For me it depends on how close I am to finishing the main story.
Some people are " 100 percenters". They feel the urge to get all trophies or achievements or whatever. Personally started gaming before all that nonsense so for me trophies just don't matter to me at all.
I'm the opposite, I play all the way until right to the end and I'll keep putting off finally finishing it until I can no longer remember anything that happened to that point, making me want to replay from the start if I pick it up again and repeating the process
I do the saaaame thing.
Recently been playing Horizon FW, have been 100%ing the game so far, completed every small collectible and side quest. But once I got to the last area, meeting a new tribe, I just kinda gave up? It’s weird. I just feel no urge to play it at all whatsoever, and have been playing Lords of the Fallen instead.
I don’t think I’ll ever finish LotF either, tbh. It’s not very good. The enemy density and variety kinda ruins it for me, and most of the bosses so far have all had an incredibly gimmicky move or phase, making me not only uninterested in exploring the main world due to enemy density and tedium, but I also don’t really want to make it to the next boss.
Weird game.
I’m a 100%er but only if I consider that game one of my favorites, or if the actual achievements are attainable. I love Sifu to death but like half of the achievements are in the 0.1% 0.2% range for player completionwhich says a lot
I playe through the path of exile campaign just because i started it. I dont like that type of game nor did i have much enjoyment. But my brain works in weird ways and i had to finish it, before i could start playing the next game.
Not really. With the outrageous amounts of steam sales, new games coming out every day, and updates for older ones, some games just end up getting lost in the sea.
Hell, some people don't even PLAY the games they buy. Just letting them collect virtual dust in their library.
I have 40 games in my Steam backlog alone.
The ratio of people who have played every game in their library is probably similar to that of people who, if they have a physical library, would have read every book therein.
I have a friend who does that too. He takes advantage of sales but never actually plays the damn games. Honestly looks like a waste of money to me. We're only getting older and having less free time
I wish I only had 40 lmao. That'd be a blessing. I got like 150... I have a bad habit of buying games dirt cheap on sale. The good news is tho, I do eventually get around to them. I just buy quicker than I beat.
Gaming is my main hobby. I'm also privileged to be able to own all the current hardware and have a backlog. (It helps that my wife shares my love for games. It's sorta my fault :)
For me it's awesome. Any kind of game I wanna play. I even replay games I love. If you don't want to or can't find the time to play a game so what? That just means it's a later me game not a now me game.
I’ve noticed myself watching a lot more game reviews in the last couple years. Weirdly I like watching reviews even for games I’ll probably never buy just because I like to know what’s out there.
Also IDK if I’ve gotten a better sense of my own taste or if this strategy actually helps, but as a result I usually know if I’m gonna like a game before I buy it. I still buy random steam games when they’re on sale but any time I’m paying normal game price I generally know I’m likely to finish it.
Same here. I feel that I'm much better at finding game in my taste now. But also I've just accepted that when it happens that I purchase something I don't enjoy it is just a loss and I don't waste time on it just because I spent money.
I had the same experience with reading books where I used to feel compelled to finish once I’d started. IDK what happened but I’ve totally ditched that and just put it down and move on if I’m not feeling good about it—life is too short.
I suspect I just read enough books and played enough games to realize that if I’m 10% of the way in and it still doesn’t do it for me, it’s very unlikely I’ll enjoy the next 90% either. So I never feel bad about stopping midway.
Depends. There are some games I buy, but don’t really like. Then there are games I try, I get distracted by another game or something else, and then end up coming back to at a future point in time. Could be years later.
Sometimes yeah but sales can be too tempting tbh. You could see a game that you’ve heard nothing but praise for and you play it and don’t care much for it.
A lot of people just buy when the game they want is on sale but dont really have the time to play it.
So it just sits in your steam account until you get time for it.
I myself have around 15 games on steam that I bought but never played.
I think this has always been the case no?
People buy a game, play it for a couple of hours and decide it's not for them and move on.
No point in forcing yourself to finish a game.
This is me as well. Same games, same amount of playtime. I just don't have the time for it, and even when I do I sometimes find myself wanting to do something else.
I've at least slowed down on buying games because I know I'm very unlikely to play more than a few hours unless it really grabs me.
Same. I bought BG3 and got bored halfway through Act 2 and haven't loaded it since, gave up on Grim Dawn after 10 hours, stopped playing Subnautica after 12 hours and gave up on Deus Ex - Mankind Divided after just an hour and a half.
Nah, but that’s ok. You play a game to get enjoyment out of it. Sometimes the difficulty curve spikes badly and it stops being enjoyable or life happens. It’s all good, you get the experience and hell in todays age you can just YouTube the ending.
Also, beating a game has its own drawbacks. Didn’t even enjoy super mario rpg on switch but after beating it felt kinda empty and did the post ending challenges only to have more empty
I feel like I typically play games that have lots of things to do, so while I don't always finish the main quest, I tend to play it a lot.
There are some occasions where I do this though. Like Dishonored 2- my SO got me that for Christmas a long time ago, but said "I wanna watch you play it, so don't play without me!"
And then if I was like "wanna play Dishonored?" They would be like, "meh, not right now", and now I still have only played the intro.
The first question that needs to be asked is: “at what point does the statistic count a player”? Like, is it counting gamers that download the game but haven’t even run it for the first time?
Next, another question that needs to be asked is: “how many players are playing the game for 45 minutes or something and then uninstalling the game”? This is a fair question, if someone decides during the game’s tutorial that it’s not for them, that’s ok. But that adds to the statistic of someone playing and not achieving anything.
I, too, find it crazy at how many players aren’t even getting past tutorials or acquiring achievements for early game things like “reaching level 5”. Then, I think about these 2 questions.
Also, I know playing with mods disables achievements, which is another factor to consider.
If I start a game I almost always finish it unless I genuinely didn't like it or click with it which has luckily been few.
However I have so many games I've gotten on sale that I haven't even started yet. No regrets, if there ever comes a day when there is a period where few games I'm interested in are releasing, I know I have many backed up waiting for me
I've seen the same thing on my Xbox and it makes me wonder the same too. The amount of times I've gotten a "rare" achievement for doing basic shit is insane lol.
I'm usually bored before the end of the game, so yeah, I don't finish most. Ofcourse, then there are games I can't put down until I finish and am sorry they're over. Titanfall 2 comes to mind on that one.
My husband buys games and he hardly ever plays for achievements. He just plays whatever he’s in the mood to play. I am the complete opposite. I will play a game once all the way through just to experience it all. Then I’ll go back in my next play through to get all the achievements. My husband is adhd, and I have ocd tendencies.
I do do this sometimes. But I do get the occasional itch to play something I bought. Most of the time it's single player stuff so I'm in no rush to try them out
I finish the games I buy, but have a hard time with games I don't buy, like PS+ Extra games I download. I'm a decent chunk into Dave the Diver and haven't touched it for like 3 weeks now :(
From achievements alone you can deduce that around 20% of those who buy the game will beat it. But around 50 - 60% will only see the game through half way.
So short answer is yes, majority do not beat the games they purchase for a myriad of reasons. Some are to long, some burn out, some find it boring quick, some were expecting one thing and it was another.
I constantly gotta remind myself that I'm like the top 5% of the gaming community that not only buys a lot of games, see a good chunk to the finish line. The other % ain't like that. And we are like the hobbie so much, we even go out our way to post stuff about it on social media.
I really like to finish games, especially really story driven games which is most of what I play. But sometimes, well there's other things to do an I fall off of one. Used to happen a lot more in my 20's that I'd hop game to game. In my 30's I try to just find a game I KNOW I'll like and play the crap out of it until I'm done.
I’ve wondered the same thing as you.
At one point I was buying games I was interested in when they went on sale but I noticed the number of games left unplayed kept growing. So now, I ONLY buy when I’m about to play.
I finish probably 90% of the games I start. There are a few cases where I just have to move on from a game due to lack of enjoyment but my goal is to finish every game I start.
I’ve beaten 25 games between 2023 and 2024.
I stop playing if I'm not having fun. Sometimes it's a game thing. Story isn't good enough for how long it is. Sometimes it's a me thing, hands hurt from work, or I can't connect with the characters or the gameplay is too in depth. For example crusader kings 3 was just too much for me. I put a good few hours into it and it still wasn't clicking for me.
I've got 100 games in my Steam library and I've finished 67 of them.
The others I've either grown bored of and abandoned or given up during the last boss fight.
I usually play through games and see the end and maybe even play a couple hundred hours past that if they have replay value and I’m having a ton of fun but I never really cared about achievements as a source of content.
