In fact, all of Paradox Interactives' games have ludicrously high average play times. We've all done it. A Steam sale pops up and we drop 5 or 10 bucks on a title, and we might only play it for a few hours, if we install it at all. In contrast, games put out by the Swedish publishing house Paradox Interactive set their hooks in players and rarely let go. Paradox CEO Frederik Wester told me at that their games have an average play time on Steam of more than 190 hours.
There are only a few games I've played for that long, and most of those are MMOs, but it's standard operating procedure for the deep strategy games like for which Paradox is famous. Wester says the high play times are directly responsible for Paradox's commercial success. 'To a gamer, value for money is incredibly important,' Wester said. 'If you pay $40 for a game you play once and never touch again, you might not feel like that was a good value. But if you buy a game for $40 that you play for months, or even years, you're probably going to feel that you received a great value for your money and share that feeling with someone else.'