I Asked Parents How They Fit (Or Don’t Fit) Long Games Into Their Lives

80 hours is a little less daunting if you spread it out over a year. Or two years.

The crew stands in awe at Patrick having actually beaten FF7: Rebirth this year.

How Long to Beat is a beautiful website that aggregates how long it takes players to finish games to give a general sense of how long it might take you. It says it takes 59 hours to beat Elden Ring. Starfield takes 23 hours. Dragon’s Dogma 2 takes 30 hours. 

The game I kept picking at this year, Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth, takes 46 hours.

In short, long video game is long, which means parents who want to enjoy a long video game are facing a conundrum! Do you accept that many games are no longer part of your life, or change your approach? This tension was the topic of discussion on a recent Spawnpoint bonus podcast that I recorded with my co-host Keza MacDonald. 

In the podcast, Keza explained this in the context of Elden Ring. The Souls games are deep and meaningful to her, a love that goes all the way back to picking up Demon's Souls on a trip to Japan, long before the rest of the world has picked up what FromSoftware was cooking. But that was a completely different era in her life, one that no longer exists. Now, she has multiple children, and when Elden Ring came out, she sat and watched two years go by, figuring at some point she'd find time for it.

She did not. 

Instead, the release of Elden Ring's add-on, Shadow of the Erdtree, was motivation to pick up the game again. This time, Keza decided to play it bit by bit on a Steam Deck. She doesn't intend to finish it. She doesn't intend to play for 59 hours. She just wants to experience Elden Ring in the only way that she can, and it’s still been rewarding.

In sharing the podcast, I asked parents on to explain their personal strategies for handling the long game problem, and received many interesting (and funny) replies.

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This makes sense! It’s reasonable! There are many things you give up when becoming a parent! But it’s also okay to be frustrated by the reality of actually giving it up.

THE CALL IS COMING FROM INSIDE THE HOUSE, because this is me. It was also one of the most consistent responses from other people, too. Steam Deck, PlayStation Portal, take your pick. I accomplish most of my video game playing on a Steam Deck, and even jumped through the hoops of connecting GeForce Now, so that I can stream demanding PC games to it. I'd do anything for a more powerful Steam Deck, in the same way I'm anxious for a more powerful Switch. There are games I prefer playing on the big screen, but at the end of the day, playing on a small screen means I'm actually playing, while waiting for the big screen to become free means that I'm not.

This was at the core of my conversation with Keza. If you're used to the mindset of keeping up with the "conversation," which means buying a new game, playing it quickly, and moving onto the next one, long games are going to be a bottleneck. But if you can accept playing a game over, say, most of the year, you might actually beat it.

I haven't had luck with this, though one time I was playing the (great) Guardians of the Galaxy game from a few years back while some neighborhood kids were over, and they all grabbed blankets and hung out on the floor to watch, as if it was a movie. It was sweet. But generally, showing my kids a game I'm playing has not hooked them at all.

Now this is killer. I have an exercise bike, but it’s a cheap and I use it for 20-minute zippy workouts, where I’m pedaling fast the whole way through. But I’ve heard of people watching serialized TV shows while on the treadmill/bike, and it seems natural to make video games a part of that, too. Most of my exercise habits involve short but intense workouts like HIIT or running a few miles, so I’m not sure this works for me.

*cue the depressing Inside Out soundtrack piano keys* C’mon, man. But it’s true. The reason I turned down pitching a book was because the only free time in my life is weekends, really, and te only season that made sense to write and report the book was during the summer. I love summer. I was unwilling to give up that time during a period of my kids’ lives where all they want to do is hang out with me. That will not last, and not in a “kids become teenagers and hate their parents” sort of way, but in a “eventually they will have their own lives and want to spend time differently.” It’s why I don’t despair over that book deal, or some games slipping through the cracks, because there will be a period over the next 10 years where I have more free time.

This is where I’ve ended up, unless I’m able to turn playing a long game into a work thing, like I did with Elden Ring, Cyberpunk 2077, and Dragon’s Dogma 2. I mark a few This Game Means Something to Me And I Will Find Time games, and the rest becomes a series of experiences that take somewhere between five and ten hours to complete. I’ll finish many of those during the year, and that has to be enough.

I’m not there yet, but I’ve slipped in that direction a few times. When I made it to the end of Sekiro, I fought the final boss a few times and decided “eh, that’s enough,” and put it down forever. And when I was banging my head against an endgame boss in Blasphemous 2 that felt overly hard, I opened up CheatEngine and gave myself more health. I still like playing games on “normal,” generally, but I suspect I’ll drift in this direction for games where I am largely there for the story, more than anything else. 

This made me howl. If you can’t see the image, it shows someone beating Margit, one of Elden Ring’s early “uh oh” bosses, after it came out. One of the next major bosses is Godrick, an enemy they did not beat until [checks notes] more than two years later.

This is the part I’ve struggled with. Because I want to hold onto the past, I’ll end up playing games in a way that, over time, makes me resent them and the situation I’m in, when in reality, I should follow in Keza’s footsteps and alter how I play games.

My wife does this, but swap video games in for exercise. Generally, our kids wake up between 7 and 7:30am, which means if you’re up between 6 and 6:30am, you can do stuff. I’ve got a reverse situation, where I wait until the family is sleeping, then play video games until I’m tired. That said, I have a hard cutoff at midnight. There have been rare instances where I’ve allowed myself to play until 12:30am, but again, it’s rare. I don’t need a ton of sleep to function, but the midnight rule keeps me in check.

Have a story idea? Want to share a tip? Got a funny parenting story? Drop Patrick an email.

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Also:

• The game I’ve been picking away at has been the Sekiro-inspired Nine Sols. I’m more than halfway through, and hoped to beat it over my recent vacation, but I did not spend any time playing video games on my vacation. Ah well.

• I’m at the point where now I’m actively mad if a game isn’t added to GeForce Now, if it would be crummy to play it natively on my Steam Deck. *shakes fist*

• Funny enough, I’m absolutely drowning in shorter games at the moment, to the point where it feels like they add up to a bunch of long games. Slow down, folks!