What gaming franchise have you spent the most time with?

[Skinypupy]

Your best guess when looking at a franchise as a whole. I’m mostly just curious how much similarity or variance we might have as a group.

My top 5 timesink franchises:
1. Final Fantasy (the next closest on the list would be a very, very distant second)
2. Elder Scrolls
3. Diablo
4. Guild Wars
5. Dragon Age (I think. Trying to dig back through the memory banks to see if there’s something else I’m missing.)

[TheMix]

Just spitballing...

Borderlands. I *know* I've got a lot of time in BL2. If we throw in the others, that counts as a franchise.

STALKER - I've played all three multiple times. As well as the Lost Alpha. If we include the Metro games in the list, then the amount of time jumps significantly.

Elder Scrolls. Oblivion, Skyrim, Enderal, SkyrimVR, Fallout 3, Fallout NV, Fallout 4, Fallout 4 VR (soon).

I sunk a lot of time in WoW. But I wouldn't count it as a franchise.

Diablo is another good candidate. I've put a lot of time in Diablo 3, but didn't put that much in Diablo or Diablo 2. So I don't know if I'd include it.

The XCOM games, I guess? Again, if you count clones, then that time goes up.

Civilization. Played a TON of Civ2 way back when. And put some time into 3, 4, and 5. Haven't picked up 6 yet. Maybe some day.

Far Cry. The first one many times. Eventually the 2nd one. 3 and 4 mostly complete. 5 is on deck. And Primal. So I expect my time in that franchise to only go up.

[hentzau]

Top 5? Ok.

1. Ultima series. Lordy the hours...
2. Fallout Universe
3. Elder Scrolls
4. City of Heroes/Villains
5. Would you consider all of the D&D games going back to the Gold Box series of games all the way through to the current Baldurs Gate III a franchise? If so, that.

[TheMix]

Doh. I guess I should have called it "Bethesda", or something, instead of Elder Scrolls. Because, yeah, the Fallout games wouldn't count.

[gbasden]

World of Warcraft
Fallout
Ultima
Wizardry
Civilization

[hitbyambulance]

The Binding of Isaac

i put so many hours into this i was getting pretty good at it. only beat Mega-Satan once, tho

[Madmarcus]

If all of the Bethesda games are one franchise then there is no other challenger. Other than Bethesda games I can't say. Civ1/2/3/4 or M&B (including Warband, the Viking one that grew out of a mod, and a ton of other mods) would be next be I have no idea which would be the most because I haven't played either in the past 7 years or so.

Do EU and CK count as one franchise? I wouldn't think so but they are related just as closely as Elder Scrolls/Modern Fallouts. EU2/EU3/CK1/CK2 (and a brief time with Vicky 1) would be up there also.

[Blackhawk]

Coming as no surprise, Bethesda games are leaders for me:

~Elder Scrolls. Easy one, especially given the insane number of hours I put into Morrowind.
~Fallout series. From 1 and 2 to tactics to all the 3d versions. I've played them all, most of them multiple times.
~World of Warcraft. I've been playing this one off and on since 2004, and I likely have thousands of hours sunk into it.
~Borderlands. I've played them all. I've played them all solo, multiple times. I've played them all with my kids. I've played all but 4 with a friend. I've played them all with a group of friends.
~Total War. I've played a bunch of them (lesse... Shogun, Medieval, Rome, Medieval 2, Empire, Warhammer, Warhammer 2, Britannia, plus I've dabbled in a few of the others but never gave them the time they deserved.)
~Baldur's Gate series. Even more so if you include other Infinity Engine games.
~Halo. I first played Halo for a review, but then forgot about it for years. I got back into it when my kids became obsessed with it, and have since played them through multiple times. Solo, then with a friend, then with kids, and now on PC.
~GTA. The 3d ones, at least. I played through 3, never finished Vice City, played San Andreas at least two or three times, never got hooked on 4 (at the time my PC couldn't handle it), and played 5, but I've also spent an insane number of hours with GTA Online, mostly with friends.

Honorable mentions: Far Cry, Batman: Arkham, Witcher, Deus Ex, Thief, Assasssin's Creed. Some are only honorable mentions because there aren't that many games, although I've played them repeatedly. Others because I haven't gone back to them or spent an inordinate number of hours with them compared to other players, but there are so many games in the series that they've eaten a lot of my hours.

[Max Peck]

Setting aside MMORPGs, it would likely be Creative Assembly's Total War franchise. I've played almost all of them over the years, with over 1000 hours in Warhammer II alone.

[coopasonic]

Would it surprise you if I said the XCOM franchise?

Would it surprise you more if I said that probably isn't true? I never played the original XCOM games.

Off the top of my head, yeah Elder scrolls and Fallout are up there, but I think Assassin's Creed and Tomb Raider might add up to even bigger numbers. I never really replayed the Bethesda stuff before Skyrim.

