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Which one of these sentences is preffered, if any:

  1. He was playing video games while we were watching him for an hour.
  2. He had been playing video games while we had been watching him for an hour.
  3. He was playing video games for an hour while we were watching him.
  4. He had been playing video games for an hour while we had been watching him.

Both of the actions were happening at the same time.

I found very little information online on using past continuous with a duration. I gathered that past perfect tense is used to signal that an action took place before another one, which is not the case here. For me, the most natural of the bunch is the 3rd.

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You are right - (3) is the only idiomatic version. (1) and (2) don't sound at all natural. (4) would only be used in a narrative set in the past if you were referring to events that had happened earlier than that - for example

I rode my bicycle to work. I had decided the night before to stop using my car to save on fuel.

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