Metal Gears Solid

We've been keeping tabs on the Gaming Desk (someone's got to monitor their obsessions) and according to our records, they downloaded Metal Gears Solid V back on May 9, so they've been playing for just a few days short of two months now. According to the Steam statistics, they've played for 77 hours over those two months, for a very sensible average of about 1 hour, 20 minutes per day.   

Previous games saw the Desk go on 6-, 8-, and even 12-hour binges, playing unitl late every night and on weekends from logging on during morning coffee until finally signing off bleary eyed well past midnight.  But not so MGSV.  After an initial negative reaction, largely due to unfamiliarity with the mechanics of the gameplay and the confusing, convoluted storyline, the Gaming Desk has learned to enjoy the game, but the intensity and stress of the game still don't encourage extended gameplay.  While MGSV does have open-world options that allow the player to explore the  gamespace at one's own leisure and one's own pace, the primary gameplay consists of completing a series of challenging missions as the game scores your performance and issues you a final grade. Usually, after completing one of those missions, regardless of the final grade. the Gaming Desk just wants to unwind a little before taking on the next mission, not jump right back into more mind-bending tension and suspense.

You see, it's a stealth game, and the object is not to kill the bad guys (that would be easy, but here you actually lose points for killing enemies) but to sneak around and avoid detection.  For example, you may need to enter an enemy military base, avoiding floodlights and timing your crossing of open areas with the rhythm of the guard patrols, and then silently sneak through a baracks full of sleeping enemy combatants to rescue some prisoner they have bound and gagged in a back room.  One misstep, one mistake, and everyone's alerted and all hell breaks loose.  The suspense can get oppressive and all the hiding and sneaking can induce a real paranoia, so after finally completing one of the missions after several failed attempts, the Gaming Desk usually just wants to walk away and decompress for a while rather than take on a whole new mission.

But as they've learned how the game works and achieved some modest level of proficiency at gameplay, the Gaming Desk now finds the game rewarding and enjoyable while they're actually playing, but we notice that when they're not playing. they try to find every available excuse to avoid logging back on and whole days have uncharacteristically gone by without any gameplay, sometimes even stretching as long as a full week.

As noted above, the results of all this is only 77 hours of gameplay over some 58 days, but the problem is that according to the in-game statistics (and the game does keep count of every little thing that one does), the Gaming Desk has completed only 19% of the game.  If it's taken them 77 hours to complete the first one-fifth of the game, it will take them another 308 hours to finish the rest.  And if the Gaming Desk maintains the 1 hour, 20 minutes average per day, that's another 240 days to finish. In other words, at this rate, they'll be playing MGSV until mid-February 2020!  

More likely, as they become better at the game and less intimidated, they'll play more often and for longer, and now that they're retired and no longer have pesky work to interfere with their  playing time, production undoubtedly will pick up.  On the other hand, if they don't start enjoying it more and pick up the pace a little bit, it's unlikely the Gaming Desk will continue to grind for a year through a chore they don't enjoy, and they'll simply stop playing, a la Fallout 76 and Assassin's Creed Unity.

In short, MGSV is probably the most fun thing the Gaming Desk doesn't like doing, and it looks like it's going to continue to have fun not enjoying it for a while.