: The hidden variable
We have to acknowledge the elephant in the room: some people are just better at games.
If you’re playing Cuphead or Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, the "time to complete" is entirely dependent on your reflexes. For a pro, Sekiro might be a 20-hour stroll. For me? It was a 70-hour exercise in misery and broken controllers.
When you look at SEO-optimized lists of game lengths, they almost never account for "difficulty spikes." They assume a smooth progression. They don't account for the three nights you spent stuck on a single boss. This is why specialized sites like Speedrun.com are interesting—they show the absolute floor of what is possible, while the general public shows the ceiling.
Real data: A quick look at recent heavy hitters
To give you some perspective, let's look at some actual data for popular titles from the last few years. These aren't guesses; they're the averaged realities of the "Main + Extras" category, which is where most of us live.
- Elden Ring: 100-130 hours. If you're exploring, this is your life for a month.
- Marvel’s Spider-Man 2: 25-28 hours. A perfect "work week" game. You can actually finish this without quitting your job.
- The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom: 100+ hours. The "main" path is maybe 50, but nobody just does the main path. The physics engine is a time-sink in the best way.
- Alan Wake 2: 18-22 hours. Tight, cinematic, and respects your time.
- Starfield: 50-150 hours. Huge variance here depending on how much you care about building outposts or flying to empty moons.
How to actually use playtime data
Stop looking at the "Main Story" number. It’s a lie. It’s the "speedrun" version of a normal person’s playthrough. Instead, look at the "Main + Extras" number and add 10%. Why? Because you’re going to get distracted. You’re going to pause the game to get pizza. You’re going to look at a guide because a puzzle is stupid.
📖 Related: Why Haru Urara Uma Musume Build Strategies Still Break My Brain
Also, consider the "density."
A 20-hour game that is 100% "killer" is always better than a 100-hour game that is 80% "filler." We’ve entered an era where "short" is becoming a luxury. Players are starting to value games that know when to end.
Actionable insights for your next purchase
Before you drop money on a game based on its length, do these three things:
- Check the "Leisure" pace on HowLongToBeat. This is usually the most accurate representation for anyone who isn't a professional streamer or a teenager on summer break.
- Audit your own history. Look at your Steam or console profile. How many hours did you actually put into your last five games? If you rarely cross the 30-hour mark, stop buying 100-hour RPGs at launch. Wait for a sale.
- Read "Time to Beat" reviews, not just scores. Some reviewers specifically focus on whether the game respects the player's time. Look for mentions of "grind" or "bloat."
Ultimately, the time to complete games is just a number. It doesn't tell you if the game is good, only how long it will take to see it all. Don't let a clock dictate your enjoyment. If a game is 100 hours long and you love every second, it's a bargain. If it's 10 hours and you're bored by hour two, it's a waste of money regardless of the "hourly rate."
Pick games that fit your current lifestyle. If you have a busy month coming up, grab a "walking sim" or a tight indie title. Save the epic journeys for when you actually have the mental runway to get lost in them. Your backlog will thank you, and you'll actually start finishing the games you buy.
Next Steps for Players:
Start by tracking your next playthrough using a simple timer or the built-in console tracker. Compare your final time to the "Main + Extras" average for that title. You’ll likely find you have a "playtime coefficient"—a percentage by which you consistently beat or lag behind the average. Use this number as a multiplier for every future game you consider buying to get a truly personal estimate of your time commitment.