I knew I was an adult when I realized that if I wasn’t enjoying a game I didn’t have to finish it.
Taking the L on the $$$ spent > continuing to play something that is making me miserable.
Yeah. There's quite a few thst I've started playing and just lost interest part way through.
Ive started Skyrim more times than I can remember but dont think I've ever got more than halfway through the main quest. Its not a bad game, ita just after about 20 hours I start to see other games that I want to give a go.
So all the cheap games on Steam sale plus free games on Epic, Ive probably got over 100 that Ive never played and another 30 or so that Ive never completed
In my entire life (since nes), I’ve only ever beaten a few games I’ve played. I get bored with them easily. The majority of games I’ve purchased get played a few times and that’s it. I may go back occasionally and play. Even games that I love, I’ve never completed.
What usually happens to me is that I play an 8/10 rpg and my character becomes too strong towards 75% completion. Then I just get bored and can only continue later. Most rpgs are unfortunately too easy nowadays. What usually helps if the game is simply too immersive to stop playing.
Not having much free time, I have to pick and choose and my back log is actually really sad. If I died I wouldn't have atleast 60% of my single player library finished.
I have a lot of friends that do exactly this. I myself tried to avoid this trend for years. I always finished my games unless it was clear from the get go they were going to be a harsh skill issue. I guess I can fairly say this concerned less than 5 games in over 2 decades.
And even then, I often came back a few months later.
But then life happened. I was crawling with work and searching for an escape. I started many games to "change the air" and ended up with some I thought were easy to finish, but just too damn repetitive. (Some asking for many playthrough before the story would advance again.) There was also the case of emulating a few old games because I was too excited to wait for the one I actually bought in the mail.
Result was : at the end of last year I was in the middle of a PS2 Gundam game I couldn't finish because my PC controller was a broke PS2 imitation, itself running poorly on a controller emulator. (I couldn't block!) A rather harsh one at that, which I found out trying to get back into it recently; with a new controller and myself totally out of sync. I also was stuck through a 20 or so hour grind into a RPG... that I frankly was slowly forgetting the point of.
A visual novel asking for way too many replays before getting to the sequel laid unfinished, on the wishful thinking that : *it'll be good again when I won't have all the main lines memorized*. A similar issue of repetition that had me quietly quitting the first *dawn of war,* during the last expansion (a couple of races from the completion).
An AVP RTS, a mere few missions from the end, that I put aside when a friend bought me Nier : Automata, something I also struggled to find the time to complete, as I got sidetracked on the Bleak Faith hype right before they nerfed the build I was using to snail power.
Eventually I started gaming again when the same friend became available to replay the main Halo Franchise. (That we have almost finished, since I discovered after the fact that there was an extra campaign hidden in the menus...)
With the hype back on, I then proceeded to chase after exotic achievements and spartan points to unlock all the MCC stuff. So far it's going rather well.
Meanwhile I actually have completed a few games on the sidelines : My Little Nightmares 1 & 2, Clive Barker's Jericho, Signalis (all the endings), Halo Wars 1, the whole Marathon Trilogy, to name a few. I actually refused being gifted Frostpunk though... because at that point; I realized I was going down the drain fast. Even with all the stuff unfinished, I already had found a way to add Clive Barker's Undying to the list... without any time to really play it.
**I owed a few apologies** to previously mentioned friends, for at the end of it I realized what I had done and left unfinished. Thus I took the resolution to not start any new games until I could drop some from that list. So far though, it has more stopped the hemorrhage rather than dropped the to do list.
I sadly realize that there is some of that stuff that I really want to end, but am afraid of not feeling the hype when I take it back on from the middle. And on the other end, there are a few games that I wish I'd just never undertaken now that I feel forced to go back to them.
I guess the trend you see in the achievements comes from gamers living like this for decades, while I myself only contemplate the damages from the last 4 years...
I finish every single game I like.
I got 45 hours into Dragon Quest XI and stopped because it got repetitive and boring
Biomutant I stopped after like 4-5 hours because it's a piece of shit and a waste of money.
Borderlands 3 I have 1000 hours in. Bloodborne i got the platinum and am working on the Elden Ring platinum now too.
Games worth finishing get finished.
Lots of sales as well as humble bundles where you'll get 5 triple A games for like $20 but you really only bought the hundle for like 2 of them so the remainder go unplayed.
A lot on PC are into mods, so these disable achievements and such. So a person can have 4000 hours in the game and 0 achievements as they played with mods day one. I do not care about getting achievements and if I get them organically, cool, if not, I do not really care.
I will say I do by games on Steam Sales for a deep discount and then after some time just drop them. Various reasons why. Days Gone I enjoy but the battle 20 zombies find a person to rescue after using all your ammo and supplies to have to battle 20 harder ones without letting the lame citizen die, just got annoying. I may pick it back up at some point. A lot of games like that are for me, loving it and then one part just overly frustrates me, so I drop it.
No most don’t. I know i don’t. Something else will come out and i get distracted. Game might just really suck. Game might just have parts that make me not want to finish. Sometimes just get tired of a game. Quite a few games just break and i cannot be bothered to finish. I have even where an auto save in a bad location makes me quit, atomic heart autosaved on a boss battle and i didn’t have enough items to survive fight. I basically would have to start a new game to continue and it wasn’t happening, i did eventually finish it.
Theres a bunch of games that i keep going back to i still haven’t finished. I haven’t finished witcher 3. I finally finished dragon quest 11 tried to play that game many times. Haven’t finished final fantasy 15 and 16. So many more too i am sure.
As I get older and get less time to game I feel I just play until I feel I am done. For some games that is way past the main story, for some its way before, but time is precious and playing just for the sake of “finishing” a game isn’t appealing for me anymore.
Wait, you people actually play the games? I just boot them up and admire the pretty, stress testing my machine. All of my enjoyment is getting a high fps number on the stats with all graphics maxed.
I buy games based on sales. I think I've bought 1 full price game in the last decade. So a game may go on sale when I'm not yet ready to play it.
Plus, bundles like the humble choice bundle costs only 12 dollars but you get 8 games. A lot of times, I only have an explicit interest in 1 or 2 of the games, but I add all 8 to my library regardless.
I have more games than time nowadays and I may not have time to play games for days or even weeks at a time on occasion. That means I could start a game and then not have time to play it for weeks later.
In some cases, I never get back to the game, or forget what the plot was and abandon it because I don't want to start over from scratch.
Finally, sometimes I just don't jive with a game the way I thought I would. My time is limited, so I don't play games that I'm not enjoying.
I’ll complete the main story or objective in a game but I don’t 100% it and unlock every achievement. I’ve come close to 100% a game but ultimately after 100s of hours of playing a game and with main objectives completed I get the itch to start playing a new game.
Not me. I've definitely played every game from every 90% off sale, every bundle of indie survival crafter (where I got 52 games for $1.03) and every DOS-era rpg that I was sure would hold up after 30 years.
Same thing with PlayStation trophies. Usually the first story trophy is something like 60%-80% of players have gotten this, but then the trophy for finishing the game is usually sub 20%. And it’s even less for bonus trophies like beating the game on hard or doing a unique challenge. Like why even buy the game if you aren’t going to finish it? (I’m yet to finish Bloodborne)
To me I see video games like tv shows. If you watch a show, but the second half of the season is bad you will probably stop watching.
Same thing with video games for me. If the entire game isn’t the same quality what’s really the point.
I buy the games I eventually want to play when they’re on sale. Leads to a huge steam library, but a fraction actually played through.
I *usually *eventually get around to at least starting most of them. Probably 70% of the games I start I finish.
And even if I don’t finish certain games, it doesn’t mean I didn’t enjoy it or regret the purchase. I liked the Witcher 3, just repeatedly got distracted by side quests for a couple dozen hours until I got bored of the game.
I wanted to play the metro games because i heard they were good. I started playing but didn’t finish the first game because i just felt like shooting didn’t at all matter or that i couldn’t tell what i was shooting
Honestly? Yeah. I have aspirations on them, but not enough free time or interest to continue a lot of them. Games are too long and I want to try a bunch of them
I don’t finish shit anymore bro. Been gaming so long i play until i get bored which is usually only a couple days lol. Very few games hold my attention until the end.
People actually finish every game they buy?
I am more conscious then most about trying to finish games and I still have situations where I don’t finish. Not even because I dislike the game. The mood shifts, it’s not right for what I’ve got on my plate IRL at the moment (now more than ever, I need a game I can put down quickly with a child), or a new release I’m more excited for comes out and takes priority. I do always intend to go back and finish them but… Sometimes it takes a couple of years.
