One player spent over 20,000 hours in a single game. More specifically, in Civilization 5. He recorded his impression of the game in a Steam review.
What game is it about? Civilization 5, in the Roman spelling, V, is a strategy game from the developer Firaxis from 2010. We note the year of release, that will become important.
To date, the Civilization series has six spin-offs from the main series, as well as a handful of expansions and independent games that take up elements of the main parts. For example, Civilization: Beyond Earth, which takes place in an alien galaxy.
Civilization, briefly and affectionately known as “Civ”, belongs to the global strategy genre. In it you lead your own civilization through different eras until victory, which can be achieved in different ways. But no matter whether you beat the other peoples using military, culture, science, or diplomacy, everything always happens in rounds.
This means that as a player you quickly lose track of time. Hours go by and before you know it, another night is over. Just recently, a player shared the story of her mother spending a lot of time in Civ 3. Something similar must have happened to a player who spent not a hundred, not a thousand, no, a whole 21,136 hours in Civ V.
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After 20,000 hours it was time for a conclusion
What does this mean for the player? First and foremost, that the player who calls himself Simon on Steam really loves the game. The 21,136 hours are no coincidence. For comparison: More than 108,000 hours have passed since the game was released on September 21, 2010. The player spent over 20,000 of these alone civilizing his digital peoples. In terms of years, Simon was busy with it for almost two and a half years.
What is the player’s conclusion? While many players are drawn to a Steam review after just a few hours in a game, Simon apparently wanted to know exactly. Only after the aforementioned 21,136 hours did he type his review on Steam. And, contrary to what might have been expected, it was short and sweet.
He writes: “I assume it was okay for the first 20,000 hours…”
The impressive playing time alone shows that he must have enjoyed the game beyond this very modest assessment.
Although Civilization is a series that works wonderfully according to the “just one more round” principle and keeps you glued to the screen for longer than initially intended, the playing time still shows above-average passion for the game. Another player, however, put 20,000 hours into an MMORPG.
What do other players think about it? Some other Steam users don’t quite buy Simon’s impressive number. Under the review, some write, like the user Kaszanka-Szatanka “fake” or the user Cyril: “Don’t you have anything else to do?”
AfricanBear is particularly interested in one thing: “Did you get all the achievements?”
Simon owed them an answer. It seems that he also neglected the current sixth part of the Civ series in favor of part 5. Instead of switching to the release of Part 6 in 2016, Simon stayed true to his good old Civilization V. There is no other way to explain the enormous playing time. MeinMMO author Schuhmann has a current, hot tip for fans of the strategy series for you.