I haven’t been at this as long as Belghast has — either blogging more generally or looking at gaming over the span of entire years. I picked up the idea from him after the 2019 edition of the post and thanks to the monthly tracking I was already doing for most of the year, I was able to track back to March.
Comparing the gaming habits of Bel and I — the main thing that jumps out is that I really don’t have anything that I play every month without fail; even if only a little. My mapping is much patchier as a result. In fact, looking over 2019 and 2020 together the maximum number of months any games have over the period is six. Six months out of twenty-four.
Looking at just the top ten of 2020, well.. Depends how we cut it. Sorting by hours and months played gives different results.
Top 10 2020 Games — By Months and Hours Played
Of most interest to me are the single-month but (relatively) mammoth hours-played titles in there. The sort of all consuming, bright-burn but short-lived titles. Monster Hunter World: Iceborne in particular sticks out to me. It capped the start of 2020, before we knew the kind of year we’d be in for.
Until Shadowlands came out, it was also the game I played the most of in a single month for the entire year. Heck, it even prompted one of my somewhat rare impressions posts.
I’ve even given thought to returning from time to time be it for particular events or even just to continue ranking up in order to get the full end-game experience. I don’t recall what I got my MR up to in the end, but it certainly wasn’t 100.
The main thing holding me back is that MHW is quite a commitment to jump back to, I think. Relearning how to play takes a bit to do.
Top 10 Games Overall — By Months and Hours Played
MHW is the only single-monther to make it into the top 10 for hours played. But the most surprising thing to me about these lists is that I haven’t touched Final Fantasy XIV for the entirety of 2020.
With how often it’s been on my mind, I would’ve thought surely- surely I had at least given it a small dabble at some point.
But apparently not!
Almost as surprising is that I didn’t play WoW for the entirety of 2019. Well, actually that might not be true as I hadn’t started tracking until March. But I went back and looked — Battle for Azeroth came out August 2018, so it is certainly in the realm of the possible that I was done with BFA within a few months and didn’t return at all until a brief stint earlier this year over the course of the NZ COVID-19 lock-down.
‘Complete’ List
Over the course of the two years tracked, there are 113 unique titles captured. Too many to easily capture into a single screenshot as it turns out, but here’s the first 68 or so. It gets down to below 4 hours played at this point, although looking at some the titles under the cut here — e.g., The Witcher 3 — and it makes me wish I had data going back further like Bel does!
One final fact: WoW has — after December — received more hours played over this period than the next three games combined.
Crazy.
That’s probably not a record any other game is likely to beat in the near future. Or ever, unless I do, once and for all, Quit WoW and stop buying into new expansions.
I also struggle to get back into Monster Hunter World. To me the time commitment problem isn’t so much with the relearning as much as with the hunts themselves. Solo hunting the monsters and grinding the parts to get new gear takes quite a lot of time. Then I keep thinking about all the other games I could’ve been playing and how much less time they would take to finish….
Yeah, I definitely understand that. MHW unlocks a part of my player psyche that is hardly ever unlocked — the completionist.
I want a weapon of every line (within my chosen type – Longsword, at least). So will farm the various monster types to make that the case.
But the individual hunts don’t really worry me too much. Once I feel ‘skilled’ again, can take each one fairly casually.
And honestly, the time required to get back to that somewhat skilled level isn’t really too great.. It’s less time and more effort… I think.. Hm.
In any case, however to term it, that initial jump back in to wash off the rust is the part that puts me off juuuust enough to hold me back vs. the other options around.
Still… I do want to get back to it at some point. Get the Golden Rathian down. :)