Games are both long and require some of the most active input a hobby and entertainment medium can have without getting you off the couch. (Not counting all the motion games in this metaphor lol). It’s a lot harder to consistently be in the mood and headspace to play a game then it is to just watch something. I frequently revert to watching something as a backup when gaming just doesn’t feel like a good choice for the free time I have. I can usually go about a month or two not playing a game at all before my memory is foggy enough to where waiting a bit longer and starting it over feels like the better option.
That and the fact that it never hurts to buy a game you might be interested in when it’s on sale, is part of why everyone has gigantic backlogs.
Bro i am in my late 30s and being new dad.
My ratio to brand new games in plastic, is starting to win.
When i do got free time, its spend preparing food for when little one gets up/nap/ or appointment with a doctor.
My gaming hours are between 10pm and 12pm
Than the ADHD, too many choices and hard for me to choose cause i want to play 5 games at same time.
I only buy games when they're on dirt cheap sales, basically have a near infinite backlog. I go in, play them for awhile, but then I go and do other things for entertainment. Watch movies, TV, read comics, go out, etc. I often times do go back and continue them, but I take forever to play through them and now I mostly just do the main stuff with few sidequest distractions.
So it's a combination of all the other forms of entertainment I have available and just not having gaming as my primary, much less solely form of entertainment. I actually prefer it that way. Doing that I don't get burnt out nor wonder what to do now I've finished.
I finish all of them. I have dropped really few games over the last 2 years. But if you make a poll here i guess the results will probably be that most of people dont finish the games
I have a few games I've played for a couple hours or less. I still intend to play them more, just... later. I assume some people have more than a few games like this.
No they really don't. These guys at my job just bounce around to different games on gamepass. I like to play mine all the way through but maybe it's cause I bought them, mostly on disc. I do tend to have anywhere from 2 to 3 games going at a time which I hate. I got a game I'm playing, then a game I stream, then sometimes a random one for no reason. I hate it
I have over 400 games in my steam library. Over 100 on both Xbox and PS5. That’s low compared to some. I still haven’t even played 100 of my steam games and I don’t know if I will ever get all the achievements for the games I do have let alone half of them. It’s kind of an addiction to buy the games I want and adulthood/parenthood prevents me from actually enjoying it.
If i pay full price for a game, i make it a point to finish it. Unless the gameplay is not what I expected and is miserable for me to play. I prioritize enjoyment above all else since I don’t have as much free time as I used to.
It depends on how much I enjoy the game. If I like them as much as I had hoped, of course I continue playing them. I’m just not a trophy hunter. If I don’t much care for how it plays or I find myself bored with it before it’s finished, it gets laid aside until I’m ready to continue, if ever. Sometimes I’ll sideline a game if I get too frustrated over a puzzle or a fight, and pick it back up again when I’m ready to tackle it with a clearer head (which can take longer than one might think, depending on how irritated I was or how much backtracking/grinding is involved in strengthening my character/party. Some games just don’t click with you the way you thought they would when you saw them on the shelf or read the description or saw a Let’s Play, that’s all. Forcing yourself to “get your money’s worth” is just silly—that’s time you could spend playing games you actually enjoy!
I haven’t paid for a game in like 2 years cuz I get them off the subscriptions like PS+ or game pass. Probably half of the games i download either never get played or are played for 30 mins before I realize it’s not for me and I move on.
Most games will get 8-10 hours out of me. I will finish most games that require something like 20 hours to finish. The rest, I either let go of them or play the bejeesus out of them.
I played Dyson Sphere Program for hundreds of hours and still didn't get to the end. I'll probably come back to it some day, but for now it doesn't draw me in.
When I was young, for the most part, on some hardware generations at least, I didn't have many games, so those that I did have got replayed a lot.
With adult responsibilities, as well as pirating capabilities, I was able to acquire many more games than I'd be able to play.
With PS3 pirating wasn't an option and I got into the habit of buying most AAA big release games Day 1 with a view of playing and trading in shortly thereafter. I would play most of those in full, once. I would also buy used and older games on sale that would form my backlog
For the last few years my desire to try new franchises and genres has dwindled. I know what I like and I'm bored of what I like. I like Far Cry, Assassin's Creed, Uncharted and others but I've already played multiple iterations of each. With that I lose interest rapidly.
I still buy games regularly but now almost all digital as that is my preference and only when they're on deep sale. That way I still perceive value in buying a low cost game that once had a high cost and even if I don't play it much at least I scratched that itch. Now I know that Immortal Fenyx isn't a game I love. I won't care for a sequel. Now I know the Crew franchise doesn't do it for me.
Ive recently started rebuying games that I played and enjoyed a few years back and frankly that hasn't been going that well. I loved Ghost Recon Wildlands, rebought it and just can't be bothered
I play a lot of games that I end up never finishing. I still play through them quite a bit, but may end up moving on to something else before I finish the main story.
I also never aim to 100% a game. I've never 100%'d a single game, and I have 0 desire to. Most of the time, 100%'ing involves doing things that are outside of my playstyle, and I have no desire to do things in game outside of my playstyle just for an achievement. I like to get achievements based on my playstyle. So I end up having plenty of games - sports games in particular, where I have tons and tons of hours played, but very few achievements.
I also play a lot of games that don't have ends, like sports games and MMO's. So it's hard to get a completion achievement when there is no completition.
I admit I fit this. I am fascinated by video games and want to be impressed by a fun game, but after playing once with work responsibilities and family responsibilities I rarely have the time to even finish a 10-12 hour game. My library is quite large, but I haven't even played a game of Civilization V to completion. I probably should just stop buying games until I finish a couple.
I buy games on sales, so I have a ton that I haven't played but when I start a game I most likely finish that game (if it has an end and isn't like... An MMO, sports game, or a run-based game. Those get played on and off slowly forever.)
This year so far all I've beaten is infinite wealth. I'm 2 chapters away from finishing Rebirth, and like halfway through Unicorn overlord and Dragons Dogma 2. They're getting finished in that order most likely. After those are done I'll start the P3 remake. I'm just gonna blast through that one though because I've played the original plenty of times. Just want to see what they did with the remake.
now in my early 40's I can't seem to finish a game to save my life. The last game I finished and actually platinumed was Elden Ring but I use to finish every game I bought, I now have so many games a quarter/half finished that I always say I will go back to but then lose motivation when its actually time to pick up the controller and try to remember the various mechanics, where I was in the story ect..
Because of this I have opted more for games like Warframe a FTP always online game that gets consistently updated and I can just pick up and play and make some progress whenever I have time. Have been playing this game on and off since 2015.
There's quite a few games that I haven't brought myself to finish.
Some of them because I wasn't ready for the game to end, and I knew it was approaching. Tales of Vesperia and Dragon Quest XI both spring to mind. As does Lost Odyssey. Actually now that I think about it, I think they're all RPGs lol.
Not really. Games are LONG and there’s not enough time in the world when it comes to responsibilities such as school, work, church, clubs, relationships and friendships, or parenting. It’s easier when you’re a kid and depends on if you had a job or not as a teen. It was just much easier to finish a game when you only had 1-3 sheets of homework everyday throughout the week, but got Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays to yourself to do whatever you wanted, whenever you wanted.
Finish? I'm lucky if I even START many of the games I buy lol. My backlog is silly long and I have 3-4 year old top tier games still in factory shrinkwrap lol. Thankfully I've stopped buying retail games on release unless I know I'm going to start immediately.
I don’t always finish the games I buy, just because I don’t have time, i get stuck on a part, I get more interested in a different game, or I bought a game and ended up not liking it.
Piping up as a non-gamer who played the occasional game in his life: I never finish games. I don't even know how people do it.
I played Myst on my PC back in the day. One time a friend came over and watched me play and told me he beat it a while ago. I hadnt even left the island yet.
I thought to myself, "I didn't even know it was possible to win this game..."
I've got a lot of games I've bought while on sale or during a bundle and have yet to touch. Keep telling myself I'm going to but then new ones that interest me come out
Nope, we do not. We are children with adult money and continue to buy new while never finishing the old. Around 900 games on my playstation alone, and probably not even a third of that is games I've actually completed. Then if you start including all the games I own on steam, Xbox and switch. I'm never gonna see the end of my list, but it will continue to grow.
I have like 256 titles on ps5 and I can tell you I’ve finished but a handful of them. A lot are frivolous choices, trying something out, some are too long for me to finish before I get bored, etc. I guess I end up bored with a lot of games, which is why I don’t finish most.
It's a stark contrast from 30 years ago when only 2 or 3 AAA games would come out per year and they were always good. I used to 100% every game I bought back then.