Actually after giving it some thought and doing some math, XCOM probably still wins (ignoring MMOs)... I mean unless Chess is a franchise??

1) XCOM
2) Assassin's Creed
3) Tomb Raider
4) Elder Scrolls
5) Need for Speed
6) Fallout
7) Hitman

[Zenn7]

Dominions/Conquest of Elysium
Heroes of Might & Magic
Battletech (all the old mechwarrior games, the (relatively) newish Battletech)
Galactic Civlizations
Warhammer/WH40k games
D&D (counting back to the gold box days)
Gemcraft
- I look forward to new games/content for all of these

WOW - pretty much done but I put my share of years into it.

Gems of War and Marvels now defunct ARPG Heroes game should get honorable mentions at over 500 hours each. They may exceed some of the above, but that's hard to tell/debatable. Still playing Gems of War, but that's more a time killer game.

[Hrdina]

After spending all of about 30 seconds thinking on this, I apparently don't play a lot of series.

* Elite (starting in 1985)
* Civilization (I, II, III, IV, plus Colonization & Alpha Centauri)
* Elder Scrolls (Arena, Daggerfall, Oblivion, Morrowind, Skyrim)
* Ultima (III, V, VI, VII, Martian Dreams)
* Microsoft Flight Sim (since 2.0 on my C64)
* IL-2 Sturmovik (IL2, 1946, Great Battles)
* Fool's Errand (Fool's Errand, 3 in Three, Fool and his Money)
* NHL Hockey (back when I used to play console games, anyway)

[naednek]

Not in any order

Call of Duty
Madden
Borderlands
Command And Conqueurer back in the day
Assassins Creed

[Torfish]

1) WOW - for about 9 years it took up 90% of my gaming time
2) Diablo
3) Civilization
4) Ultima series
5) Mario games
6) Fallout
7) Elder Scrolls
8) Zelda
9) Zork
10) Heroes of Might & Magic

[Max Peck]

This is what Steam tells me on this issue:


After checking GOG Galaxy, I should add the Witcher franchise to my list. It would place somewhere between Warhammer II and Borderlands 2 if I knew how much time I had put into Witcher 1/2.

If I went digging around in the Ubisoft launcher, The Division franchise overall might top Warhammer II and Far Cry and Ghost Recon would probably also make a showing at 500+ hours each.

[hentzau]

After spending all of about 30 seconds thinking on this, I apparently don't play a lot of series.

* Elite (starting in 1985)
* Civilization (I, II, III, IV, plus Colonization & Alpha Centauri)
* Elder Scrolls (Arena, Daggerfall, Oblivion, Morrowind, Skyrim)
* Ultima (III, V, VI, VII, Martian Dreams)
* Microsoft Flight Sim (since 2.0 on my C64)
* IL-2 Sturmovik (IL2, 1946, Great Battles)
* Fool's Errand (Fool's Errand, 3 in Three, Fool and his Money)
* NHL Hockey (back when I used to play console games, anyway)

I loved those two Ultima spin off games, Martian Dreams and Savage Empire. Thanks for mentioning them.

[Victoria Raverna]

Not including MMORPG like WoW, probably:

1. Rimworld
2. Dragon Quest series
3. Fallout series
4. Metal Gear Solid series
5. XCOM series
6. Assassin's Creed series
7. Hitman series
8. The Sims series
9. Horizon Zero Dawn
10. Sonic series

[Carpet_pissr]

That's tough, considering there is an inverse correlation of time spent gaming vs age with me, so I have to dig deep in the grey matter here:

My guess at my top five, in order:
1. Civ (by far, not even close, no contest maybe even combining the next 3 together)
2. Might and Magic (including the HOMM's in that as well, but it would still be top five without probably)
3. Bard's Tales
4. The old school X-Wing and TIE Fighter games, and that whole franchise
5. Toss-up maybe between: Gems of War/original RTS Warcrafts I-III/Fallouts/Baldur's Gates/Wizardry

[Hrdina]

After spending all of about 30 seconds thinking on this, I apparently don't play a lot of series.

* Elite (starting in 1985)
* Civilization (I, II, III, IV, plus Colonization & Alpha Centauri)
* Elder Scrolls (Arena, Daggerfall, Oblivion, Morrowind, Skyrim)
* Ultima (III, V, VI, VII, Martian Dreams)
* Microsoft Flight Sim (since 2.0 on my C64)
* IL-2 Sturmovik (IL2, 1946, Great Battles)
* Fool's Errand (Fool's Errand, 3 in Three, Fool and his Money)
* NHL Hockey (back when I used to play console games, anyway)

I loved those two Ultima spin off games, Martian Dreams and Savage Empire. Thanks for mentioning them.

