Only 10-20% of people finish videogames

The metrics are not as clear cut on the games side. Every book has a last page. Not every game has a "finish". How do you finish Madden or FIFA? There's also the scenario where a player couldn't finish the game because it was too difficult, not because they didn't want to finish the game.
 
I've put over 25 hours into Ghost of Tsushima for PC, I just rescued the Uncle and moved into the upper half of the map.
Thing is I am kind of over the game and not sure I want to keep playing. I've taken a break for over a week now and I don't really wan't to boot it up and finish it now.
It's a good game but I might be done with it.
 
It's almost like many games that go past 30 hours end up padding their time with filler that gets people to drop off, and then combine that with more game releases each year to entice doing something else.

For every Baldur's Gate 3 that is dense enough to deserve it's runtime, there are dozens that would be better if they cut content.

More games need to be shorter with higher quality.
 
I have pages of xbox and playstation achievements/trophies that are 0-5% complete. I very rarely ever finished a game before starting another. I used to try and play multiple types at a time. It led to back log anxieties, buying games and renting (gamefly) where I would feel bad for buying crap and then renting something only for them to sit unopened or the gamefly disc sitting for months.
I stopped buying games and the very few I do purchase, I get 100% trophies. The bright side is I have a ton of awesome games that I can restart or play for the first time since very little nowadays catches my interest. It can be the generation of the backlog
 
I wonder what the stat was like before advent of digital store-fronts - though obviously back then there was no way to measure it at scale.
Obviously proliferation of subscriptions will only make that worse - but even before, in the era of super high DD discounts in early 2010s - people would end up with libraries of games that go unplayed alltogether, let alone unfinished.

That said - we do see large variance here too so overall statistics is less meaningful. Spiderman came with a completion rate of over 50% on PS4, something that I find quite shocking for 'any' AAA game tbh.
 
The game must be very interesting to make the player finished it, look at the last of us 2.
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I only play one game at a time, and generally see it through to the end. I only drop a game if I really can't stand it, or it's turning into a chore to play.
 
nush said:
So does that just mean they didn't get all the achievements and thus didn't "Finish" the game?
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Almost all games I have played have a specific trophy/achievement when completing the last "level". I imagine they are using these as markers of completion.
 
Durin said:
It's almost like many games that go past 30 hours end up padding their time with filler that gets people to drop off, and then combine that with more game releases each year to entice doing something else.

For every Baldur's Gate 3 that is dense enough to deserve it's runtime, there are dozens that would be better if they cut content.

More games need to be shorter with higher quality.
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The never ending quests of three:

- fetch three berries for *insert random task*
- fetch three flowers for *insert random task*
- fetch three…

Side quests should add to the game, not make you hate it.
 
AmuroChan said:
Not every game has a "finish". How do you finish Madden or FIFA?
Click to expand...

Yeah, someone asked about fighting games earlier, too - games where it's not clear when you would be "finished." I'd have to look into the methodology more deeply, but I believe the researchers (of the Steam data) excluded games that did not have a clear-cut "finished" achievement from their analysis.
 
This is why we need shorter, high-quality games with no filler. Everything is competing for our time these days, and it'd be nice if I didn't have to spend 40+ hours on a game that could be fully experienced in 10.
 
AmuroChan said:
The metrics are not as clear cut on the games side. Every book has a last page. Not every game has a "finish". How do you finish Madden or FIFA? There's also the scenario where a player couldn't finish the game because it was too difficult, not because they didn't want to finish the game.
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That's not even the biggest flaw in this methodology. It's based on Steam ownership and doesn't include the criteria that they actually booted the game. How many people have bought countless games/shovelware in sales never to get to it in their backlog? That's a little different to booting a game and not enjoying it.
 
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This is like watching a movie and shutting it off. I can understand if a game isn't good and you move on but the statistics are basically saying every game.

People are goldfish and need better judgement. I won't buy something if I'm not invested in it.
 
