Carol Pinchefsky

Carol Pinchefsky, Contributor

I mean business about science fiction and geek culture.

1/11/2013 @ 11:25PM |21,511 views



Kelly is a gamer who thoroughly enjoys—and I do mean thoroughly—one game. For lack of a better word, I’m going to call it “monogaming.” And at about 250 hours of exploration, she feels she hasn’t learned everything there is to learn about her game.

With a few exceptions, it takes about eight and twenty hours to play a AAA videogame; James Fudge, the editor of Game Politics, said, “Most serious role-playing games require well over twenty hours.” But with multiple playthroughs with different characters, downloadable content, achievements, and mods, that time can easily stretch to fifty or one hundred hours. I’ve spoken to people who stretch even that. They’ve played one game for hundreds, even thousands of hours beyond the time which most people would have turned off their computers and walked away.

Fudge told me Civilization players could offer “staggering statistics” about the number of hours they put into their game, and as we know, one gamer played Civilization II, on and off, for ten years. Then there’s the elderly Japanese woman has played Bomberman for the NES to keep her mind sharp. She’s played every single day. For twenty-six years.

I don’t have statistics, but after quizzing friends, I learned that many of them have played games in excess of 100 hours, friends I didn’t realize were gamers. Because of this, I can honestly say there are more monogamers than I realized.

And I’m not referring to MMOs either. Although these gamers easily put thousands of hours into their favorite game, MMOs create new content for their players every few months. However, I spoke with gamers who play games that are mostly static experiences.

Here’s what I’ve learned about monogamers and their games of choice:

They play differently than the way the game was intended to be played.

Videogames have storylines or missions. Get from point A to point B. Keep your character alive while it moves from one level to the next. Monogamers don’t play that way. My interviewees seem to ignore the mission objectives in favor of exploration.

Kelly says, “I wander off and do my own thing.” That “thing” means she’s ignoring the plotline in EO:BW (about discovering the Song of Dragons) in favor of swimming in the ocean with the underwater fauna.

Stephen Purcell has logged over 1,000 hours in various incarnations of Pokemon, which yes, has frequent updates. But it’s the way that Purcell plays that interests me. “I always try and do/go whatever/wherever I can except for where I’m supposed to go.”

RT, who did not want to be identified, is an American teacher who lives in Japan. He played Xbox’s playing Grand Theft Auto IV for an unknown number of hours (estimated at 1,000), driving around the streets in various cars. He said, “I enjoy the freedom of play. No missions, no forced paths. Just fun. Any fun I want to have.”

Merv Dettra (Kelly’s husband) who has put over 10,000 hours into Command & Conquer (C&C) on the PlayStation 1, said, “The game is divided into two parts. One is just skirmishes you play against the computer, and the other part is you advance your various missions. I don’t like that. I just play me against three other opponents controlled by the computer.”

They play because they feel they still have something to learn.

After reading an article online about EO:BW, Kelly realized the author was discussing a questline she had never played, not even after one hundred hours of gameplay, “And I said, ‘Oh, that’s because I didn’t do that mission.’ So I went back and did it again. I followed the rules this time.”

Toni Rocca, who has played Romancing SaGa 3 (RS3) for what is likely over 2,000 hours, explained there are things he still discovers about the game, even after multiple repeated playthroughs, “where something can only happen under very specific conditions.” For example, if you follow a certain line of options, you meet a character with poor physical stats who had lost his hand when he was young. “There’s an item called ‘Silver Hand,’ which is an accessory that gives you some defense buffs. However, if you put that item on [Sharl], his physical stats (str, dex) suddenly become very high,” said Rocca.

BethAnn Bretter said she plays all of Bethesda Studio’s games, most recently Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (and she has spent thousands of hours on each of them) “because I just want to see what it would be like if I did it a little differently, with different characters. I think there’s something to be learned from repeating a fantasy situation, to see different outcomes and possibilities. You can’t hit the reset button in real life.”

They play because it fills a need.

People seem to monogame for the same reasons that most people game in the first place.

Dettra said he enjoys C&C because, “It can still beat me. If I beat it it’ll come back and beat me again. I start from square one every time.” For him, it’s an intellectual challenge.

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  • Jason Jason 1 year ago

    I’m definitely a monogamer. I love new games, and all the excitement and fun that comes with them…and just playing games in general, but I gravitate and seek out games that have longevity and replay ability. MMOs are an obvious fix, but having a Mac you are sort of limited in a fashion in that realm (if not Bootcamped).
    Open World games to me are just cathartic, allowing for more escapism than any other type of game to me. They offer everything a typical 10-20 hour game can give…and so much more, mainly most of the example types you relayed.

