Why is Skyrim Not My Favorite Game When 100+ Hours of Playtime Says Otherwise?

A friend of mine recently texted me out of the blue, as he tends to, with the following interesting topic:

“I’ve put in about 80 hours on my current Skyrim character, had 127 on another, and like 40 more on a 3rd.  Yet I don’t consider Skyrim my favorite game, partly due to the occasional bugs.  Shouldn’t the 200+ hours of enjoyment equate to a game being my favorite?”

Needless to say, I found this to be really fun to think about.  I’ve sunk an equivalent amount of time into Skyrim.  Maybe more as I picked it up again when it was remastered and again when it came out for Oculus Rift (which, by the way, is pretty fun so long as you are good with the occasional bugs and only choose archery or magic).

Addiction

But I’ve also sunk time into games like Fallout (3, New Vegas, and 4) and World of Warcraft.  My time played for Warcraft is insane.  Of the ~14 years that game has existed, my time played is measured in months not hours.  But as I’ve mentioned previously, World of Warcraft is really not my favorite game, nor would I consider Skyrim or Fallout to be my favorites either. Now it’s hard to compare the addictiveness of World of Warcraft with Skyrim and Fallout. There are certain elements of WoW that make it addictive. Very addictive!

In the older days, there were horror stories about people dying due to lack of food or sleep after playing WoW for too long.  I think what tends to make WoW more addictive is the leveling and achievement process.  Sure, the Bethesda Power Couple has a leveling mechanic, and gaming consoles and Steam all have built in achievement systems, but the process of achieving and leveling are not gamified in the way they are for WoW.  For one thing, your level in Skyrim isn’t super important?  Sure you won’t get access to some cool skills (unless you are PunchCat, in which case you are born with everything that you need), but to progress through the game you will general level as fast as you need to complete content.  In WoW, you are literally grinding for XP so that you can face greater foes.  It is essential.

For another, earning achievements and levels happens far more often in WoW than Skyrim or Fallout.  This mechanic has been incorporated into everything from Overwatch to whatever game is on your iPhone.  Completing a simple task gives you a reward that lights up the screen: “Congratulations! You did it”.  This activates our pleasure center in our brain the same way any other addictive substance might, we naturally seek out what rewards with a pleasurable sensation, driving us to do it more and more.

Time to Play

Hmm, this got kind of dark. To be fair, I don’t think the only answer is that these games are addictive and that’s why we spend more time on them.  I think a big part of it is that Skyrim is never really over.  According to Howlongtobeat.com, Skyrim takes an impressive 32.5 hours to beat the main story, 107 hours for main+extras, and a massive 225 hours to complete everything.  To be honest, I’ve never beat Skyrim, and I don’t know if I know anyone personally who has.  For comparison, HowLongtoBeat clocked Fallout’s main story at 26 hours and only 150 hours to do everything.  THAT’S 3 DAYS SHORTER than Skyrim.

Put another way, you could play EVERY SINGLE HALO TITLE (the FPSs and Halo Wars), and not just the campaigns but all the extra side stuff, looking for all the skulls, doing EVERYTHING YOU CAN and clock in at 219 hours, which is STILL SHORTER THAN SKYRIM.

Its possible people just don’t have the time to beat Skyrim or Fallout 4, but the point still stands that I think one element that keeps drawing people back is the sense that you’ve never actually completed the game.  That there is something new to find or to do.  Not to mention that you could essentially triple most of these play lengths as each game offers significantly different play styles (melee, ranged, and stealth), and within those unique ways to play as well!  You’ll always come back because there will always be something you haven’t done or tried.

Lastly, Skyrim and Fallout really offer something different than most other games, and that is that you can do almost anything and you have a game that will always just feel different from any other game that you play.  No other open-world game, save perhaps Grand Theft Auto V, boasts that level of interaction with the world around you.

So Why Aren't These Games our Favorite?

Hard to say.  In his work “The Poetics”, Aristotle states that a story needs a beginning, middle and end.  That may be why as much as we love playing Skyrim, it might not be our favorite game.  In my case, despite my love for all these games, a game with a structured story always feels more fulfilling to me and I end up remembering my overall experience more than any unique playthrough of Skyrim.

What do you think?  Is Skyrim your favorite game or do you agree with the points here?  Let me know!