There are many games available out there and many which has managed to capture our time, attention, as well as getting us to open up our wallets. That being said, how many of us actually bothers getting to the end of a game? Sure there are many out there who do play games from the start to the end, but interesting statistics have revealed that there are many gamers out there who don’t bother finishing games that they have started.
At an enlightening 25 minute-long speech today at GDC – one jointly given by Riot Games’ Narrative Lead Tom Abernathy and Microsoft Game Studios’ Design Lead Richard Rouse III – it was noted that many gamers who play even the most story-driven titles don’t actually finish them. The speech, called “Death to the Three-Act Structure,” elaborated on game completion with some interesting statistics from Valve, based wholly on Steam Achievements. The percentages associated with the titles below represent how many players completed the game in question on Steam.
I’ve played a lot of games over the last 14 years on many different platforms. What really brings me to a halt is fighting some monster that is nearly impossible to kill even after repeated tries. Finally I just get bored with trying to kill this thing and abandon the game in favour of another. This has happened with many titles including Lair, Turok 2, Mass Effect 1, and Lost Planet. Sure, I’d like to finish these games but how much time do the designers think I should spend trying to kill something that just doesn’t want to die? It’s really unfortunate, they are all fun games to play up to that point. Fortunately these games are the exception, not the rule. If you get stuck on something, maybe after 10 tries the game should just move on, now there’s a thought. Most games I do manage to finish.
Game on!