37 replies to this topic

[moycon]

Finished Faery: Legends Of Avalon yesterday and got 100% achievements.
Yeah seeing this thread inspired me to go back and finish what I start!!

[HuckleCat]

I can see where the article is coming from, and alot of the reasoning is pretty much common sense. I do have a few problems though with it -

1 - I have been gaming for a long time, and this is the first time I have heard of "Raptr". Instead of saying that only ten percent of gamers finish games, they should keep it honest and say ten percent of users tracked by Raptr finish games. A service where the 3rd most popular game is still Bad Company 2. It would be more interesting, as well as seem more legitimate, if Sony or Microsoft reported the total number of all the players who had played Red Dead Redemption, for example, and what percentage of those players had the endgame achievement/trophy. I have a feeling it would be more than 10 percent.

2 - Articles like this give developers an excuse to be lazy and push out bullshit. "Why bother making a robust single-player experience when barely anybody is going to finish it". If you ever find yourself wondering why some games are too short with all the attention seeming to go to multiplayer, this is why.

As for myself, if I like a game, I'll finish it. If I don't, I won't.

[VW]

HuckleCat, on Sun Aug 21, 2011 10:27 PM, said:

1 - I have been gaming for a long time, and this is the first time I have heard of "Raptr". Instead of saying that only ten percent of gamers finish games, they should keep it honest and say ten percent of users tracked by Raptr finish games. A service where the 3rd most popular game is still Bad Company 2. It would be more interesting, as well as seem more legitimate, if Sony or Microsoft reported the total number of all the players who had played Red Dead Redemption, for example, and what percentage of those players had the endgame achievement/trophy. I have a feeling it would be more than 10 percent.

I completely agree that Raptr is hardly a great source, I have never heard of them. Like you say actual trophy stats from Sony/Microsoft would be an accurate gauge. I guess I am a freak, I think I have finished every game I have started (although Persona 3 FES took me about 2 years of on/off playing) ever since Icewind Dale II's poor pathfinding enraged me beyond the point of no return. It's probably why I have an enormous backlog and Dragon Age Origins is not helping!

[bloodreptile]

i try to finish as many games as I can.. I beat blue dragon, bioshock one and 2, fallout3 and the terrible fallout new vegas duke nukem forever, etc... I try to finish as many games as i can. i even went back and played all the way through Silent Hill reckoning and it was terrible...when you consider how good the series was before I wonder why they had to put out that one... still it could have been silent hill shattered memories which is by all accounts terrible...

[Cynicaster]

Emehr, on Thu Aug 18, 2011 7:17 AM, said:

Another reason I don't finish some games:

- Okay, I got the basic gist of it - Two games spring to mind: Rygar (PS2) and God of War (PS2). I play the first level up to the big boss and think "Okay, this is probably about all this game has to offer" and out it comes. Mashing buttons and performing scripted moves is dull, dull, dull.

My sentiments exactly.

For me, a mind-numbing, time-sucking experience isn't enough to keep me interested. I need there to be at least some potential for gratification. The age-old way of doing this is to chase high scores. If I beat my long-standing high score on Defender by 600 points, that is immeasurably more gratifying than finishing a God of War game. Why? Because a monkey with enough patience and an internet connection can finish God of War. A monkey couldn't play Defender.

I know there are people, even friends of mine, who would hear me say this and just assume I'm being "grumpy old guy" that thinks the stuff from his youth is better than the new stuff, simply because it's the stuff from his youth. Like, the guy in the Van Halen t-shirt that says "man, music has sucked ever since 1988!" But, I really don't think it's the same thing.

[Mendon]

Depends I guess on what you interpret as "finished"..... two of my son's are Xbox360 gamers and they both have NEVER played the single player campaign of any Call of Duty, Halo, Gears of War, or Battlefield game. Nor most other FPS games like Crysis 2 or Bulletstorm. They buy the games with the sole purpose of strictly online multiplayer gaming.

So I guess they might fall into the "Modern Players Don't Finish Games" category.


Mendon

[Uzumaki]

On facebook, one of my cousin posted he just finished Zelda: Spirit Tracks and still had some 20 DS games to finish including many Pokemon, Metroid Hunter, etc. He is half my age and just finished high school a few months ago so it's not because of old people getting tired of games before finishing them. Young people also fails to finish.

I responded with a suggestion: pick up Sudoku. Most of them can be finished in 5-15 minutes per puzzle.

[moycon]

This is a very interesting topic but it's kind of skewed, it suggests gamers today don't finish games....but does that mean anything?
The earliest gamers COULDN'T finish games because most games didn't end.
We had an NES when they were popular, the system had a lot of games that had an ending. I could name off a lot more games that we had and didn't finish than ones that I did finish. That was back when I didn't have a job, a car, etc...
Without any data to disprove it, it might very well be that throughout the history of video games, gamers don't always finish games.

It's really easy to take a topic like this and use it as proof to support an opinion. "Today's games suck and this is proof"
There is no proof that gamers ever fished every game they received and I can tell you now, some didn't. I've been saying, "I need to get back to that one" since the dawn of video games with endings. I'll bet everyone here has.