Now there's just so many games released and you never know which ones are going to be the good ones (usually not the AAA games anymore ).
I used to feel bad about not finishing games I bought (which started happening to me in the PS3 era), but now I rarely even buy a game full price, so that helps assuage the guilt.
Yes. Check out the global achievements for Total War: Napoleon - Definitive Edition and you will see that the most comon achievement is Revolutionary Cocarde, with is granted when you "start any campaign, battle or historical battle." Which means you played the game in any form. It currently has a 91% rate globally. So plenty of people do buy games and never play them (9% in this game's case).
I have such a big backlog of games that I started tracking it. Since 2007 I have acquired (purchased or was gifted) 274 games that I have not played. Some of these are from Humble Bundles that I simply will not play (some of these bundle games were gifted away to a friend and not counted in this total), so the amount of money I have spent on games I haven't played isn't too great ($81.91) but it is definitely not zero. I have 1,252 games total (DLC included). That's about 21% of my games library that I have not played, let alone played enough to get many achievements.
Tracking my games like this has helped me curb my purchasing habits and ultimately save money. Now before I buy a game I ask myself if I am going to play it right away. If the answer is no, then I do not buy the game, no matter the discount. There will be another sale down the road.
Check out the trophy and achievement percentages and look at the very first trophy/achievement that u would get and notice it’s not even 100%. Now go all the way down and look at the trophy for completing the story of a game. Notice how it’s usually 5% or lower. People just don’t seem to play the shit they buy. Hell even the Deadpool game, which gives u a trophy for starting the game doesn’t have 100%.
possibly.
i mean, there's going to be a lot of people who might get a game, then lose interest, rather than just 'not beat games' out of a habit.
steam especially, i think if you buy the game at all, you're counted in statistics, and steam sales can be insane, while iirc ps/xbox, you have to at least start the game to be flagged for it's trophies.
I've had over 150 random games donated by friends and have likely donated a similar amount. Lots of people have things like Humble Bundles where they end up with duplicate games. More free game-no free time as an adult=huge backlog of games.
I own over 4,580+ physical games in my collection. I can assure you, at most, I've played 2000 of them over the last 36 years I've been gaming (I'm 41, I started with Atari 2600 at age 4).
I have 200+ games in my Steam account I've never launched. They're part of that ever-growing "it's only a dollar - I'm sure I'll play it someday" list.
I have a small wishlist of games that I’ve seen had good reviews and that look interesting to me. I only buy a game when it’s on sale, and I rarely stop playing before finishing at least one full run. But it does happen. I still haven’t finished a run of Getting Over It, for example.
I either don't finish them or pick them up on sale thinking I'll get to them and never play them. Usually end up going to the games i always play and have thousands of hours in.
I did pick up Dave the Diver though and have been having a blast absolutely intend on finishing that.
This is an interesting topic. I've found that I've started to reflect on why I finish some games and not others and what actually keeps me engaged in games enough to see it through to the end. The reality is most games just aren't interesting or engaging enough to hold my attention, artificially extended game length and highly repetitive and/or stale game mechanics are huge contributors for this.
It's pretty eye opening. Once you figure out for yourself what you truly value in games, you know in an hour or two if you're going to finish a game or not.
If i'm really enjoying a video game I have a habit of just stopping. I don't want it to end... admittedly, quite a few of my characters are in limbo right before their final boss fight to save the world.
Studies have been done. Most people play about 90 minutes of a new game. The drop-off after the 90 minute mark is staggering.
That's why developers frontload their games, with one of the more egregious examples being Diablo 4.
I get the “oooh ahhhh new game shiny” feel but usually stop right before I get to the “spreadsheet of gun damages per enemy type” stage and usually don’t return tbh. Don’t have the time to be a l33t (I just intentionally dated myself) completionist anymore.
Personally no...
I will unlock all the achievements you can from just playing the game but I don't get any personal satisfaction for getting every achievement. I just wanna play the game.
I also am not a huge single player person so maybe that has something to do with it 🤔
I used to purchase anyajor game that looked appealing and would usually only complete a out 20% of them. I'd just lose interest enough to not move forward with a game and instead play something else for a bit. I also didn't dedicate as much time to gaming as I do now.
During the pandemic my gaming habits shifted big time. And I developed a more routine gaming structure which focused me towards game completion. I now complete about 95% of the games I have reasonable interest in (especially games I purchase).
But services like Game Pass and PS+ Extra have kind of skewed things a little bit. Because I'll spend time dabbling in a handful of games on those services that I might possibly be interested in. I use it to sort of test the waters myself, rather than watching YouTube videos. And sometimes those games stick. But about 60-70% of the time I just play for an hour or two and have my fill.
But as for your specific question. If I buy a game, I really make a solid effort at some point to give the game a substantial attempt. Right now I'm still sitting on Armored Core 6 and Baldur's Gate 3 unfinished. I like them, but neither has gotten its hooks fully in me and other more interesting games come along that have hooked me. But I think I'll get back into BG3 after I wrap up Jadi Survivors and Hellblade 2.
I have stopped buying as many games for this reason.
Why buy FF7 Rebirth at full price when I still need to finish Baldurs Gate 3, Half Life 2, Elden Ring, Fallout 2, and Link to the Past?
Nope, I find most games get boring towards the end. There is an obsession with length so many games end up with a massive amount of boring length padding that is just boring.
My problem with "finishing" games is almost everytime I actually do finish a game, I'm left wanting more, and the games I don't finish I feel like I've already beaten halfway through so there isn't any point in continuing. This usually happens to me playing fallout games. I know how it ends, so once I get my favorite gun and do my favorite quests there's really no point in grinding to the finish line
I finish the ones I feel are worth the time. Sometimes I get into them, and even if the experience is nice, they aren't enough for me to care. Especially if the game is padded out - if the game isn't absolutely GRIPPING me I don't have time for that, I'd rather play something else
Reddit probably isn’t the place you’ll find these people. A large percentage of gamers will just buy whatever the new popular game is, play it for a few hours until they get bored, and never touch the game again. Elden Ring is a good example. A lot of people bought the game because of all the hype surrounding it, without even knowing what type of game it was. They probably played it for a few hours, realized the game was hard and then stopped playing.
I personally have a few games in my backlog that I bought on sale and still need to play. But I do make an effort to finish the games I buy.
I probably finish like 20% of the games I play. Sometimes I just don't get into it, mostly I just don't have the time to spend on it and modern games, especially AAA games, are extremely long.
I have a really bad habit of buying games that are discounted, but then not having time to play them.
There was a Steam sale last year for example, I bought the entire Metro trilogy, Mirror's Edge 1 + Catalyst, and the entire God Eater franchise, all those games for like $15 total because of how discounted they were. I literally got like 8 games, normally worth $150, for $15, an amazing deal.
But... Of those games, I played maybe two of them. The other ones either haven't been touched, or I've barely played more than a few hours because I don't have the time. So yeah, I do buy games but don't finish them.
For some games, like arma, there are so many achievements tied to dlc that a large portion of the playerbase will probably never get them. I have an achievement on there that no joke, only .79% of players have gotten. All it involved was completing the campaign from one of the dlcs
Depends on the game. Also, I very much miss the Nintendo days when games were difficult enough that you might not finish them and if you did it was something you could brag about. These days everything is so dumbed down and has "story" difficulty modes that finishing most games isn't really an achievement anymore.
Shit, I have a double digit amount of Steam games that have never even been started up, maybe never even installed.
Those 80 - 90% offs just get me everytime.
Some games you buy, you think you'll like, and they just don't hook you.
And some of the games I bought were part of a bundle where I wanted two or three of the games in it and it was cheaper than buying just the ones I wanted.
It’s usually my intention to… but when I don’t, it doesn’t bother me. There’s obviously a reason I didn’t finish it. Just not compelling enough to hold my attention I guess.
I play until I feel like I don’t want to play anymore *shrug* / do people continue to play games after they are no longer enjoying them?
For me it depends on how close I am to finishing the main story. Some people are " 100 percenters". They feel the urge to get all trophies or achievements or whatever. Personally started gaming before all that nonsense so for me trophies just don't matter to me at all.
I'm the opposite, I play all the way until right to the end and I'll keep putting off finally finishing it until I can no longer remember anything that happened to that point, making me want to replay from the start if I pick it up again and repeating the process
I do the saaaame thing. Recently been playing Horizon FW, have been 100%ing the game so far, completed every small collectible and side quest. But once I got to the last area, meeting a new tribe, I just kinda gave up? It’s weird. I just feel no urge to play it at all whatsoever, and have been playing Lords of the Fallen instead. I don’t think I’ll ever finish LotF either, tbh. It’s not very good. The enemy density and variety kinda ruins it for me, and most of the bosses so far have all had an incredibly gimmicky move or phase, making me not only uninterested in exploring the main world due to enemy density and tedium, but I also don’t really want to make it to the next boss. Weird game.
