Hello PC Gaming community.
With this post I kind of want to poll the Steam gamers here; how important are your or your friends’ Steam stats to you?
By that, I mean total playtime, badges, level, number of achievements etc.
For exemple, I have a colleague that keeps boasting about his playtime and expertise on a particular game (which is over 3000 hours). However, whenever I log in Steam, he’s always online running that game (even when he’s actually at work). I have trouble grasping the utility of artificially inflating your numbers if you only played the game for maybe 10% of that amount.
Thanks in advance!
Are you sure he’s not playing at work as well? Stats are cool, but it doesn’t really matter to me or my friends.
He’s a doctor in an ICU unit. Our job just doesn’t let us play at work (and it’s a good thing).
Thanks for your answer!
I occasionally use friends’ play time stats as a kind of recommendation list: If someone with taste similar to my own is playing a game consistently, I’m more likely to give it a try.
It’s also sometimes interesting to look at their achievements to get hints about play styles that I haven’t tried or secrets that I haven’t discovered.
Other than that, I don’t care about stats at all.
By the way, the play time counter is meaningless for competition, unless you’re competing for who can burn the most electricity. It includes time spent paused, or in menus, or at the title screen.
Oh don’t misunderstand me, I know it’s meaningless.
I was just wondering why some people are stuffing up their numbers and calling out other gamers for having less expertise than them based on playtime.
Thanks for your answer!
I use it to only measure money/time value you got out of a game. I don’t use stats to measure skill, I can tell well enough by the way I play with said friend.
If I played a $50 for 5 hours then that’s $10/hour. It’s expensive, but if it was a blast, then at least it’s cheaper than a night out. If I have 100 or more hours clocked, that’s under $0.50/hr of entertainment so quite worth it imo. I’d basically check it when I’m on the fence about shelling out cash.
Not a stats guy myself. At most, I get trophies out of something that feels a bit like OCD. Ultimately, I just want to have fun with my games, and not to boast them around. And tbh, one of the reasons I started dropping Steam was precisely the enforced social features (still use it, but now I’m finishing more games than I get instead).
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Personally, I pay attention to it, but only as a casual, friendly competition between friends. The sort of thing where someone will brag aboubt their 20 year badge, show off achivememts, or compare playtime in games, but none of us are particularly serious about it, and we keep in mind the circumstances around those stats, such as ignoring hours if the person leaves the game open, or achivements gained by external means.