I don't think I ever got around to Savage Empire, but I really enjoyed Martian Dreams.

One series I forgot about:
* Crusader Kings (II and III)

At this point it seems apparent that I wrote "I apparently don't play a lot of series" then proceeded to prove myself wrong.

[Alefroth]

Might and Magic
Warcraft
Diablo
Elder Scrolls
Assassin's Creed
D&D if that's considered a franchise and not an IP

Why are people leaving out MMOs?

[Daehawk]

TONS

[JCC]

Ultima
Thief
Zelda

I don't know what 4th is but it would be way behind those 3.

[Skinypupy]

Heroes of Might & Magic

Forgot about HOMM because I haven’t played it in ages (the last few games have been so disappointingly bad). That’s probably close to Dragon Age for the final spot.

Thief, Mass Effect, and D&D Infinity Engine games would def be in the top 10 as well. Neverwinter might also sneak in there, if you include the MMO (I was including MMOs, fwiw)

A little surprised I’m the only one with FF on my list, but I know this is a more PC-centric forum.

[Isgrimnur]

High Heat Baseball
Jedi Knight (Dark Forces)
Borderlands
Just Cause
NHL ##

[Baroquen]

This is hardly official but franchises I've spent WAY too much time playing over the years include (not counting MMOs):

MLB: The Show (back to some versions that were 0X something or another, I believe)
Civilization (all the way back to the original version)
Disgaea (Have beaten 1-3 and am in the middle of a second attempt at 5... had over 100 hrs logged for D1)
Final Fantasy (including Tactics... 100+ hrs)
Suikoden (just finished a play of S3 and that had about 65 hrs)
OOTP through the years
Might and Magic (including HOMMs)
X-com (having completely played through XCOM and XCOM2 and Xcom Apocalypse and multiple tries at the original two)
Fire Emblem (again lots of hours in lots of different titles)
Borderlands (maybe?)

And just looking back at this list brings back fond memories.

[Dramatist]

Just going from memory

King’ Bounty/Heroes of Might and Magic
Monster Hunter
Borderlands
Dragon Quest
Dungeons of Dredmoor
Fallout
Civilization


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Sawyer]

Also just going by memory:

- Civilization
- Elder Scrolls
- XCom (probably most, not necessarily in hours but by proportion of number of titles)
- Lord of the Rings Onine

Interestingly, the list misses some of my favorite titles. Back to the original poster's question, lot's of commonality. I wonder if that's because of the nature of some of the titles? All the Bethesda games and Civilization series are major time vacuums.

[NickAragua]

In no particular order:

X-Com
Civilization
Starcraft
Heroes of Might and Magic
Doom
Duke Nukem
Gold Box series (Dragonlance, Forgotten Realms)
TIE Fighter/X-Wing

The reason I put these here is because I played games from those franchises during the 90s and early 0's, when, as a teenager and college kid, I had a *lot* of free time but not a lot of money to buy games for $50 (and this was before I figured out about software piracy). So I'd replay them over and over. The introduction of 56k modems meant I was able to play Doom and Starcraft multiplayer, which stretched their playtime way past the amount of time that singleplayer got me.

I probably forgot some, but those are the ones that stand out in my mind.

[gameoverman]

Franchise vs title is a tough one for me because I may have spent a large amount of time on one title of a franchise. An example would be Jagged Alliance 2, I played that exclusively for a long time but never played the others. If I try to limit to franchises where I played more than one of the titles then I spent the most time, probably, on:
Civilization
Diablo
Quake
Tomb Raider(go ahead and laugh)
Fallout
Half Life but only if you count mods like Garry's Mod

[Exodor]

WoW
Civilization
OOTP


Those three probably account for ~90% of my lifetime gaming time.

[Grifman]

Civilization
Total War
Fallout
Borderlands
Deus Ex

[Tampa_Gamer]

Interesting, there are certainly some common themes on this board - FWIW, here are mine (no particular order):

- X:Com (legacy and current all iterations)
- Master of Orion series/spin-offs/failures, etc.
- Elder Scrolls (starting with Arena box game)
- Fallout (starting with 1)
- Wasteland (starting with 1)
- X Series (kind of surprised no one else mentioned this yet - I am now getting started on the most recent total conversion for X3:AP - "Mayhem 3" which has introduced procedural universe generation and a host of other goodies)
- Baldur's Gate/Infinity Engine D&D games/Goldbox, etc.
- Total War franchise
- Galactic Civilizations series
- Space Empires (due to 1000s of hours beta testing and modding various iterations)

[Skinypupy]

Interesting, there are certainly some common themes on this board

The only really surprising one to me is how often XCom shows up.

That's not a series I ever enjoyed, and I honestly had no idea it was such a time sink for so many.