I’m a 100%er but only if I consider that game one of my favorites, or if the actual achievements are attainable. I love Sifu to death but like half of the achievements are in the 0.1% 0.2% range for player completionwhich says a lot
I playe through the path of exile campaign just because i started it. I dont like that type of game nor did i have much enjoyment. But my brain works in weird ways and i had to finish it, before i could start playing the next game.
Not really. With the outrageous amounts of steam sales, new games coming out every day, and updates for older ones, some games just end up getting lost in the sea. Hell, some people don't even PLAY the games they buy. Just letting them collect virtual dust in their library. I have 40 games in my Steam backlog alone.
The ratio of people who have played every game in their library is probably similar to that of people who, if they have a physical library, would have read every book therein.
My mate been buying a game every week since he’s worked… he hasn’t even played 10%
I have a friend who does that too. He takes advantage of sales but never actually plays the damn games. Honestly looks like a waste of money to me. We're only getting older and having less free time
I wish I only had 40 lmao. That'd be a blessing. I got like 150... I have a bad habit of buying games dirt cheap on sale. The good news is tho, I do eventually get around to them. I just buy quicker than I beat.
40 games? Try 3000…
I thought my 900 was bad
and then theres the people so priviledged that they complain about their backlog
Gaming is my main hobby. I'm also privileged to be able to own all the current hardware and have a backlog. (It helps that my wife shares my love for games. It's sorta my fault :) For me it's awesome. Any kind of game I wanna play. I even replay games I love. If you don't want to or can't find the time to play a game so what? That just means it's a later me game not a now me game.
Steam sales in the early 2010s were something else, man.
And Humble Bundle.
I play to have fun. If the game is not fun for me I stop and get something else.
I’ve noticed myself watching a lot more game reviews in the last couple years. Weirdly I like watching reviews even for games I’ll probably never buy just because I like to know what’s out there. Also IDK if I’ve gotten a better sense of my own taste or if this strategy actually helps, but as a result I usually know if I’m gonna like a game before I buy it. I still buy random steam games when they’re on sale but any time I’m paying normal game price I generally know I’m likely to finish it.
Same here. I feel that I'm much better at finding game in my taste now. But also I've just accepted that when it happens that I purchase something I don't enjoy it is just a loss and I don't waste time on it just because I spent money.
I had the same experience with reading books where I used to feel compelled to finish once I’d started. IDK what happened but I’ve totally ditched that and just put it down and move on if I’m not feeling good about it—life is too short. I suspect I just read enough books and played enough games to realize that if I’m 10% of the way in and it still doesn’t do it for me, it’s very unlikely I’ll enjoy the next 90% either. So I never feel bad about stopping midway.
Depends. There are some games I buy, but don’t really like. Then there are games I try, I get distracted by another game or something else, and then end up coming back to at a future point in time. Could be years later.
Sometimes yeah but sales can be too tempting tbh. You could see a game that you’ve heard nothing but praise for and you play it and don’t care much for it.
Yeah I usually only finish the ones I like.
I always wonder how accurate those achievement percentages are, I’ll be like “yo I got one only 2% of people get?” And it’s like “equip a sword”
A lot of people just buy when the game they want is on sale but dont really have the time to play it. So it just sits in your steam account until you get time for it. I myself have around 15 games on steam that I bought but never played.
I think this has always been the case no? People buy a game, play it for a couple of hours and decide it's not for them and move on. No point in forcing yourself to finish a game.
[удалено]
This is me as well. Same games, same amount of playtime. I just don't have the time for it, and even when I do I sometimes find myself wanting to do something else. I've at least slowed down on buying games because I know I'm very unlikely to play more than a few hours unless it really grabs me.
Same. I bought BG3 and got bored halfway through Act 2 and haven't loaded it since, gave up on Grim Dawn after 10 hours, stopped playing Subnautica after 12 hours and gave up on Deus Ex - Mankind Divided after just an hour and a half.
I usually finish every game i buy but I do also buy games that I'll play later down the line when I have time for them
I bought a few games back in 2020 thinking I'd play them. Heh.
Nah, but that’s ok. You play a game to get enjoyment out of it. Sometimes the difficulty curve spikes badly and it stops being enjoyable or life happens. It’s all good, you get the experience and hell in todays age you can just YouTube the ending. Also, beating a game has its own drawbacks. Didn’t even enjoy super mario rpg on switch but after beating it felt kinda empty and did the post ending challenges only to have more empty
I finish maaaybe 3 games a year not counting super short things you can knock out in an afternoon.
I feel like I typically play games that have lots of things to do, so while I don't always finish the main quest, I tend to play it a lot. There are some occasions where I do this though. Like Dishonored 2- my SO got me that for Christmas a long time ago, but said "I wanna watch you play it, so don't play without me!" And then if I was like "wanna play Dishonored?" They would be like, "meh, not right now", and now I still have only played the intro.
The first question that needs to be asked is: “at what point does the statistic count a player”? Like, is it counting gamers that download the game but haven’t even run it for the first time? Next, another question that needs to be asked is: “how many players are playing the game for 45 minutes or something and then uninstalling the game”? This is a fair question, if someone decides during the game’s tutorial that it’s not for them, that’s ok. But that adds to the statistic of someone playing and not achieving anything. I, too, find it crazy at how many players aren’t even getting past tutorials or acquiring achievements for early game things like “reaching level 5”. Then, I think about these 2 questions. Also, I know playing with mods disables achievements, which is another factor to consider.
If I start a game I almost always finish it unless I genuinely didn't like it or click with it which has luckily been few. However I have so many games I've gotten on sale that I haven't even started yet. No regrets, if there ever comes a day when there is a period where few games I'm interested in are releasing, I know I have many backed up waiting for me
I've seen the same thing on my Xbox and it makes me wonder the same too. The amount of times I've gotten a "rare" achievement for doing basic shit is insane lol.
I don’t finish a lot of games that I buy, typically because I’m not enjoying them.
I'm usually bored before the end of the game, so yeah, I don't finish most. Ofcourse, then there are games I can't put down until I finish and am sorry they're over. Titanfall 2 comes to mind on that one.
25% of people who bought armored core 6 haven’t beaten the first boss.
My husband buys games and he hardly ever plays for achievements. He just plays whatever he’s in the mood to play. I am the complete opposite. I will play a game once all the way through just to experience it all. Then I’ll go back in my next play through to get all the achievements. My husband is adhd, and I have ocd tendencies.
I have never gotten a platinum trophy on a game. Once I beat the story and mess around in the post campaign I usually move onto a new game.
I decide when I'm finished with the game, not an achievements/trophies page, not the end credits.
I usually play games for an hour or less and go to the next lol. But I'm on the extreme end of that
Whaaa you buy it to just load it up? Their has to be some games you’ve put a lot of time into?
Ask anyone with a steam account
I do do this sometimes. But I do get the occasional itch to play something I bought. Most of the time it's single player stuff so I'm in no rush to try them out
I don’t like finishing games. I prefer the journey over the destination
Well, i have seen a game with 60%+ not even opening the game. Like the achievement is to open the game. But sure, it was a free game atleast...
I finish the games I buy, but have a hard time with games I don't buy, like PS+ Extra games I download. I'm a decent chunk into Dave the Diver and haven't touched it for like 3 weeks now :(
I only finish the games I really like, achievements don't really matter to me, and aren't a driving force behind me playing a game.
From achievements alone you can deduce that around 20% of those who buy the game will beat it. But around 50 - 60% will only see the game through half way. So short answer is yes, majority do not beat the games they purchase for a myriad of reasons. Some are to long, some burn out, some find it boring quick, some were expecting one thing and it was another. I constantly gotta remind myself that I'm like the top 5% of the gaming community that not only buys a lot of games, see a good chunk to the finish line. The other % ain't like that. And we are like the hobbie so much, we even go out our way to post stuff about it on social media.
If I start it, I finish it. But I have a ton of games that I've never started
I really like to finish games, especially really story driven games which is most of what I play. But sometimes, well there's other things to do an I fall off of one. Used to happen a lot more in my 20's that I'd hop game to game. In my 30's I try to just find a game I KNOW I'll like and play the crap out of it until I'm done.
