For both questions, either would be fine with me! If I were entering time, I’d be likely to do it rounded to the nearest five minutes even if I didn’t have to, but I could see people liking the ability to be more precise. Similarly, if I were looking at the time estimates, I wouldn’t feel any need for it to be more granular than the nearest five minutes, but I wouldn’t mind if it was, either.
1 Like
Further than a full hour, estimating it and rounding to the nearest 5 sounds good to me. Below the full hour, I’d keep it to the nearest full minute number.
I’d prefer entering the exact number of hour:minute.
It matters less for longer games, but for shorter ones I think it does.
3 Likes
I would be bummed if my game, In a minute there is time, had its playtime rounded to 5 minutes, given the whole conceit that it takes place in a minute (+ the amount of time to read a 15 line intro poem) 
1 Like
When displaying the estimated play time for a game on the game page…
If we round to the nearest minute below a certain cutoff, and round to the nearest 5 minutes above that cutoff, what should the cutoff be?
- Above 10 minutes, round to the nearest 5 minutes.
- Above 15 minutes, round to the nearest 5 minutes.
- Above 20 minutes, round to the nearest 5 minutes.
- Above 30 minutes, round to the nearest 5 minutes.
- Above 40 minutes, round to the nearest 5 minutes.
- Above 45 minutes, round to the nearest 5 minutes.
- Above 1 hour, round to the nearest 5 minutes.
- Other
0
voters
1 Like
What would the breakdown look like? Would a simple one be helpful (and what would that look like?) or would it only be helpful if there were some kind of graph?
Also–if people’s individual times are displayed, should they be displayed in hours-and-minutes format (“2 hr 7 min”) or minutes only (“127 min”)? (I think the first might read more naturally, but I don’t know what people would want to do with the numbers. If people want to average them or something, that might be easier with just minutes.)
I think if I’m going into the weeds like this, a simple list of times, sorted by time, would suffice, at least to start with; that allows spotting outliers / lack of consensus.
(Similar to the information you can get about ratings. I realise the ratings detail also comes with a graph, but in that case it’s much more obvious what the graph should look like, whereas with this more continuous category axis you’d need to make a bunch of design decisions.)
1 Like
I’m excited to announce that the first draft of this feature is live now!
You can now use the “Estimated Play Time” form on any game to submit a “vote” for how long it takes to finish the game.
- Vote only if you've played the game.
- Vote on how long it would take to get to one final ending without hints or a walkthrough.
- Time spent away from the game doesn't count.
- Times don't need to be exact. Good-faith estimates are fine.
We’ll display the median time vote near the top of that game’s page.
This feature is very, very new. We’ve got a lot of ideas for have to improve the “estimated play times” feature, and I’m sure you’ll have more ideas to share here.
We wanted to get the feature in your hands precisely so you could play around with it and see how it feels to use it.
(I’d also like to add that @bg did a truly heroic job implementing this feature from scratch! Three cheers! 
)
8 Likes
are we allowed to put a rating for the estimate of our own game
1 Like
I don’t see why not.
3 Likes
it says that I have to have played it as a conditional. I guess it’s fine to mark my own game as played…by me…
edit: oh oop you can just uncheck the “played” box afterward. not sure if that should be prevented/the time rating removed (?)
2 Likes
Thank you and bg for the work on this feature!
I’d suggest the “without hints” stipulation be removed; I feel like most players turn to hints at least once or twice in larger/harder games, and I don’t think having those with-hints times included in the vote will hurt anything.
5 Likes
FWIW, my interpretation wasn’t so much “If you used hints, don’t vote” as it was “if you used hints, take that into account when coming up with your estimate.” But it’s helpful feedback to have regardless.
1 Like
That makes sense! Just speaking for myself, though, I’m likely to go “…well, I have no idea how long it would have taken me if I hadn’t used that hint” and therefore simply not enter a time.
1 Like
I’ve had this issue with my own kind of time tags I do on games (through tags on my reviews).
Usually, if I beat a game with one or two hints, I put the time down that I actually took to play.
If I use a walkthrough or rely entirely on hints, I estimate how long it would take to play without hints and put that at the time; I don’t feel like it’s useful for, say, Curses, to put down ‘2.5 hours’ because I typed in the whole walkthrough and read it. But I don’t mind putting ‘more than 10 hours’ since that’s what I think it would take without hints.
But this time-to-completion field is more granular. I don’t know if I would feel comfortable putting, say, 20 hrs for Curses, or 30, because I don’t know what’s more reasonable for a new player, and I’ve never beat it without hints.
So I could see the feature being more useful for games that can be reasonably completed in 4 hours or so.
I’m not sure what a different wording could be than ‘no hints’. ‘How long do you think an average player would take?’ ‘Put the number that you think would be most useful for indicating the game length to others; if your experience was highly unusual, such as using a walkthrough, try to estimate how long you think it would take under normal conditions?’
1 Like
I think maybe the average is the average, and that targeting “without hints” might assume a norm that doesn’t exist? Or is less pronounced. That is, do we know that people usually beat games without hints, and therefore that should be the target? I think people do beat long games without hints–maybe not as much as they used to–but perhaps those play times simply roll into the average like everything else.
3 Likes
I would guess that using hints is pretty common. I don’t want to imply that the “average” way of playing is to use no hints. At the same time, if people have very different ideas of what kind of play time we’re talking about, it could make it harder to compare apples to apples. (And I do wonder a little bit if leaving this too open to interpretation could make it harder for the mods to deal with votes that look like trolling.)
Instead of “without hints,” would it make sense to say something like “without extensive use of a walkthrough”?
Actually, maybe I should ask…Are people wanting to keep the “without using a walkthrough” part, and just take out the “without hints” part? Or are people wanting to take out both?
2 Likes
Maybe one could get rid of the hints section and change the walkthrough part to “if you aren’t sure that your time reflects the full experience (due to stopping early or using a full walkthrough, for example) it may be better to not include your time”.
4 Likes
I like Brian’s suggestion! “Enter how long it took you to get to one final ending. If you aren’t sure your time reflects the full experience…”
Hmm. Re: “Full experience”–I don’t want players to think they have to be completionist, either (e.g. examining every last thing, if it’s a parser game).
How do people feel about taking just the “without hints” part out of the original, and leaving in the “without a walkthrough” part?
2 Likes
What should voters take into account when coming up with a time estimate for a game?
- A. Users should estimate how long the game would take without hints or a walkthrough.
- B. Users should estimate how long the game would take without a walkthrough, and with only minimal hints.
- C. Users should estimate how long the game would take without a walkthrough, but any hints are ok.
- D. Users should estimate how long the game would take without extensive use of a walkthrough (any hints are ok, and minimal use of walkthrough is ok).
- E. Hints and extensive use of walkthrough are ok to include in time estimate.
- F. Other
0
voters
1 Like