So you’re halfway through BioShock but Halo 3 just came out. And then Call of Duty 4 hits store shelves. You set aside your allowance/paycheck all year to be able to afford all the games you want this holiday season. But if you keep buying these new games, will you have time to play all the games you buy.

I’m terrible about finishing my games. I’ve maybe beaten 20 of my more than 100 games. And, of course, I keep buying more and more. And with no end in new games in sight, I have to ask, is shelling out the $60 for new games worth the money.

I estimate that if my 100 unbeaten games take an average of 20 hours to beat (I like RPGs), it will take around 2,000 hours to finish all my games, not counting new ones I buy. That’s more than 83 days with no sleep or rest. Giving myself six hours of sleep and some time to eat, it’ll take 125 days. So it’s humanly possible, but who can play for 16 hours every single day. And what if I want to do a sidequest? Or play some multiplayer? Or, the horror, replay a game? I sometimes get so hung up worrying about finishing the game that I forget to enjoy the experience.

The conflict comes from the demand for long games with fleshed-out stories filled with twists and turns. But it’s these games that frustrate me the most. A game with no story has no demand for completion. I can play Street Fighter II or Sim City 2000 as much as I want and I’ll never really beat them. And with sandbox and exploration games like Grand Theft Auto III and Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, the game might have ending, but you’ll only get there after 200 hours of sidequests and just, plain, fun.

Games are just made too long to beat. No longer can you rush through a Mario game in a single sitting. The reason games no longer have limited lives is because games just last too long on such limited resources. Imagine trying to beat Ninja Gaiden only being allowed to die three times.

But if the developers of the game spent years creating this massive world with so much story and visual splendor, he or she must want me to see everything. So should I take the 10-40 hours minimum to beat all my games, possibly waiting to buy new ones until I beat my current games. Frankly, I just think video games take too long. I look at games as experiences. Sometimes I enjoy some subdued stealth in Metal Gear Solid and sometimes I want to hack-and-slash my way through God of War. Because I own so many games or because of my own ADD, I let my mood decide what game I play. So Dragon Quest VIII gets sidelined in place of dozens of newer games because it just never fancies my mood. I love the game and have put in several hours already, but there are just so many other games I want to play more…at that point in time.

For me, I look at video games as the modern book collection. How many books are on your or your parent’s shelves that you or they never read? I think video games giving us long campaigns with rich stories provides valuable experiences, but do they all have to be this way. As I’ve written about before, critics and gamers demand these long games to make the large price worth paying. But all games don’t have to be 40 hours and all games don’t have to be $60. But that’s a whole other blog post.

For now, I keep buying games because I enjoy new games. Do I owe something to the developers to see the full story they made? Or do I owe it to myself to get my entire money’s worth by playing every minute I can. Of course it’s an individual’s choice. But I think doing anything for several hours, even something really pleasurable, can get bland after a while. I use the movie rate of value to measure the value of a video game. One movie ticket for $10 provides two hours of entertainment. So for a $60 video game, I need at least 12 hours to make it worth buying (you can use the DVD rate of value; I don’t because I don’t like watching movies repeatedly).

While I haven’t beaten the majority of my games, I have put in at least ten hours into about ninety percent of them. So in the end, I am getting my money’s worth. Of course, it may take me almost a year to log the time, but I get there eventually. And that’s worth something, right?