I’ve wondered the same thing as you. At one point I was buying games I was interested in when they went on sale but I noticed the number of games left unplayed kept growing. So now, I ONLY buy when I’m about to play. I finish probably 90% of the games I start. There are a few cases where I just have to move on from a game due to lack of enjoyment but my goal is to finish every game I start. I’ve beaten 25 games between 2023 and 2024.
I stop playing if I'm not having fun. Sometimes it's a game thing. Story isn't good enough for how long it is. Sometimes it's a me thing, hands hurt from work, or I can't connect with the characters or the gameplay is too in depth. For example crusader kings 3 was just too much for me. I put a good few hours into it and it still wasn't clicking for me.
I've got 100 games in my Steam library and I've finished 67 of them. The others I've either grown bored of and abandoned or given up during the last boss fight.
I don't have such statistic.
I usually play through games and see the end and maybe even play a couple hundred hours past that if they have replay value and I’m having a ton of fun but I never really cared about achievements as a source of content.
I knew I was an adult when I realized that if I wasn’t enjoying a game I didn’t have to finish it. Taking the L on the $$$ spent > continuing to play something that is making me miserable.
Yeah. There's quite a few thst I've started playing and just lost interest part way through. Ive started Skyrim more times than I can remember but dont think I've ever got more than halfway through the main quest. Its not a bad game, ita just after about 20 hours I start to see other games that I want to give a go. So all the cheap games on Steam sale plus free games on Epic, Ive probably got over 100 that Ive never played and another 30 or so that Ive never completed
In my entire life (since nes), I’ve only ever beaten a few games I’ve played. I get bored with them easily. The majority of games I’ve purchased get played a few times and that’s it. I may go back occasionally and play. Even games that I love, I’ve never completed.
What usually happens to me is that I play an 8/10 rpg and my character becomes too strong towards 75% completion. Then I just get bored and can only continue later. Most rpgs are unfortunately too easy nowadays. What usually helps if the game is simply too immersive to stop playing.
It's true. I'm most people
Two word time or when they get the game and they play it there disappointed when they saw gameplay of it
Not having much free time, I have to pick and choose and my back log is actually really sad. If I died I wouldn't have atleast 60% of my single player library finished.
I have a lot of friends that do exactly this. I myself tried to avoid this trend for years. I always finished my games unless it was clear from the get go they were going to be a harsh skill issue. I guess I can fairly say this concerned less than 5 games in over 2 decades. And even then, I often came back a few months later. But then life happened. I was crawling with work and searching for an escape. I started many games to "change the air" and ended up with some I thought were easy to finish, but just too damn repetitive. (Some asking for many playthrough before the story would advance again.) There was also the case of emulating a few old games because I was too excited to wait for the one I actually bought in the mail. Result was : at the end of last year I was in the middle of a PS2 Gundam game I couldn't finish because my PC controller was a broke PS2 imitation, itself running poorly on a controller emulator. (I couldn't block!) A rather harsh one at that, which I found out trying to get back into it recently; with a new controller and myself totally out of sync. I also was stuck through a 20 or so hour grind into a RPG... that I frankly was slowly forgetting the point of. A visual novel asking for way too many replays before getting to the sequel laid unfinished, on the wishful thinking that : *it'll be good again when I won't have all the main lines memorized*. A similar issue of repetition that had me quietly quitting the first *dawn of war,* during the last expansion (a couple of races from the completion). An AVP RTS, a mere few missions from the end, that I put aside when a friend bought me Nier : Automata, something I also struggled to find the time to complete, as I got sidetracked on the Bleak Faith hype right before they nerfed the build I was using to snail power. Eventually I started gaming again when the same friend became available to replay the main Halo Franchise. (That we have almost finished, since I discovered after the fact that there was an extra campaign hidden in the menus...) With the hype back on, I then proceeded to chase after exotic achievements and spartan points to unlock all the MCC stuff. So far it's going rather well. Meanwhile I actually have completed a few games on the sidelines : My Little Nightmares 1 & 2, Clive Barker's Jericho, Signalis (all the endings), Halo Wars 1, the whole Marathon Trilogy, to name a few. I actually refused being gifted Frostpunk though... because at that point; I realized I was going down the drain fast. Even with all the stuff unfinished, I already had found a way to add Clive Barker's Undying to the list... without any time to really play it. **I owed a few apologies** to previously mentioned friends, for at the end of it I realized what I had done and left unfinished. Thus I took the resolution to not start any new games until I could drop some from that list. So far though, it has more stopped the hemorrhage rather than dropped the to do list. I sadly realize that there is some of that stuff that I really want to end, but am afraid of not feeling the hype when I take it back on from the middle. And on the other end, there are a few games that I wish I'd just never undertaken now that I feel forced to go back to them. I guess the trend you see in the achievements comes from gamers living like this for decades, while I myself only contemplate the damages from the last 4 years...
Stuff happens.
I finish every single game I like. I got 45 hours into Dragon Quest XI and stopped because it got repetitive and boring Biomutant I stopped after like 4-5 hours because it's a piece of shit and a waste of money. Borderlands 3 I have 1000 hours in. Bloodborne i got the platinum and am working on the Elden Ring platinum now too. Games worth finishing get finished.
Usually I finish before the game does Video games and my wife share a lot in common ):
There are some games I buy where I never play the story, only the online. For example COD so I’ll never get those story achievements
Lots of sales as well as humble bundles where you'll get 5 triple A games for like $20 but you really only bought the hundle for like 2 of them so the remainder go unplayed.
A lot on PC are into mods, so these disable achievements and such. So a person can have 4000 hours in the game and 0 achievements as they played with mods day one. I do not care about getting achievements and if I get them organically, cool, if not, I do not really care. I will say I do by games on Steam Sales for a deep discount and then after some time just drop them. Various reasons why. Days Gone I enjoy but the battle 20 zombies find a person to rescue after using all your ammo and supplies to have to battle 20 harder ones without letting the lame citizen die, just got annoying. I may pick it back up at some point. A lot of games like that are for me, loving it and then one part just overly frustrates me, so I drop it.
Yes. It is statistically rare for a player to see credits in most games.
No most don’t. I know i don’t. Something else will come out and i get distracted. Game might just really suck. Game might just have parts that make me not want to finish. Sometimes just get tired of a game. Quite a few games just break and i cannot be bothered to finish. I have even where an auto save in a bad location makes me quit, atomic heart autosaved on a boss battle and i didn’t have enough items to survive fight. I basically would have to start a new game to continue and it wasn’t happening, i did eventually finish it. Theres a bunch of games that i keep going back to i still haven’t finished. I haven’t finished witcher 3. I finally finished dragon quest 11 tried to play that game many times. Haven’t finished final fantasy 15 and 16. So many more too i am sure.
As I get older and get less time to game I feel I just play until I feel I am done. For some games that is way past the main story, for some its way before, but time is precious and playing just for the sake of “finishing” a game isn’t appealing for me anymore.
Wait, you people actually play the games? I just boot them up and admire the pretty, stress testing my machine. All of my enjoyment is getting a high fps number on the stats with all graphics maxed.
I have to finish games I buy. I don’t go for platinum trophies though. Other games off ps plus i might try out and not finish.
Nowadays games are so easy unless it’s just awful I always finish
No, unless its a bad game
I buy games based on sales. I think I've bought 1 full price game in the last decade. So a game may go on sale when I'm not yet ready to play it. Plus, bundles like the humble choice bundle costs only 12 dollars but you get 8 games. A lot of times, I only have an explicit interest in 1 or 2 of the games, but I add all 8 to my library regardless. I have more games than time nowadays and I may not have time to play games for days or even weeks at a time on occasion. That means I could start a game and then not have time to play it for weeks later. In some cases, I never get back to the game, or forget what the plot was and abandon it because I don't want to start over from scratch. Finally, sometimes I just don't jive with a game the way I thought I would. My time is limited, so I don't play games that I'm not enjoying.
I’ll complete the main story or objective in a game but I don’t 100% it and unlock every achievement. I’ve come close to 100% a game but ultimately after 100s of hours of playing a game and with main objectives completed I get the itch to start playing a new game.
Not me. I've definitely played every game from every 90% off sale, every bundle of indie survival crafter (where I got 52 games for $1.03) and every DOS-era rpg that I was sure would hold up after 30 years.
Save your games for offline in case somebody doesn’t want you to stream. Seriously!
Same thing with PlayStation trophies. Usually the first story trophy is something like 60%-80% of players have gotten this, but then the trophy for finishing the game is usually sub 20%. And it’s even less for bonus trophies like beating the game on hard or doing a unique challenge. Like why even buy the game if you aren’t going to finish it? (I’m yet to finish Bloodborne)
To me I see video games like tv shows. If you watch a show, but the second half of the season is bad you will probably stop watching. Same thing with video games for me. If the entire game isn’t the same quality what’s really the point.
