Steam Replay is a feature that Steam dished out a fair while ago where you can check out your gaming habits and essentially, look back at how you’ve gamed each year. To check it out yourself, you visit Steam’s store page and hover over the “New and Noteworthy” section where you should be able to see your Replay for 2023.
Either way, today, I wanted to share some of my highlights of this year, according to Steam.
This year…
- I have played 124 games, 84 of which were newly added to my library.
- I’ve unlocked 798 achievements across 86 games, 72 of which were rare achievements.
- I spent 45% of my playtime playing with a controller, or more precisely, I used the controller for 30 games across 126 play sessions.
- To name a few, I played Monster Hunter Rise, Dave the Diver, Spiritfarer, Fable Anniversary, and Dust – An Elysian Tale with a controller.
- This year, 56% of my playtime was spent on newly released games.
- I shared 394 screenshots.
- I added 33 friends.
- I gifted five games.
- I subscribed to 13 Workshop Items (aka mods).
- I earned three badges.
- I posted one review.
- I gave two community awards.
- Monster Hunter Rise made up 21% of my playtime – across 49 sessions.
- Deep Rock Galactic made up 7% of my playtime – across 37 sessions.
- Dave the Diver made up 4% of my playtime – across 10 sessions.
The fact that these three games stood out at a rate of 21/7/4% makes sense, in my opinion, given how much I switch games, playing different titles and typically roguelikes, at that.
Compared to the Steam Community…
- I unlocked 798 Achievements whereas the median is 16.
- I played 124 games whereas the median here is 4.
- my longest streak was 26 days whereas the median is 5.
There’s not much to say here. I played a lot of games this year and I’d do a mission in DRG before bed quite often.
Honestly, after my two-month period here of having no internet and not being able to play games due to my lack of a desk, I realised that a lot of my gaming habits were excessive… or rather, I streamed a lot this year and I don’t think it was healthy for me, so I definitely want to cut out on that.
While I do still plan on playing games, I want to cut back a bit and make sure to not play as much per day, reducing the screentime I get overall in 2024. I don’t think I’m addicted per sé (although that’s also what an addict would say, in theory) but I don’t think that cutting down a bit on this hobby of mine would be a bad thing either.
Look at me coming in with an uncontroversial and lukewarm take. Oh my. “They” will cancel me for this. Jk.
What’s more surprising to me is that the average Steam user will only play four games per year… or rather on average, Steam users only play four games.
Based on what I’ve seen in the blogging community, I think this makes sense.
There are tons of people who will play one game and primarily that game, not to mention lots of people who also play other games on other platforms. I wonder if this will change now that some ABC games (like Overwatch 2 and Diablo 4) released on Steam.
The median for “achievements unlocked” is 16 which is less surprising: If you play fewer games but more of it, you’ll inevitably get stuck at really difficult achievements – or you’ve already unlocked all of them and hence cannot unlock new ones. As a personal example, since I’ve unlocked all achievements in Risk of Rain 2, I won’t unlock more in that game since there are none to unlock left.
At the same time, I wonder how many people actually hunt for achievements these days. I’m sure there’re plenty achievement hunters out there but I wonder if it has gone down over the years, especially with the introduction of grindy filler achievements which have become fairly common in a lot of titles, i.e. “Finish 1000 missions” or whatever.
Aside from that, though, there are also lots of accounts, probably, that drag the achievement metric down that belong to players banned on another account. The same goes for bot accounts that are inevitable on platforms like this. It’d be interesting to see if Steam has data on those.
New Releases
According to Steam, 56% of my playtime were newly released games that came out in 2023. As someone who receives a lot of keys for coverage purposes (Twitch/Blog), this makes sense. It’s hardly surprising.
The average for Steam’s userbase appears to be 9%.
This is also rather unsurprising. I wouldn’t be able to play so many new releases if it weren’t for the fact that I’m sent them for free. The hurdle to review a game that costs a lot is pretty high, after all, especially amidst the cost of living crisis, among other factors.
Compared to 2022, this is actually less. 61% of my playtime was spent on newly released games last year whereas the median for Steam users was 17%. This means that people on Steam played a lot fewer newly released games because they either couldn’t afford them or they were still playing the ones from last year. Another option would also be that they did play newly released games this year but just not as much as they played older games. I’d love to see some data on that by Steam.