    And the beauty is…you can easily be a monogamer cyclist and play another game of the type, if you wanted a change of pace…and go back to the other and it will just as fresh and new. I have yet to finish Skyrim, having countless hours already and countless more to go if I went for storyline routes. I finished Red Dead Redemption a while ago…but had an issue where I had lost the stored data due to a total reinstall of the console I had to do….but was only a slight miffed, as now I can just roam on my horse even more, already knowing how it ends…and knowing I could do the same as the son by story, just takes it out of the ‘must finish’ processing.

    You play other games, giving them a whirl…and some can be great fun, while others are ‘why did I waste my time’…but you can always go back to the one that just took hold. Why do I keep going back to Skyrim? The music is tranquil, the pacing is whatever I want it to be, I can collect and horde, I can be a thief or assassin (all my killings are assassinations because I am of the Dark Brotherhood be it contract or not). Sometimes, something I even inquired about on the ES forums way back when Skyrim cam out….I just look at a mountain or high precipice of rock, and go mountain climbing…just to see if I can make the ‘climb’ by that route, and wondered how many did the same. Not just as an alternative route to destination….but just to try climbing it…jumping..pressing the button repeatedly, trying to find that sweet spot on the angles of steep rock that allow you to move up. You’d be surprised, as I was, at some of the seemingly impossible ‘climbs’ I have made….getting that never before, first, or own path feeling. Is tremendous. And there is just simply so much more you can do.

    Have so many games, but only handful can be of the quality that just stick to you like these.

  • Mongo Mongo 1 year ago

    I’ve played Team Fortress 2 for 730 hours now. To be honest I can’t really give a precise reason why I love the game so much. I just do.

    Maybe it’s the hats? Do the other games mentioned in the article give out hats too?

  • Alex Buer Alex Buer 1 year ago

    I am defintiely a monogamer as well. What with the prices the gaming industry asks for their products these days, it’s hard not to be. But that’s just my “front” reason, the main reason is as the article described, there are so many ways to finish the game, so much to do and so many new things to explore. I personally have played through Fallout 3 and all it’s DLCs multiple times, trying to create the best character, with maps, charts, locations of chests and so on all neatly written down and mapped out.

    It’s not escapism in my eyes, I put these hours in because it is fun, I don’t own a TV and I have a regular job and social life, but when I’m bored and I want to entertain myself, I play a game. It’s when games become work, like in MMOs, when I worry about gamers.

  • I guess I’m a multi-monogamer. When I find a game I like, I play it tons and tons. Diablo II was like that. I was pretty much still playing it (who knows how many hours) when Diablo III came out. I’ve already stopped playing D3- somehow, it just doesn’t have that charm (though I probably did put in a couple hundred hours).

    My biggest monogames? Conquest of the New World (1996)- there isn’t really THAT much to do, and I play it in the same sort of way repeatedly, but constantly upping the challenge for myself. It is just simple and pure and, well, fun.

    The other big one? The previously mentioned Civilization. Civilization III was my favorite, and I still play it, and love it. Tried the newer additions, and they just weren’t as fun. In fact, I’ve got 45 minutes to kill before catching the bus to work- Civ III here I come!

  • Localsingle Localsingle 1 year ago

    I think I am similar. I could be considered a multi-mono gamer, which doesn’t make much sense.

    It started with Final Fantasy Tactics, I have played the game so many ways and so many hours. I try to make it harder each time, The hardest of which is going through the game with just Ramza and another character (even the first battle… which is really hard!). There are just so many possible character builds.

    Similar with Diablo 2, Dota ( though this game natural requires a lot of play ), and Dark souls. I have put at least a thousand into each of these games and I only have it at 1000 as dark souls hasn’t been out as long as the others.

    I would gladly play a sequel to any of these games if an appropriate one ever comes about. FFT advance and Diablo 3 were nothing compared to the previous versions in my opinion. Dota 2 is Dota, even though some of the game mechanics are a little different. and Dark souls 2 isn’t out yet :)

  • When you find a game and it just clicks with you, there’s no reason to not replay it.

    Also, it is so much more fun to play games the way you want to play them.

    I played Skyrim by not following the quest line at all. Just me and the compass and wandering around. I actually quit the game when I had wandered every location and the game got too easy because I was way over leveled compared to everything in the game. I don’t know what happens in the main quest line, I didn’t take out all the dragon priests, and I really don’t care.

    I created my own adventure, had my own epic battles, created my own narrative. In my opinion, that’s way more fun than following a story line created by someone else.