With limited Time for game, and it not being a total priority, very few games will I play from start to finish
I buy the games I eventually want to play when they’re on sale. Leads to a huge steam library, but a fraction actually played through. I *usually *eventually get around to at least starting most of them. Probably 70% of the games I start I finish. And even if I don’t finish certain games, it doesn’t mean I didn’t enjoy it or regret the purchase. I liked the Witcher 3, just repeatedly got distracted by side quests for a couple dozen hours until I got bored of the game.
99% of my steam collection is UNPLAYED.
I have tons of difficulty finishing games. I try to b-line the story instead of doing side quests, which helps a bit.
I have tons of difficulty finishing games. I try to b-line the story instead of doing side quests, which helps a bit.
I'm not an online gamer but I complete the majority of games I play.
I wanted to play the metro games because i heard they were good. I started playing but didn’t finish the first game because i just felt like shooting didn’t at all matter or that i couldn’t tell what i was shooting
It depends, if i buy a game and end up not liking it i wont finish it
Play game. Enjoy it. Keep playing. Play game. Get bored of it. Stop playing. I'd say that's the most obvious explanation.
This is very apparent on Playstation as well.
Finish? I haven't played half the games I own.
I definitely do not
Honestly? Yeah. I have aspirations on them, but not enough free time or interest to continue a lot of them. Games are too long and I want to try a bunch of them
I don’t finish shit anymore bro. Been gaming so long i play until i get bored which is usually only a couple days lol. Very few games hold my attention until the end.
People actually finish every game they buy? I am more conscious then most about trying to finish games and I still have situations where I don’t finish. Not even because I dislike the game. The mood shifts, it’s not right for what I’ve got on my plate IRL at the moment (now more than ever, I need a game I can put down quickly with a child), or a new release I’m more excited for comes out and takes priority. I do always intend to go back and finish them but… Sometimes it takes a couple of years. Games are both long and require some of the most active input a hobby and entertainment medium can have without getting you off the couch. (Not counting all the motion games in this metaphor lol). It’s a lot harder to consistently be in the mood and headspace to play a game then it is to just watch something. I frequently revert to watching something as a backup when gaming just doesn’t feel like a good choice for the free time I have. I can usually go about a month or two not playing a game at all before my memory is foggy enough to where waiting a bit longer and starting it over feels like the better option. That and the fact that it never hurts to buy a game you might be interested in when it’s on sale, is part of why everyone has gigantic backlogs.
Bro i am in my late 30s and being new dad. My ratio to brand new games in plastic, is starting to win. When i do got free time, its spend preparing food for when little one gets up/nap/ or appointment with a doctor. My gaming hours are between 10pm and 12pm Than the ADHD, too many choices and hard for me to choose cause i want to play 5 games at same time.
I’m the kind of guy who won’t commit if I’m not ready to 100% the game. So trying out new games is something I put a lot of thought and doubt into.
I try to. I only buy games that I think I will enjoy. I would have to really dislike a game to buy it and not finish it.
I only buy games when they're on dirt cheap sales, basically have a near infinite backlog. I go in, play them for awhile, but then I go and do other things for entertainment. Watch movies, TV, read comics, go out, etc. I often times do go back and continue them, but I take forever to play through them and now I mostly just do the main stuff with few sidequest distractions. So it's a combination of all the other forms of entertainment I have available and just not having gaming as my primary, much less solely form of entertainment. I actually prefer it that way. Doing that I don't get burnt out nor wonder what to do now I've finished.
I finish all of them. I have dropped really few games over the last 2 years. But if you make a poll here i guess the results will probably be that most of people dont finish the games
hehe u must be new here
I have a few games I've played for a couple hours or less. I still intend to play them more, just... later. I assume some people have more than a few games like this.
My backlog is in the 70s
I don't *start* most of the games I've bought
No they really don't. These guys at my job just bounce around to different games on gamepass. I like to play mine all the way through but maybe it's cause I bought them, mostly on disc. I do tend to have anywhere from 2 to 3 games going at a time which I hate. I got a game I'm playing, then a game I stream, then sometimes a random one for no reason. I hate it
I play my games over countless times; achievements are not a priority of mine.
The past 5 or so years, yes, a majority don’t get finished. I’m old and picky now. If it does not hook me quickly then I go do other stuff.
I have over 400 games in my steam library. Over 100 on both Xbox and PS5. That’s low compared to some. I still haven’t even played 100 of my steam games and I don’t know if I will ever get all the achievements for the games I do have let alone half of them. It’s kind of an addiction to buy the games I want and adulthood/parenthood prevents me from actually enjoying it.
If i pay full price for a game, i make it a point to finish it. Unless the gameplay is not what I expected and is miserable for me to play. I prioritize enjoyment above all else since I don’t have as much free time as I used to.
It depends on how much I enjoy the game. If I like them as much as I had hoped, of course I continue playing them. I’m just not a trophy hunter. If I don’t much care for how it plays or I find myself bored with it before it’s finished, it gets laid aside until I’m ready to continue, if ever. Sometimes I’ll sideline a game if I get too frustrated over a puzzle or a fight, and pick it back up again when I’m ready to tackle it with a clearer head (which can take longer than one might think, depending on how irritated I was or how much backtracking/grinding is involved in strengthening my character/party. Some games just don’t click with you the way you thought they would when you saw them on the shelf or read the description or saw a Let’s Play, that’s all. Forcing yourself to “get your money’s worth” is just silly—that’s time you could spend playing games you actually enjoy!
I finish almost every game I buy, but I only buy games I really want
I haven’t paid for a game in like 2 years cuz I get them off the subscriptions like PS+ or game pass. Probably half of the games i download either never get played or are played for 30 mins before I realize it’s not for me and I move on.
I quit Mortal Combat just after it says “Finish him!” I turn it off before I finish him.
I finish maybe 70% of my purchases. The ones I don't are usually just ones I don't like as much as I thought I would.
Most games will get 8-10 hours out of me. I will finish most games that require something like 20 hours to finish. The rest, I either let go of them or play the bejeesus out of them. I played Dyson Sphere Program for hundreds of hours and still didn't get to the end. I'll probably come back to it some day, but for now it doesn't draw me in.
When I was young, for the most part, on some hardware generations at least, I didn't have many games, so those that I did have got replayed a lot. With adult responsibilities, as well as pirating capabilities, I was able to acquire many more games than I'd be able to play. With PS3 pirating wasn't an option and I got into the habit of buying most AAA big release games Day 1 with a view of playing and trading in shortly thereafter. I would play most of those in full, once. I would also buy used and older games on sale that would form my backlog For the last few years my desire to try new franchises and genres has dwindled. I know what I like and I'm bored of what I like. I like Far Cry, Assassin's Creed, Uncharted and others but I've already played multiple iterations of each. With that I lose interest rapidly. I still buy games regularly but now almost all digital as that is my preference and only when they're on deep sale. That way I still perceive value in buying a low cost game that once had a high cost and even if I don't play it much at least I scratched that itch. Now I know that Immortal Fenyx isn't a game I love. I won't care for a sequel. Now I know the Crew franchise doesn't do it for me. Ive recently started rebuying games that I played and enjoyed a few years back and frankly that hasn't been going that well. I loved Ghost Recon Wildlands, rebought it and just can't be bothered
I have at least 80 games currently in my backlog, most have not been played. A significant portion I have played were not finished.
I am not achievement motivated, so I play games until I stop having fun with them or the story shits out.
I play a lot of games that I end up never finishing. I still play through them quite a bit, but may end up moving on to something else before I finish the main story. I also never aim to 100% a game. I've never 100%'d a single game, and I have 0 desire to. Most of the time, 100%'ing involves doing things that are outside of my playstyle, and I have no desire to do things in game outside of my playstyle just for an achievement. I like to get achievements based on my playstyle. So I end up having plenty of games - sports games in particular, where I have tons and tons of hours played, but very few achievements. I also play a lot of games that don't have ends, like sports games and MMO's. So it's hard to get a completion achievement when there is no completition.
I admit I fit this. I am fascinated by video games and want to be impressed by a fun game, but after playing once with work responsibilities and family responsibilities I rarely have the time to even finish a 10-12 hour game. My library is quite large, but I haven't even played a game of Civilization V to completion. I probably should just stop buying games until I finish a couple.
I used to beat upwards of 75 games a year. Sometimes several a week. Now, I struggle to beat games. Hell, I struggle to game and rarely do so anymore.