On a side note...I did just finish Darkest of Days yesterday.

[disjaukifa]

My biggest problem is time, memory and age level appropriate.

Time - I've got two kids, a full time job, a house in need of constant repair and a wife who does like spending time with. Most modern games demand hours on top of hours of gameplay to complete and further more, you sometimes have to play 45 minutes to 1:30 before being able to save, which I simply don't have.

Memory - I can't remember game story lines or where I was in a game, I have other things on my mind constantly that are more important. Great example, went to play a little bit of Infamous this past weekend because everyone else was napping and I couldn't do yard work because of the weather, put in Infamous thinking it would be fun, I haven't played in about 14 months, I had no idea where I was, what I was suppose to be doing, what I could do, or where I could go for help. I turned it off and played some Berzerk.

Age Level Appropriate - I have two kids under the age 3, and they like playing games and oddly enough love watching games as well, there is no way I'd play Infamous in-front of kids, but Berzerk or Pac-man sure, and my kids love it when I go after the ghosts in Pac-man, my daughter just laughs, its so funny.

Regardless, there is a clear market for games the way they are today, but I also think there is a missed market for simpler games that are easier to follow.

-Disjaukifa

[Emehr]

moycon, on Thu Aug 25, 2011 10:23 AM, said:

This is a very interesting topic but it's kind of skewed, it suggests gamers today don't finish games....but does that mean anything?
The earliest gamers COULDN'T finish games because most games didn't end.

Good point. And that takes us to the core of what makes a game and what our goals are as players. In the past it was all about mastering a game. In the NES days it became about beating a game. Nowadays it seems like it's about watching a game. Just kidding there. But really, it's all about what satiates us as gamers and whether we've exhausted the fun out of a particular game. If playing half of a beatable game is satisfactory to a gamer, where's the harm in not playing it to the developer's intended conclusion? It's core game play that lights the spark. Graphics and storylines are there to help sell the product. When the game play feels derivative the player will soon figure that out and play something else.

Just a theory, anyway...taken from my own personal experience.

[raskar42]

i played gta: vice city for months and never finished it. i just liked driving around aimlessly and getting chased by cops.

i like non linear games - if I buy the game, i'll play it any way i want.

i don't game solo too often - my son and i usually play arcade games together - we play gauntlet for hours and he likes making up stories about his elf.

[disjaukifa]

Emehr, on Thu Aug 25, 2011 10:57 AM, said:

moycon, on Thu Aug 25, 2011 10:23 AM, said:

This is a very interesting topic but it's kind of skewed, it suggests gamers today don't finish games....but does that mean anything?
The earliest gamers COULDN'T finish games because most games didn't end.

Good point. And that takes us to the core of what makes a game and what our goals are as players. In the past it was all about mastering a game. In the NES days it became about beating a game. Nowadays it seems like it's about watching a game. Just kidding there. But really, it's all about what satiates us as gamers and whether we've exhausted the fun out of a particular game. If playing half of a beatable game is satisfactory to a gamer, where's the harm in not playing it to the developer's intended conclusion? It's core game play that lights the spark. Graphics and storylines are there to help sell the product. When the game play feels derivative the player will soon figure that out and play something else.

Just a theory, anyway...taken from my own personal experience.

I think you make a good point, I'm kind of the same way with Gran Turismo 5, I don't think I will ever "beat" the game but I play it from time to time because I like messing around with various cars that I have gotten.

raskar42, on Thu Aug 25, 2011 11:10 AM, said:

i played gta: vice city for months and never finished it. i just liked driving around aimlessly and getting chased by cops.

i like non linear games - if I buy the game, i'll play it any way i want.

i don't game solo too often - my son and i usually play arcade games together - we play gauntlet for hours and he likes making up stories about his elf.

Dude thats awesome, my son's still a little to young to play, but what I do get out of him is narration of what is going on and comments about how to be better at the level. Berzerk is my favorite so far. "Daddy walls are bad! No touch!"

-Disjaukifa

[Pixelboy]

There's one reason that hasn't really been explicitly mentioned up until now (including in the article), namely difficulty. If the difficulty level gets so intense near the end of a game that it gets tedious and/or frustrating, then there's a good chance the player will say "the heck with it, I've seen most of what the game has to offer anyway" and then move on to another game.

That's exactly what happened to me on numerous occasions: Ninja Gaiden on NES (got way too difficult at some point and I never finished it), Blaster Master on NES (this game really needed a savegame battery in the cart), Metroid Prime (reached the final boss, got my ass kicked, put the game aside for later, but never got back to it), Super Mario Bros 3 (loved the game, but again, it got too difficult for my taste in the later levels, so I never finished it).

And then there are those games that I played and finished over and over again (Mega Man series on NES, Game Boy and Super-NES, or Super Metroid on Super-NES). So it goes both ways, and the difficulty level plays an important role in the replay value of a game, I would say.