Games Played 2020 Edition

This was one hell of a weird year, I think for pretty much everyone involved. Traditionally on the last day of the year (or as close as I can actually manage to it) I have had this tradition since 2015 of attempting to talk about the games that I played during the last year. I am not entirely certain why I started doing this thing, but if you have been around for awhile you will recognize this sort of post. I do this thing where I keep track of what games I played during what months of the year. I think in part this has been my way of keeping track of when exactly I played something now that tools that I used to use such as Raptr no longer really exist, or at least I am not really using them.

The challenge as well is that so many games are spread out across so many different platforms. I consume content from Steam, GOG, Epic Games, PlayStation Network, Nintendo Online or Xbox Game Pass. So instead of relying on a single source of information… I started keeping track of things in spreadsheet form and then collecting what games I actually touched during a given month based on what I had been talking about on my blog and what games I was taking screenshots of from my massive archive of past screenshots. The end is a compiled list of games that I chart in spreadsheet form… which is by no means as complete as tracking hours (which would be impossible) but does give me an idea of what my year looked like.

The Top 10 of 2020

Top 10 Most Played Games of 2020

The rules of this experiment are pretty straight forward. If I play a game in a given month I fill in a box and then tabulate the number of filled in boxes giving me the number of months in a given year I actually played a specific game. There are always going to be a number of “Forever Games” that eat up a lot of my time, but throughout the year I ended up spending at least some time in seventy different games. Here is the list of games that I played the most months during the year of 2020.

  • Diablo 3 – PC and Switch – Played all 12 Months
  • Destiny 2 – PC – Played 10 Months
  • World of Warcraft – PC – Played 9 Months
  • Ghost of Tsushima – PS4/PS5 – Played 6 Months
  • Final Fantasy XIV – PC – Played 5 Months
  • Phantasy Star Online – PC/Xbox One – Played 5 Months
  • Genshin Impact – PC/Android – Played 4 Months
  • Hades – PC/Switch – Played 4 Months
  • New World – PC – Played 3 Months
  • The Division 2 – PC – Played 3 Months
Comparing Top 10 from 2019 to 2020

Another thing that I find interesting is comparing my top ten list from the previous year. First up it is zero shock that I am still playing a lot of Diablo 3. This game is comfort food for me and especially with the option of playing it on the Switch I spend a lot of time just tinkering around in it between seasons. My ultimate wish is still that I can just play my PC characters on the switch. Completely gone is Dragalia Lost and honestly… I have yet to replace it with a Mobile Phone game. Also gone is MTG Arena which I weirdly just sort of stopped playing out of the blue. Destiny 2 I probably played less, but I poked at it pretty often and World of Warcraft came back with the pandemic and my need to play something that I could ultimately shut my mind off while playing.

I played significantly less Final Fantasy XIV and for whatever reason I am finding it harder and harder to attach to that game. WoW Classic, Bloodstained, ESO, Anthem and Pokemon Go all ranked high in 2019 but are all completely absent. Replacing them would be Genshin Impact and PSO2 which I spent quite a bit of dedicated time playing… but have sort of petered out in both cases. Hades is another bedtime gaming experience that I continue to poke at… and while I spent a lot of months playing Ghost of Tsushima I never really was able to play for a very long time due to my lack of stamina when playing with a controller. Division 2 and New World both surprised me because I did not realize I had played for as many months as I ultimately did.

The Top 15 Of All Time

Top Games by Month Since Beginning Tracking

Another thing that I like doing is keeping track of the total number of months I have spent playing a game since starting this. I have data reaching back to 2012 and that gives me an eight year view of my gaming habits and trends. Since that image above is way too small to reasonably read, going to once again break it out into a text list.

  • World of Warcraft – 69 Total Months
  • Destiny / Destiny 2 – 65 Total Months
  • Final Fantasy XIV – 60 Total Months
  • Diablo 3 – 53 Total Months
  • Elder Scrolls Online – 45 Total Months
  • Rift – 39 Total Months
  • Pokemon Go – 25 Total Months
  • MTG Arena – 21 Total Months
  • Dragalia Lost – 16 Total Months
  • Monster Hunter World – 16 Total Months
  • Guild Wars 2 – 15 Total Months
  • Division 1 and 2 – 15 Total Months
  • Minecraft – 14 Total Months
  • ArcheAge – 13 Total Months
  • Fallout 4 – 13 Total Months
  • Wildstar – 13 Total Months

As you can see from the list… this is mostly consumed by what I earlier referred to as “Forever Games” There are a good number of MMORPG/Live Service as well as some evergreen games like Fallout 4 and Minecraft. Diablo 3 and Elder Scrolls Online swapped spots in the list, which makes sense because I did not really spend much time in ESO this past year. Given my continued disinterest in FFXIV, Diablo may be able to lap that game by this time next year. Rift continues to hold solid even though I am not playing it because that 39 month seems like a hard plateau to cross with new games. Weirdly from that point down all of the games remained the same… because they are not games I was actively playing nor has anything else had the staying power to really compete with them.

