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Do people these days finish games they buy?


BalancedPro
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Games are becoming bigger and longer, and all of them are being released very close to each other. A person could buy Zelda Breath of the wild for 60$ one day, play for a couple of days or weeks, and then pick of Horizon Zero dawn and never finish the previous one. 

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Yes?  I know there are no dumb questions (only the people who ask them), but come on.  Games aren't generally becoming longer and longer either.  There are just more open world games, sure, but they're not particularly longer than previous open world games.  Additionally, just beating open world games isn't that long of an endeavor.  It's only when you try to complete them that it becomes a monumental (and sometimes tedious) task.  Also, most other non RPG/Open World genres of games are a helluva lot shorter than the games that you mentioned, which makes them a lot easier to complete as a result.

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Generally speaking, if it's a game I absolutely adore, I'll play it diligently until I finish it. RPGs are my favorite game genre, and as they tend to be extremely long, we're talking multiple sessions of gameplay.

I was that way with Earthbound on the Virtual Console, I'm that way with pretty much every Fire Emblem game, I was that way with The Wind Waker until that goddamn fetch quest (and when it was toned down in the HD version I went back and finished it), and whatnot.

If it's a game that I'm more 'meh' towards, then I'll play it until I lose interest.

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To this day, I can claim that the only games that I've left incomplete are FFX (JECHT), Pokemon Stadium (granted, this was out of not having a rumble pak) and Ninja Gaiden Sigma (TOO HARD). Otherwise, I'd always make an effort to at least finish the main game of whichever it is, no matter how long it takes (DK64 was my first game ever that I got... I honestly don't remember, but it came with my green N64. Took me til like 2011 to actually BEAT, but hey,  I still did!)

Whether I liked the game determines whether I'd either play it again, or even start in the first place

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I get a kick out of looking at global achievement progress on steam games. I'm one of 10.1 percent of players that beat VVVVVV for instance. Baldur's Gate Enhanced Edition is a game in which only 20.3 percent of players have played past the first 30 minutes, while less than 0.5% have finished the game. Several achievements have a 0% rate, wow! Not that that's a necessarily fair pool of data. The purely digital distribution model of Steam makes it so that games are typically bought in bulk and not often for 60$ on release.

I keep a backlog of games I own, and I can say definitively that I have beaten less than half of the 1000+ games I own on some format. Try listing out your own game collection and you may find there's a lot you haven't finished.

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Personally, I try to finish every game I purchase. But if I end up not liking it, I won't force myself to finish it. I recall reading that about 30% of games that get bought, that have a campaign, end up being completed. I think the biggest contributor to that statistic is online multiplayer--that's the main selling point for commercially successful games nowadays 

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I keep hearing that the statistic says that most people don't complete their games.

With the great increase in open world games its logical such numbers will get higher because they are so much larger than other games and not really designed in a way that makes completing them the highest priority. 

I myself try to complete most games I buy, I don't always do but usually succeed in completing them. 

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I definitively beat all the platform  game, racing games, and traditonal RPGs I buy. My record with other games is mixed. With Platformers I can't stop till I have everything, I don't see the fuss over DK 64. Giana Sisters:Twisted Dreams, is probably the closest to making me stop going for everyone, but I eventually did finish all its modes and collect everything on normal, at least.

Rpgs I settle for all the sidequests, I only time I tried to complete an "item log" once in chrono trigger,  and I don't even do it in stuff like castlevania anymore now. Same for grinding to 99 in every stat via boosters-. It's completely unneeded, not real gameplay at that point.  In similiar vein, for animal crossing I only finished the musuem and upgrading house, but didn't collect all of K's songs get all the ufo furniture, etc.

Games that come to mind for me are like Jet Force Gemini, Goldeneye, Turok, super monkey ball, System Shock,Tom Clancy's Rogue Spear, F-zero GX- when I first owned them I put them down for other stuff, but I slogged through them maybe 3 years afterwards tops. In GTA games I tend to do the story, but I can never get into all the sidequests- collecting horsehoes/oysters/neighborhood turf/properties is always too much of a sink for me. I'll do the sidequests that have actual missions associated with them.

Looking through steam, the only things In my library I've never beaten are "Dust:Elysian Tail, Startopia, Giana Sisters, Trine 2, Breath of Death VII, or Chtullu saves the world.

I know that Dust and Startopia were due to technical problems. Giana and Trine 2 also had technical problems, but due to a lack of coordination a friend got me the same humble bundle for wii U, and I was able to play them there. The other two are meme games that came bundled together and offended me too early.