[Paingod]

I don't have the stats in front of me, but I can safely generalize...

• XCOM (Including the UFO series, the original, and the remakes): Over 1,000 hours
• Elder Scrolls (Including Arena, Daggerfall, Morrowind, Oblivion, Skyrim, and Online): Over 1,200 hours
• Terraria: Over 800 hours
• Civilization (1 through VI): Over 400 hours
• Final Fantasy (1 through 7, Tactics): Over 600 hours
• X Series (X2, X3:AP): Over 900 hours
• City of Heroes: Over 600 hours
• Everquest: Over 1500 hours
• Fallout (1, 2, 3, New Vegas, 4): Over 500 hours
• Isometric RPGs (Baldur's Gate 1/2, Neverwinter, Icewind Dale, etc): Over 600 hours.
• StarCraft (the Original + Expansions): Untold LAN party hours
• Diablo (1 & 2): Untold LAN party hours

GOG.com's Galaxy client calculates my total time between all games on all recorded platforms to be in excess of 8,500 hours. This does not take into account games I played before Steam and played without Steam/GOG/Origin calculating my time spent.

[Kurth]

Not in orded:

- XCOM (starting on PS1; first game I owned on CD)
- Bards Tale
- D&D Gold Box games (starting with Pools of Radiance on an Apple IIGS)
- Civ
- Assassin's Creed
- Fallout
- Elder Scrolls
- Witcher

[Carpet_pissr]

[*]Isometric RPGs

That's just downright cheating right there.

[Sudy]

Hmm, I used Raptr for a while but got tired of its bullshit so these are all guesses and Steam totals, and some of those are extremely suspect; the card generator app did not need to play Verdun for 90 hours, so what gives?! I don't recall being hacked.

- Civilization
- World of Warcraft
- Diablo
- Out of the Park Baseball (though it's been years since I've fired one up, mostly because you people are too lazy to run a new OO league)
- CCGs: Steam says 613 hours for Eternal, Dire Wolf Digital's CCG. I don't think that's correct, but if this were "genres" instead of franchises, CCGs would definitely dominate (Hearthstone, MTG:Arena, Runeterra, etc).

Off the top of my head, that's everything in the multiple hundreds of hours territory in the last couple decades, excepting other MMORPGs. Going back to childhood I'm sure Mario anything and Donkey Kong Country would be way up there, as well as some sports games. (Tecmo Super Baseball and NBA Live 98 come to mind when I was a broke kid.) In the next bracket would be Fallout, Final Fantasy (Tactics taking the cake... hundreds of hours/attempts, but still never finished the sucker), and whatever my FPS obsession was of the era (Quake 2, Unreal Tournament, Half-Life +mods, Halo PC, etc). I put serious time into Borderlands, XCOM, and Warframe, but typically only one game in the series. My most played (and most loved) "short game"/roguelike would be FTL.

Elder Scrolls is #1 on the list of "most money spent upgrading PCs for and most time invested researching/installing/troubleshooting mods, but least time spent playing, and never ever getting more than 15% of the fucking way through one".

I think I spend far more time researching, collecting, thinking, and complaining about games than I do playing them.

[Kasey Chang]

Civilization and Fallout.

Played original CIV and subsequent variations for hundreds of hours.

Played FO3, FNV, and FO4 for hundreds of hours too.

And Battletech of course.

All were enjoyed with mods. Lots of mods.

Add TIS-100 and LogicBots for puzzles,

Titan Quest for RPG

Borderlands 1 and 2 for shooters

Fallout Shelter and Carrier Deck for "simple" games

And Dirt 4, WH40K Death Watch, Rebel Galaxy, Mad Max, etc.

Star Crawlers just hit 80 hours. I could have gone on a bit longer, I think, but it'd be repetitive and I need the time to do other things.

I guess you can also throw in Staints' Row 3, Sniper Ghost Warrior 3, and Sleeping Dogs. I have a lot of different game interests.

I played a lot less XCOM than people think. While I did play it a lot, I didn't obsess over it to write the various guides way back when, which is also when I had a lot more time on my hands, so to speak.

[Paingod]

[*]Isometric RPGs

That's just downright cheating right there.

I know, but I don't have a record of time spent playing those games. They mostly pre-date Steam for me, and I haven't spent a lot of time on them in the last 5 years.

[disarm]

It's hard to really say for certain, but I do know several that I've sunk huge amounts of time into over the years...

Elder Scrolls (Morrowind Oblivion, Skyrim)
Infinity Engine RPGs (all of them, plus expansions)
Dragon Age
Guild Wars
Final Fantasy
Unreal Tournament (thanks Zaxxon!)
Grand Theft Auto
Halo
Super Mario (so many games over the years)
Legend of Zelda

Lots of really great gaming memories on that list!