Longest Streaks

While working on this post, I had a random conversation with my friend Tam about this process and that I was going through pulling together this post. To this he posed the interesting question of which game has the longest streak of unbroken months. I didn’t have an answer to this at all, which lead me to quickly compile a list of the longest streak for all of the games on the above list. It was around this time that I realized that if I did a longest streaks list… I would end up with a completely different top 15. Several of those games are played in short bursts over a large period of time which add up to a big number in the end. The end result is a bit surprising.

  • Destiny – 33 Months in a Row
  • Diablo 3 – 28 Months in a Row
  • MTG Arena – 23 Months in a Row
  • Pokemon Go – 23 Months in a Row
  • Rift – 22 Months in a Row
  • World of Warcraft – 21 Months in a Row
  • Elder Scrolls Online – 20 Months in a Row
  • Final Fantasy XIV – 20 Months in a Row
  • Dragalia Lost – 16 Months in a Row
  • Monster Hunter World – 15 Months in a Row
  • World of Warcraft: Classic – 7 Months in a Row
  • Anthem – 6 Months in a Row
  • ArcheAge – 6 Months in a Row
  • Bloodstained Ritual of the Night – 6 Months in a Row
  • Ghost of Tsushima – 6 Months in a Row

Other Interesting Data

In 2018 I played 70 unique games, which fell to only 48 in 2019. However with 2020 I returned to 70 games which means I seemed to be extremely restless as it comes to gaming. In 2019 I played 19 games that I considered to be “singletons”, or games that I only played for a single month and then walked away from usually meaning I bounced. During 2020 I played 44 of these Singletons so I wound up bouncing around quite a bit. I would like to play more single player narrative adventures, because I seem to really enjoy them when I allow myself to play them. However I still find myself being drawn back into the usual titles that I find familiar and comforting, which was something that I needed quite a bit during this year of Pandemic.

If you are curious about past gaming trends since starting this experiment, you can find my posts going back to 2015.

If you are terribly curious, you can even check out my raw list of data that I share freely. I am not exactly sure why I started this tradition, but I do find it interesting to reflect back each year on the past years games and the trends that occurred.

8 thoughts on “Games Played 2020 Edition”

  1. I might have to make this my 1 project for next year. Might have to find a way to identify the “played it for an hour and then tossed it” games. I played and tossed 4 games lastnight alone, for instance.

  2. I also really like your spreadsheet idea! I’ve been struggling to find a way to track Switch games in particular (since built-in Switch stats aren’t really that great), so I might try something similar next year to keep my Switch backlog in order if you don’t mind?

  3. I’m a sucker for statistics and the like. I just love it when people create spreadsheets for anything and everything. This looks great! Really enjoyed reading your analysis on the different games you played as well. I’m looking forward to catching up on older posts in the series.

    I do have a list of games that I played, completed fully or partly, or that I stopped playing… But I didn’t document it like that and I think I really like that spreadsheet. Mind if I get inspired by it, Bel?

    As for the interesting data, it’s cool to see a trend in getting back into more games again, but I feel like it would be interesting to see how much more total play-time there was in those games compared to previous years, although it’s probably hard to get that data from past years.

    • So one thing to keep in mind. I am not possessive at all about my ideas. I am certain this idea was probably inspired by someone that I don’t even remember. If something I do can help you then by all means snag it. I am pretty sure someone else grabbed the sheet last year and made their own copy, which is why I share it out there.

      • Oh, awesome! Well, I just think that people should at least credit the OG poster when they get inspired by it. I am doing the small info box because Frostilyte also did that and it’s a great idea, so I tagged him in that post when I first did that.
        I tag Naithin every time whenever I do a Humble Choice post…
        And well, if I end up creating that spreadsheet, I’ll tag you right up there above the spreadsheet. 😀

        I mean, I’d like to document that kind of stuff and just take a look at it eventually when I’m (maybe not old but) grumpy and see what my gaming behaviour was like. I feel like documenting it could be a lot of fun! 😀 Just like with my science fair projects in the past. :3

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