Also it's hard for me to judge beating a compilation game.... say sega genesis/md classics colection-, I did get through phantasy star 4, ristar, streets of rage, toejam earl, shinobi,etc, but I mean I never went thruogh the full sword of vermillion or heaven forbid the tower of druaga. It was just too painful. In the capcom classics collection I beat (or did a complete loop) of everything except for exed exes, gun smoke, legendary wings, street fighter I. Could not loop all the midway arcade collection games. I have infinite patience for an old hack n slash, space shooter, or twin stick shooter, but shit like xenophobe and xybots, is beyond me. My history with random games on MAME is pretty similiar.

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Unless it's Fire Emblem, I usually play all the way up to the last chapter, and then quit. For some reason, that feels rewarding to me. Like in Super Mario Galaxy, I collected every one of the game's stars, and then put it back in its case before the final Bowser fight. I suppose someday when I'm feeling bored, I'll probably just pull the game out and finish it, but until then, I'm in suspense as to how it actually ends.

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8 hours ago, Refa said:

Yes?  I know there are no dumb questions (only the people who ask them), but come on.  Games aren't generally becoming longer and longer either.  There are just more open world games, sure, but they're not particularly longer than previous open world games.  Additionally, just beating open world games isn't that long of an endeavor.  It's only when you try to complete them that it becomes a monumental (and sometimes tedious) task.  Also, most other non RPG/Open World genres of games are a helluva lot shorter than the games that you mentioned, which makes them a lot easier to complete as a result.

I'm curious as to why you're acting like this is a silly topic? Statistically, most gamers don't finish games they buy. This has never been more evident since the release of Steam and achievement tracking.

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Part of the reason as to why I don't complete games may be that I don't want the fantasy to end I think.

List of incomplete games I can think of at the moment:

Spoiler

Steamworld Heist: Decided to grind up a bunch of the characters I hadn't been using before tackling the final boss, never got back to it.

LoZ: WW, TH, SS, Master Quest OoT3D

XBCX: up to Chapter 11

Guacamelee: damn the treetops- 10/10 platforming difficulty there

Codename STEAM: Never finished collecting all the gears, did beat the final boss though

Affordable Space Adventures

MMBN: I genuinely could not take the kidiness beyond a certain point- probably should have opted for a latter game in the series where the quality was better- without restore points I would have had to restart the game a thousand times

Final Fantasy Tactics: at the end of Part 1

Tales of Graces, Valkyria Chronicles: My original PS3 died, no backed up data so I need to redo the whole thing, made it as far as the place on the other planet, and Naggiar

New Super Mario Bros, all of them: final level of Wii and Wii U, 2 needs the Star Coins from Bowser's stage, the original got stuck on the penultimate stage

EOU2: My Beast can't survive the Berserker, ergo my team can't survive it- I should grind a bit. Anyone have any idea whether Self-Defense (which I've neglected), is better than Protection Vow?

Have a copy of Pokemon B2 sitting in my room, never played it. Bum rushed SS for some reason, started over, forget where I left off.

Never 100% Galaxy or Galaxy 2. Though I did get to the Green Stars in the latter.

 

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46 minutes ago, SlipperySlippy said:

I'm curious as to why you're acting like this is a silly topic? Statistically, most gamers don't finish games they buy. This has never been more evident since the release of Steam and achievement tracking.

That's not the point.  Firstly, I don't entirely agree with what you're saying.  Most gamers do finish games lol, even if they don't finish all or even most of the games they own.  If your first reaction to this is "duh", then take it up with the OP who made a very generic and clickbaity title which I took issue with in the first place.  And it's not like his actual post was better.  His first reason for this (games are becoming longer) isn't valid, as games aren't much longer or more expansive than they were in the last gen.  Other people in this thread have made very good points about the prevalence of open world games being a contributing factor, but OP did not put any effort into doing so.  OP's other point about games being released too closely together is...almost good (it's more complicated than this), but he didn't expand on it at all.  I'm not saying the topic is inherently uninteresting (most of the followup posts by other people have been interesting!), but the way that OP lazily presented it as is.

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3 minutes ago, Refa said:

Firstly, I don't entirely agree with what you're saying.  Most gamers do finish games lol, even if they don't finish all or even most of the games they own.

In relation to the relevance of the thread, it's statistically false that gamers complete most of the games they purchase. In the modern gaming industry, most players don't complete games they buy. This is a consistent trend across all genres of gaming, not just open world games. 

First-Person Shooter games: 

Role-playing games:

  • Only 15.6% of players fought the final boss in Tales of Zestiria. 
  • Only 12.3% of players completed the second half of Final Fantasy 7 (it should be noted this is likely significantly lower due to how long the game is and also that many people purchasing Final Fantasy 7 may have completed it during their childhood).

Horror games: 

  • Only 26.3% of players got to Chapter 6 on Dead Rising 3 (there are 8 chapters). 
  • A larger amount of 49.6% of players have beaten Resident Evil 7: Biohazard on easy mode.