By the Numbers…
I played primarily Action-Roguelikes. Duh. This is by far the least surprising information, especially if you follow my streams, haha.
The spider graph also shows that I play a bunch of roguelike deckbuilders, Tower Defense (probably referring to Endless Dungeon and Dungeon of the Endless), “Emotional” games, and “Open World Survival Craft” games.
This last category probably refers to some titles I played with friends. For a while earlier this year, I ended up playing a fair bit of Valheim on a community server on a streamer friend’s discord. This involved certain challenges and lore and roleplay. It was pretty great.
Aside from that, I also clocked in a fair few hours in Ark, when a friend opened up a server in that. Then, at some point, I ended up playing a bit of Don’t Starve Together, again, as well as Raft, and some other titles in that sort of genre.
And well, perhaps Monster Hunter Rise also counts into that, to a degree. There is crafting. The world is relatively open. You gotta survive monsters, lol.
Anyhow, I took 394 screenshots – I wanna say Rookie numbers on the one hand but it’s also an improvement. I’m not sure what happens when you use up all your space.
I gifted five games, added 33 new friends, earned three badges (need to get back into that), gave two community awards, wrote one review (on my non-curator account), and subscribed to 13 workshop items (mostly Slay the Spire mods, as well as that one Specialist mod for The Binding of Isaac).
Comparing 2023’s and 2022’s Replays
So, I already started doing this a little bit earlier but in essence, this year I’ve played fewer games, taken fewer screenshots, and overall, the stats were over all lower compared to 2023.
That’s an improvement!
I still wanna cut down on my screen time, as already mentioned, but in the context of last year’s Replay, I’ve already improved a fair bit.
So, whereas I played 124 games and unlocked 798 achievements this year, I played 148 games in 2022 and unlocked 1058 achievements.
I also took 1377 screenshots, so I have cut down a lot, I guess?
I mean, yes, I didn’t play games for the last sixth of this month, basically, but I’m unsure if those two months would have made much of a difference.
There are way more statistics here to analyse and I may try and do that over the course of 2024 when I have my dual-monitor set-up and internet and everything working. On one screen on my laptop, it’s just a tad difficult to compare the data on two tabs and also write this and… you know. Hence, a wee bit of a project for next year, perhaps?
All that said, though, if you wanna take a look at my 2022 Steam Replay, you can it over here. As for this year’s, you’ll find it over here.
Gaming Resolutions for 2024
For 2024, I wanna definitely cut down on the time I spend on screens and I wanna live a bit of a more balanced life, if that makes sense. I’m busy as it is, so I didn’t quite find the time for gaming or other hobbies, actually, especially with the lack of internet. When I get back online, I want to try to not indulge too much. Keep it cool, y’know? Enjoy things in moderation as opposed to excess.
More importantly, though, I want to also spend more time in titles that I really enjoy and hop less around. I’d love to try to actually get good at one game instead of switching to another. I’ve got over 200 roguelikes in my library and perhaps I could try to do more challenge runs or go for very specific things.
I’ve got that sort of content planned for Streaming in 2024, including a modded playthrough of Skyrim, a challenge-adjacent playthrough of Minecraft, and some other cool and interesting ideas. I’d love to do very specific things and make them entertaining while also challenging myself throughout the year. I hope I can make that work.
That being said, I digress.
When it comes to gaming in 2024, I wanna go for:
- quality instead of quantity
- and moderation instead of excess.
These two points may sound similar but the former refers to the amount of games I play and the latter refers to the time per day or session, if that makes sense.
So, have a less long good time instead of an okay time for too long.
I still wanna review games, of course, and actually write more of those, but it’d be good to also have a great time playing games I already know I enjoy. Like Monster Hunter World/Rise, Deep Rock Galactic, and a bunch of action roguelikes (which I obviously tend to gravitate towards).
Hence, wish me luck, I guess?
Do you have any resolutions for gaming in 2024? Were you surprised by any of your statistics? Any thoughts you wanna share on my Replay or any other views or thoughts expressed in this post?
This post was originally written by Dan Dicere from Indiecator.
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