Could you play a single video game forever? There might not be any infinite books or endless films, but there are games to which people dedicate thousands, even tens of thousands, of hours. One Polish fan of the sports strategy sim Football Manager holds a Guinness World Record for spending 10,887 hours on a single campaign — that’s 453 days.He’s not alone. Today gamers are spending more time than ever playing old games. A study from analysts Newzoo showed that the top 10 most-played games of 2023 were released, on average, seven years ago. Where gamers were once obsessed with new consoles with more advanced graphics, today technological progress is less pronounced and older games are updated continually, so many players see little reason to change games. We are entering the world of forever games. But what does this mean for the future of the medium?
你能永遠玩一款影片遊戲嗎？一本書總有讀完的時候，一部電影總有看完的時候，但有些遊戲卻能讓人投入數千甚至上萬小時。體育策略模擬遊戲《足球經理》(Football Manager)的一位波蘭玩家創造了一項吉尼斯世界紀錄(Guinness World Record)，在同一個遊戲存檔中游玩了10887個小時——也就是453天。