Hack'n Slash games:

  • Only 6.5% of players have beaten Bayonetta on normal mode. 
  • Only 20.4% of players have beaten Devil May Cry 4: Special Edition on Devil Hunter mode.
  • It should be noted that players may have beaten the game on easier difficulties and stopped playing, however even accumulating the percentages of these still wouldn't come close to a 50% completion rate across consumers.  

There are some areas of games that do often have higher completion rates. Particularly, story-driven games:

  • 44.7% of players completed Dangnaronpa 2: Goodbye Despair. 
  • 48.6% of players fully completed Zero Escape: Zero Time Dilemma's story. 
  • 63.1% of players completed Walking Dead - Episode 1, although comparatively, only 40.7% of players completed the final episode. 

This of course isn't representative of the console gaming industry, just the PC-gaming community. 

Anyway, what I actually thought this topic was formed was because of the IGN article about gamers not completing games. I thought it was common knowledge, but apparently not. 

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Did you even read what I said?  I never claimed that gamers finish most of the games that they purchase.  That's not what I was arguing, nor was it ever what I was arguing for.

I don't read/follow IGN.  Fair enough if the topic was formed because of an IGN article, although that just makes me wonder why that article wasn't linked.

Edited by Refa
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I try to finish all the games that I buy, though I do have some that I didn't finish, mainly because of difficulty or loss of interest.

One prominent example would be me almost not finishing Trails of Cold Steel II (I played until the Epilogue and then put it away for a week before deciding that I'll finish it after all), because I didn't really like the build up towards the ending and that said ending would essentially make all my previous work and choices meaningless and then exactly that happened... This is a personal gripe I have with that game, but otherwise I love it, thus I finished it.

The only game I own and didn't finish and have no intention to in the future is Dungeon Travelers 2. I usually don't mind fanservice, but as prevalent as it is in this game, it turned me off after about three hours or so. I thought it'd be a fun dungeon crawler, which it is on the surface, but then... *shudder*

This is all just personal stuff, however. Most games that I bought I played until I decided that I finished it. Since I mostly play RPGs and story-driven games, that is when I finish the story. For games I really love, I consider them finished when I have played through all the postgame stuff, though I have to admit I have yet to 100% complete all the games that I have.

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I often do, but I'd still say there's a good 30-40% I own that I haven't.

Occasionally I get all the way to the final battle, then lose interest. 110 hrs in Skyrim and I dropped it at the last hurdle. Same with Mass Effect 3 (I still don't really want to finish that). 

Now, as for my husband... he has hundreds and hundreds of games (1,000+ on Steam, we probably own a few hundred console games and goodness knows how many he's sold or given away over the years) and so his completion rate is probably under 10%. 

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I haven't finished every game I purchased but that's because I take my sweet time.  I don't mind having a backlog I'll finish everything I buy eventually (unless I end up not liking it then I don't finish it), took me a year to finish Witcher 3 (because I was working through it in between other games) last year lol.  It's just the reality of being an adult with a life, I don't have all the time in the world like I used to so I slowly piece my way though games.

That being said when it comes to things I could play like the things I can get from my brother's Steam library (who has over 500 games because humble bundle does things to a man) I would never dream of being able to complete even an eighth of those games. In fact I haven't really dived into his library because of this. There's also the matter of all the all the old games I plan to complete at some point lots classic's I never played a kid (though I did play for a number of them at that age),  those will come in due time.

Edited by Locke087
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If a game is good, I complete. Otherwise, I don't. That's it for me.
Mostly, the games I haven't completed games are due to grinding or other design flaws.

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Eventually I do. I have only about 15 or so games I have actually beaten, compared to the 100 or more games I have actually played. I have finished Fates, Awakening, Path of Radiance, Radiant Dawn, Final Fantasy 1, Diablo 3, Champions of Norrath, Ultimate Alliance 1, Ultimate Alliance 2, Xmen Legends 2, Mass Effect 2, Mass Effect 3, Resident Evil 4, Warcraft III, and Splinter Cell. So 15 games in total. I have at least another 15-20 in progress.

Part of it has to do with how large these games are. Fire Emblem is pretty linear. I have a set path in front of me on where to go. Dark Souls 2 was a little less linear, but at the same time there were only so many areas for me to go at first, and overall it was a linear game with set paths going in each direction you go in. So eventually I finished the game. Same with Splinter Cell, Resident Evil, Champions of Norrath, Diablo, Ultimate Alliance, Xmen Legends, Final Fantasy. They were all pretty linear.

What I have issues with completing is the big open world style games. I am no where close to completing Witcher 3, and there is just so much to do in that game I dont think I ever will. And that isnt even including DLC. Same with a lot of other games out there.

 

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