Okay, so I’ve been getting this question a lot: “How much time do you REALLY spend on League?” And honestly, it’s a bit of a loaded question. So, I decided to actually track it. Like, really track it. Here’s how I went about figuring out the time sink that is League of Legends.
The Initial (Naive) Estimate
First, I tried to just guess. You know, like, “Oh, I play a few games a night, maybe a couple hours?” Wrong. So, so wrong. I knew I needed a better system if I wanted an even remotely resemble to accurate data.
Getting Down to Business: Tracking My Time
I needed hard data. So, I started with the basics.
- In-Game Time: This one’s tricky. The League client doesn’t exactly show your total playtime in a super clear way.
- Out-of-Game Time: This is where things got interesting. I realized I spend a TON of time not actually playing the game, but still doing League-related stuff.
So here is the breakdown of the experiment:
I started to jot down time I started playing and when I stopped. Just a quick note on my phone. Simple, but effective.
Then, I realized that is time consuming, so I opened my computer and create a very simple excel form. Simple date, start time and end time and notes. The notes part is me writing what I did in that session.
After about a week of this, I started to see some patterns. I was playing way more than I thought, especially on weekends. No surprises there, right?
Next, I needed to get a handle on the out-of-game stuff. So, I used a simple method:
I started paying attention to all the other League-related things I do. And listed them down:
- Reading patch notes.
- Watching pro games (This is a BIG one).
- Browsing Reddit for memes and discussions.
- Talking to friends about the game.
- Thinking about builds and strategies while I’m supposed to be working. (Don’t tell my boss!).
For these, I just did rough estimates. Like, “Okay, I probably spent an hour on Reddit today…” and so on.
The Results: A Shocking Revelation (Kind Of)
After a couple of weeks of tracking, I added everything up. And… wow. It was a lot. More than I’m comfortable admitting in public, to be honest. Let’s just say it’s a significant portion of my free time.
The biggest takeaway? It’s not just the in-game time that adds up. It’s all the other stuff. The community, the esports scene, the constant updates… it’s all designed to keep you hooked. And it works. Really, really well.
So, yeah, that’s my journey into tracking my League of Legends time. It was eye-opening, a little scary, but ultimately, pretty helpful. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have some… uh… research to do. For science, of course.