Three said:
That's not even the biggest flaw in this methodology. It's based on Steam ownership and doesn't include the criteria that they actually booted the game. How many people have bought countless games/shovelware in sales never to get to it in their backlog? That's a little different to booting a game and not enjoying it.
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I'm not clear whether that is the case or not. In the excerpt, the researchers state that the stats are based on games players "start," which implies more than just downloaded it for later. I haven't downloaded the full article and taken a close look at the methodology to verify that, though, so I could be wrong.
 
If I start a game I tend to finish it, well, I always finish it, it's just that the definition of "finish" varies.

I tend to rate games on a 5-star scale, and it's easy to finish anything I deem 3/5 or above - good to incredible games get my time until complete and/or beyond.

And I'll even complete some games I'd rank a 2/5 just in the hopes of finding something worth sticking with, and before I know it I've finished the game *without* ever finding much of value, lol.

I have no issues putting down the garbage tier games, as I see them, and hopefully sooner rather than later, but I'm pretty patient and end up wasting time sometimes.

But overall, I wouldn't start a game that I didn't have at least the *hope* of completing. I don't understand that mentality.
 
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"50% of games had a completion rate of 10% or below."

So the Hellblade 2 stat is totally normal and this forum lied to me? Say it ain't so...
 
Old gamers don't have enough time nowadays to fully play games and new gamers got an attention span shorter than before so they get bored and just switch to a new game or a game without a proper ending (Fornite, Minecraft, etc).
 
I recall such stats during the PS3 era, probably threads on here etc. Shocking at the time but I guess it's worth repeating again.
 
I just tend to find I drop a load of games simply because the general gameplay loop doesn't hold my attention for the 60+ hours they expect me to enjoy it for. If it does I'm in there for 200+ hours. Most are 20-30 hours and I bin them off because I'm not seeing exciting additions to my gameplay options.
 
This used to be the norm until Uncharted 2 came out and many people replayed it multiple times.

Back in the 80s/90s video games used to be hard and short (arcade genre).

Nowadays video games are rather easy and way too long (RPG genre) for their own good. Replayability is no more.
 
Three said:
That's not even the biggest flaw in this methodology. It's based on Steam ownership and doesn't include the criteria that they actually booted the game. How many people have bought countless games/shovelware in sales never to get to it in their backlog? That's a little different to booting a game and not enjoying it.
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In that case the stats are actually higher than I would expect. I have probably 100+ games on Steam that I've never booted up before.
 
DavidGzz said:
"50% of games had a completion rate of 10% or below."

So the Hellblade 2 stat is totally normal and this forum lied to me? Say it ain't so...
Click to expand...

Sony exclusives don't seem to have this problem at all. There's really no excuse for Hellblade 2 to have such atrocious completion rate with a 6hr run time.

gamerant.com

14 of the Best PlayStation Exclusives, Ranked by Completion Rate

These big-budget PlayStation exclusives are all critical darlings, but which of them have the highest rates of completion among those who played them?
gamerant.com gamerant.com
 
I play less games than before, only one at a time, but I try to complete at least the main story narrative, especially if its an open world game. Only rarely try to do 1000G/Platinum on those.
 
I have two main reasons why I don't complete games. The first is that some games are simply too long for me. I have this reaction to a lot of big, open-world games. I just don't want to sink 50-100 hours into one game.

The second is that I don't like the gameplay enough to continue. This can be for a variety of reasons - maybe I find the gameplay boring, the combat too difficult, the cinematics too lengthy, the writing lousy, or the mechanics aggravating. Usually, I can figure this out within the first few hours, although sometimes it takes me half the game. On occasion, I will bail during the last level, because the developers have decided to suddenly crank the difficulty from 5 up to 9 in order to create a "challenging" (frustrating) finish. After I die a dozen times, I say fuck it and watch the last chapter on Youtube.

For some people, finishing a game is a matter of pride, and bailing out is a mark of dishonor. I'm not that way. For me, a game should entertain me or engage my interest. If it's not doing that, then I'm moving on. Life's too short to spend my free, leisure time doing things I don't enjoy.
 
Maybe it's just me, but I've noticed that former PC/WoW gamers tend to really love 100-200 hour long open world games with RPG elements.

