A chapter takes forty minutes, but how much of that is actual play?

Online chapters fill with waiting, watching and people stepping away. The length on the clock then overstates the play. This entry shows how to split the time into kinds, treat long pauses as someone being away, and report the share of real play.

Why this works

Time on the clock is not time spent playing. People who wait, watch or step away fill a chapter with hours nobody played, and a very long pause means the player left, not that your game was slow, so it should not count.

When not to use it

Do not use it for a game that is meant to be slow, like a talky mystery where waiting and watching are the play. There, call the quiet time part of the experience and ask whether players enjoyed it.

In the full entry

• What to build, step by step
• Starting values and the reason for each
• 3 common mistakes and the fix
• 34 lines of example code with 3 checks that pass
• How your AI shows you that it works

Say this to your AI

Use the Spielerando entry "A chapter takes forty minutes, but how much of that is actual play?" (read_entry chapter-time-active-versus-waiting-and-away) in my game. Build it step by step, and show me how you checked that it works.

Or skip this and connect the MCP: your AI then finds all of this by itself.Connect the MCP