Analyzing my completed games of 2024
2024 has certainly been a year that existed. In general, the world seems to be a more divided, conflicted and expensive place than it’s been in a long time, with people taking charge who only stand to make it more of all that, but also traditional and social media Hell bent on making it also seem worse than it is.
For me personally, it’s also been a challenging one. My life has been going pretty good overall but around April, I started having severe, debilitating anxiety that made it hard to just work and look after fundamentals for several months. I still don’t know what caused it or why it tripped off when it did. A lot of expensive medication and therapy later and things have stabilized some, but the core issues remain. I’m continuing to work on it, but it’s a grind with no apparent end for now. I put Twitch, YouTube and other things on hiatus to deal with this and there’s another post coming about that, but I will keep making content, but not the same way. I left Twitter (which you should too) and joined Bluesky, which has been a breath of fresh air and a place I actually enjoy looking at. We’ll see how long it can hold off the “Twitter garbage” and if it can’t, I’ll be bailing on it too but at least for now, I quite like it. I have also become a major contributor to the BigBoxDB project and am running their official Bluesky account too. It’s been a ton of fun and a really fun site to check out.
It’s also been another big year for gaming, though we have continued to see the industry get decimated due to inept businesspeople, with many developers thinking 2025 will be no better. The medium finds a way though and there are still more amazing releases coming than anyone has time for. Though I haven’t played or completed as much as last year, I still got to experience a ton, even when fighting my brain to so much as let me get up in the morning.
So like last year, I thought it’d be fun to do a little breakdown and analysis of the stuff I finished in 2024, and where and how I played it. I also have another post talking about the coolest games I played from 2024, including ones I haven’t yet finished. This year wasn’t as big a deal for me gaming wise as 2023, but it was still an incredible time to be into this stuff.
Alright, let’s break it down!
Games Finished:
69 (Niiiice) vs. 82 in 2023
82 games was an absolutely insane total for anyone to finish in a single year and I still don’t know how I pulled that off. I never say never, but I didn’t think I’d ever top that. Truth be told though, I wasn’t far off and if I’d dug in hard to a bunch of the smaller titles in my backlog, I couldn’t have eclipsed that. How that’s remotely possible with the above mentioned anxiety and also a heavier workload at my job, I don’t know but, the numbers don’t lie! I guess it’s easier to finish more stuff when most of what you play are smaller games these days. Who knew?
Total Time Played (Finished Games Only, in Hours:Minutes:Seconds):
424:23:25 vs. 528:36:11 in 2023
Average Per Week:
8:09:41 vs. 10:09:56 in 2023
Average Per Title:
4:52:41 vs. 6:04:33 in 2023
Like last year, if we were to also rope in the time I’ve spent playing games I haven’t yet finished, you could probably add another 50 or so hours to this total.
I finished fewer titles, so it’s not surprising that the playtime and averages are down, but the interesting outlier is the average time per title, which has a proportionally smaller delta between it and 2023 than the other times do. As with last year, most of what I played had finish times in single digit hours, but I did have a few big ones like Grounded, Dead Island 2 and Assassin’s Creed: Mirage, with a solid number of 10–15 hour titles as well. There’s also a lot of unaccounted time for a multiplayer title I got back into that you never finish, but more on that in this post.
Any way you slice it, there’s still no doubt that I spend a lot of time on gaming. This is something I’m aware of and that I may work to better balance with other things going forward.
Platforms:
Steam: 51
PC Game Pass: 8
Xbox Game Pass: 6
Xbox: 1
PS5: 0
Switch: 1
I have to admit, this surprised even me. It’s no secret that I’m primarily a PC gamer, but I like playing stuff on the couch in front of the big TV too. However, when my anxiety was bad for most of the year, for some reason being at my desk in my office just felt more comfortable, so that’s where the overwhelming majority of my gaming time was spent. The one non-Game Pass Xbox game was Assassin’s Creed: Mirage, which I got on disc for $30 and quite enjoyed. For Game Pass titles, I also only count the platform I spent the most time on so more games were played on both PC and Xbox than this might seem to indicate.
That’s not to say my consoles just gathered dust this year though. I did use my PS5 and Switch a fair amount, I just oddly didn’t happen to finish much on them. I have several titles on the go on both platforms so I expect those numbers to be higher in 2025. I’m also the odd duck who prefers Xbox to PS5. Nothing against the PS5, I just find the Xbox controller more comfortable, with much better battery life, I like how seamless Game Pass works between it and PC and I prefer achievements over trophies, unless the PS5 version of a title runs or looks notably better, which is almost never the case. There’s no doubt PlayStation is eating Xbox’s lunch right now and in many ways, deservedly so.
Other Stats:
Co-Op Games: 9, the same as 2023
DLC: 6, vs. 11 in 2023
Mods: 0, the same as 2023
Replays: 0, the same as 2023
Nothing remarkably different this year for these. Some of the longest games I finished were co-op, so even though it’s a small number of titles, they accounted for a lot of time. I did beat fewer DLCs this year, but that’s mostly because in 2023, I went back to a lot of DLC I had for older titles and never got around to. The mod count is no surprise either as basically nothing I finished this year even supports them anyway, which is an industry problem unto itself. I will say that when I start streaming again, there’s a good chance we’ll see this number jump a fair amount. Little teaser for you all there.
What I draw from this year’s completion stats is honestly not that much different from last year. There are still some great AAA games coming out, but at least how they relate to my taste, they are becoming fewer and further between. Not just indie games, but shorter games in general have become my main jam and I have little willingness to devote to titles that are purposefully bloated with filler to just keep you engaged longer or worse, sell you things to skip them. One of my single biggest titles time wise was Dead Island 2, which I enjoyed at the start, but by about halfway, I just wanted it to be over and mostly kept playing cause my co-op partner was enjoying it.
The idea of a game’s value being tied to its length needs to stop. I will happily pay $30 for an awesome, all killer, no filler 5–10 hour game than $80 for 5–10 good hours with 80–120 of soulless padding around it. I think Assassin’s Creed: Mirage was one of the best entries in the series for a long time, specifically because it went back to its roots of being a tighter experience focused on being an assassin, not slogging through a map full of icon barf. I guess Ubisoft decided that experiment didn’t work out because Assassin’s Creed: Shadows will apparently be one of the largest worlds yet. Then again, things not working out has basically been the entire existence of Ubisoft in 2024.
The last two years of completion stats have shown me one thing: It is possible to have quantity and quality as a gamer. Unless you only like a subset of games so small that they’ll only fit on the head of a pin, there is always a ton of stuff out there you’ll like, if you’re willing to spend just a bit of time looking for it and not just buying what marketing people tell you to.
Of course, I’m fortunate enough to have a good job where I can afford to buy all these games and while I lead a very busy life, not having things like kids or a massive social circle means I can clearly devote more time to gaming than most people. I recognize those things, but these stats have also told me that for as much as I love this medium and how much good it does to quell my ADHD brain, I’m probably devoting too much time to it as well. I need to start learning and pursuing the other interests I’ve been wanting to for years. I’ve also wanted to start doing some volunteer work. Most important of all, this last year with all my mental health challenges have left some important relationships neglected. There are more good games out there than I could ever possibly play and I think I do need to start really embracing that reality, rather than trying to keep up with every cool new release I see. It’s something I didn’t think keeping track of these stats would make me think about, but I’m also glad it did.
How many games do you think you finished this year? Were they mostly AAA, indies or a mix? Where did you mostly play? Leave that or whatever else you think is interesting about your 2024 gaming in the comments, I’d love to hear it! Here’s to another awesome year of gaming in 2025!