I tend to call this "WoW Lite". Not addictive as crack like World of Warcraft (lots of people's lives were ruined back then -> lost jobs/girlfriends -> true & sad stories), but still addicting/engaging enough for them. Most of these gamers have OCD/completionist tendencies and like to "clean the map" (AC Unity anyone?) as they say.

As a console/arcade gamer myself, I feel a bit alienated by the grand majority of modern AAA games... I'm waiting for Astro Bot (I bet it didn't take them 4 years to develop it, must be recent pivot of change at Sony's HQ), but that's the exception these days, not the norm.
 
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Too many games nowadays.

Play a game.
Shiny new game comes out start playing that
Another shiny new game comes out start playing that
And so on and so on. Eventually I do go back and beat most games I play unless I forget the mechanics/story.
 
I've been playing Dirt 4 the last few weeks, a game delisted and done.

Only 5,4% of players won the Global Rally Series.
Only 1,9% won the triple crown (the true end of the game's career mode)
 
Games these days have long completion times which isn't an issue if they weren't mostly filler fluff padding.

Then you have the rise of the forever games and peer pressure. Being an hour in and the Lads hit you up to helldive or play warzone/apex whatever the new hotness is.

That's why I keep saying I wish co-op was taken more seriously by more studios... at the end of the day we group chat and party up to "hang out". I'd rather be playing another wildlands than warzone with whiny sweatlords obsessed with meta
 
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I've got games from the 90's I still never finished despite playing them multiple times, even in recent years. In fact in my game library I've probably realistically only beaten like 5%... oh well - doesn't mean I don't have fun.
 
StueyDuck said:
Games these days have long completion times which isn't an issue if they weren't mostly filler fluff padding.

Then you have the rise of the forever games and peer pressure. Being an hour in and the Lads hit you up to helldive or play warzone/apex whatever the new hotness is.

That's why I keep saying I wish co-op was taken more seriously by more studios... at the end of the day we group chat and party up to "hang out". I'd rather be playing another wildlands than warzone with whiny sweatlords obsessed with meta
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Some companies still make fun Co-op games (yes, Splatoon isn't just PvP):



Naughty Dog also used to have fun & story-driven Co-op experiences:



I honestly don't know why Sony doesn't offer it anymore...
 
OP here. I have one late thought I wanted to add. I suspect that if you tracked the people who completed 90% of the game, rather than 100%, the stats would jump up considerably. I think there are a lot of people who (like me) get frustrated with the end level or final boss battle, where difficulty often ramps up. After dying 20 times, they say "fuck it" and just watch the end of the game on Youtube.

I did that recently with two games (Plague Tale: Innocence and Bramble: The Mountain King). I enjoyed both games, and I would have been happy to complete them, but the developers chose to ramp the difficulty up a lot in the final level (as developers tend to do), and I found it more frustrating than enjoyable. I got tired of dying over and over again, and so I just quit and watched the ending on Youtube.

I don't think I'm alone in that. I suspect that a lot of people do the same. They don't complete the game 100%, but they get 90% or 95% of the way there. I think if you added those sort of almost-completers to the stats, the numbers would be a lot higher.
 
Humdinger said:
OP here. I have one late thought I wanted to add. I suspect that if you tracked the people who completed 90% of the game, rather than 100%, the stats would jump up considerably. I think there are a lot of people who (like me) get frustrated with the end level or final boss battle, where difficulty often ramps up. After dying 20 times, they say "fuck it" and just watch the end of the game on Youtube.

I did that recently with two games (Plague Tale: Innocence and Bramble: The Mountain King). I enjoyed both games, and I would have been happy to complete them, but the developers chose to ramp the difficulty up a lot in the final level (as developers tend to do), and I found it more frustrating than enjoyable. I got tired of dying over and over again, and so I just quit and watched the ending on Youtube.

I don't think I'm alone in that. I suspect that a lot of people do the same. They don't complete the game 100%, but they get 90% or 95% of the way there. I think if you added those sort of almost-completers to the stats, the numbers would be a lot higher.
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Why not drop the difficulty at Easy to finish the game?
 
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