In a game the engine clock and the player clock don't have to agree. A cutscene can compress months into thirty seconds of attention. A combat sequence can stretch two seconds of avatar time across ten minutes of player decision. Bullet time, fast travel, save and reload, the pause menu. The avatar experiences time as continuous because the avatar has no way to detect the gaps. Pause the game and the character doesn't feel the interval. Reload from an earlier save and the character doesn't remember the dead branch.
Where is time?
Time is where the frame gets the most uncomfortable, which probably means it's where the frame is doing the most work.
Peak elasticity
In a game the engine clock and the player clock don't have to agree. A cutscene can compress months into thirty seconds of attention. A combat sequence can stretch two seconds of avatar time across ten minutes of player decision. Bullet time, fast travel, save and reload, the pause menu. The avatar experiences time as continuous because the avatar has no way to detect the gaps. Pause the game and the character doesn't feel the interval. Reload from an earlier save and the character doesn't remember the dead branch.