I thought I wasn’t quite that crazy to count the happiness product of my games played, but it turns out I was. Of course, I count all the games I play. I have also graded every game on a scale of 1-10. Now the obvious step is to count which game has produced most enjoyment: multiply the games played with the grade.

However, that favours short games. So, add the time spent playing the games! So if you count the minutes spent playing the games and then multiply with the grade (normalized, that is grade-5 to make it 0-centered), you get the happiness product. It’s Joe Huber’s idea, from Spielfrieks list.

I first thought it was a crazy idea. But few days ago, a message by Joe explaining the system made me realize that is not true. Of course I won’t have to count the minutes spent playing. It’s more than enough to estimate the average playing times of the games and use that. So, I added the necessary formulas to my good old Excel table and here’s what I found out:

I’ve gotten most happiness from Puerto Rico. I’ve played it nine times, it’s grade is 9 and I estimate the games have taken 1½ hours on average. That produces a happiness product of 54.00. The close second is Mahjong (7 games, grade 10, 1½ hours per game) with a score of 52.50.

One game of Britannia, which I like (grade 9) and which is long (I estimated four hours) produces 16.00 happiness. Sixteen games of Zèrtz (grade 9, 15 minutes per game) has the same happiness product. Is that true? Probably not, but close enough.

This is completely crazy thing to count, but at the same time quite interesting. And worry not for my sanity — I’m not too serious about these figures, not at all… really…