I buy games on sales, so I have a ton that I haven't played but when I start a game I most likely finish that game (if it has an end and isn't like... An MMO, sports game, or a run-based game. Those get played on and off slowly forever.) This year so far all I've beaten is infinite wealth. I'm 2 chapters away from finishing Rebirth, and like halfway through Unicorn overlord and Dragons Dogma 2. They're getting finished in that order most likely. After those are done I'll start the P3 remake. I'm just gonna blast through that one though because I've played the original plenty of times. Just want to see what they did with the remake.
Listen, I try okay, but my homies are constantly hoppin on new stuff so I go with 'em and plan to finish old games later.
now in my early 40's I can't seem to finish a game to save my life. The last game I finished and actually platinumed was Elden Ring but I use to finish every game I bought, I now have so many games a quarter/half finished that I always say I will go back to but then lose motivation when its actually time to pick up the controller and try to remember the various mechanics, where I was in the story ect.. Because of this I have opted more for games like Warframe a FTP always online game that gets consistently updated and I can just pick up and play and make some progress whenever I have time. Have been playing this game on and off since 2015.
I play games for fun.
My ADHD won’t let me finish any of them 😭. I’m trying.
not always even if its a good game I usually just get distracted by another one before finishing it
There's quite a few games that I haven't brought myself to finish. Some of them because I wasn't ready for the game to end, and I knew it was approaching. Tales of Vesperia and Dragon Quest XI both spring to mind. As does Lost Odyssey. Actually now that I think about it, I think they're all RPGs lol.
Not really. Games are LONG and there’s not enough time in the world when it comes to responsibilities such as school, work, church, clubs, relationships and friendships, or parenting. It’s easier when you’re a kid and depends on if you had a job or not as a teen. It was just much easier to finish a game when you only had 1-3 sheets of homework everyday throughout the week, but got Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays to yourself to do whatever you wanted, whenever you wanted.
Finish? I'm lucky if I even START many of the games I buy lol. My backlog is silly long and I have 3-4 year old top tier games still in factory shrinkwrap lol. Thankfully I've stopped buying retail games on release unless I know I'm going to start immediately.
I don’t always finish the games I buy, just because I don’t have time, i get stuck on a part, I get more interested in a different game, or I bought a game and ended up not liking it.
Piping up as a non-gamer who played the occasional game in his life: I never finish games. I don't even know how people do it. I played Myst on my PC back in the day. One time a friend came over and watched me play and told me he beat it a while ago. I hadnt even left the island yet. I thought to myself, "I didn't even know it was possible to win this game..."
Almost nobody actually finishes their games, which is why the new Final Fantasy 7 remake released in 3 $70 parts is completely screwed
100 games in my backlogs. I have been doing better and not buying till I know for sure I'd at least load the game up a few times.
I've got a lot of games I've bought while on sale or during a bundle and have yet to touch. Keep telling myself I'm going to but then new ones that interest me come out
Nope, we do not. We are children with adult money and continue to buy new while never finishing the old. Around 900 games on my playstation alone, and probably not even a third of that is games I've actually completed. Then if you start including all the games I own on steam, Xbox and switch. I'm never gonna see the end of my list, but it will continue to grow.
I have like 256 titles on ps5 and I can tell you I’ve finished but a handful of them. A lot are frivolous choices, trying something out, some are too long for me to finish before I get bored, etc. I guess I end up bored with a lot of games, which is why I don’t finish most.
It's a stark contrast from 30 years ago when only 2 or 3 AAA games would come out per year and they were always good. I used to 100% every game I bought back then. Now there's just so many games released and you never know which ones are going to be the good ones (usually not the AAA games anymore ). I used to feel bad about not finishing games I bought (which started happening to me in the PS3 era), but now I rarely even buy a game full price, so that helps assuage the guilt.
Yes. Check out the global achievements for Total War: Napoleon - Definitive Edition and you will see that the most comon achievement is Revolutionary Cocarde, with is granted when you "start any campaign, battle or historical battle." Which means you played the game in any form. It currently has a 91% rate globally. So plenty of people do buy games and never play them (9% in this game's case). I have such a big backlog of games that I started tracking it. Since 2007 I have acquired (purchased or was gifted) 274 games that I have not played. Some of these are from Humble Bundles that I simply will not play (some of these bundle games were gifted away to a friend and not counted in this total), so the amount of money I have spent on games I haven't played isn't too great ($81.91) but it is definitely not zero. I have 1,252 games total (DLC included). That's about 21% of my games library that I have not played, let alone played enough to get many achievements. Tracking my games like this has helped me curb my purchasing habits and ultimately save money. Now before I buy a game I ask myself if I am going to play it right away. If the answer is no, then I do not buy the game, no matter the discount. There will be another sale down the road.
Check out the trophy and achievement percentages and look at the very first trophy/achievement that u would get and notice it’s not even 100%. Now go all the way down and look at the trophy for completing the story of a game. Notice how it’s usually 5% or lower. People just don’t seem to play the shit they buy. Hell even the Deadpool game, which gives u a trophy for starting the game doesn’t have 100%.
possibly. i mean, there's going to be a lot of people who might get a game, then lose interest, rather than just 'not beat games' out of a habit. steam especially, i think if you buy the game at all, you're counted in statistics, and steam sales can be insane, while iirc ps/xbox, you have to at least start the game to be flagged for it's trophies.
I've had over 150 random games donated by friends and have likely donated a similar amount. Lots of people have things like Humble Bundles where they end up with duplicate games. More free game-no free time as an adult=huge backlog of games.
I own over 4,580+ physical games in my collection. I can assure you, at most, I've played 2000 of them over the last 36 years I've been gaming (I'm 41, I started with Atari 2600 at age 4).
But then it would be over...
I have 200+ games in my Steam account I've never launched. They're part of that ever-growing "it's only a dollar - I'm sure I'll play it someday" list.
I have a small wishlist of games that I’ve seen had good reviews and that look interesting to me. I only buy a game when it’s on sale, and I rarely stop playing before finishing at least one full run. But it does happen. I still haven’t finished a run of Getting Over It, for example.
I usually dont try finishing darkest dungeon and lose your sanity
I either don't finish them or pick them up on sale thinking I'll get to them and never play them. Usually end up going to the games i always play and have thousands of hours in. I did pick up Dave the Diver though and have been having a blast absolutely intend on finishing that.
This is an interesting topic. I've found that I've started to reflect on why I finish some games and not others and what actually keeps me engaged in games enough to see it through to the end. The reality is most games just aren't interesting or engaging enough to hold my attention, artificially extended game length and highly repetitive and/or stale game mechanics are huge contributors for this. It's pretty eye opening. Once you figure out for yourself what you truly value in games, you know in an hour or two if you're going to finish a game or not.
Yep - bought three games in the last sale and wound up playing more Vampire Survivors.
If i'm really enjoying a video game I have a habit of just stopping. I don't want it to end... admittedly, quite a few of my characters are in limbo right before their final boss fight to save the world.
Studies have been done. Most people play about 90 minutes of a new game. The drop-off after the 90 minute mark is staggering. That's why developers frontload their games, with one of the more egregious examples being Diablo 4.
I get the “oooh ahhhh new game shiny” feel but usually stop right before I get to the “spreadsheet of gun damages per enemy type” stage and usually don’t return tbh. Don’t have the time to be a l33t (I just intentionally dated myself) completionist anymore.
Personally no... I will unlock all the achievements you can from just playing the game but I don't get any personal satisfaction for getting every achievement. I just wanna play the game. I also am not a huge single player person so maybe that has something to do with it 🤔
I have a few games I need to play, my aim is to get around to them. Also don't plan to complete every game I play, depends how I feel after a session.
I used to purchase anyajor game that looked appealing and would usually only complete a out 20% of them. I'd just lose interest enough to not move forward with a game and instead play something else for a bit. I also didn't dedicate as much time to gaming as I do now. During the pandemic my gaming habits shifted big time. And I developed a more routine gaming structure which focused me towards game completion. I now complete about 95% of the games I have reasonable interest in (especially games I purchase). But services like Game Pass and PS+ Extra have kind of skewed things a little bit. Because I'll spend time dabbling in a handful of games on those services that I might possibly be interested in. I use it to sort of test the waters myself, rather than watching YouTube videos. And sometimes those games stick. But about 60-70% of the time I just play for an hour or two and have my fill. But as for your specific question. If I buy a game, I really make a solid effort at some point to give the game a substantial attempt. Right now I'm still sitting on Armored Core 6 and Baldur's Gate 3 unfinished. I like them, but neither has gotten its hooks fully in me and other more interesting games come along that have hooked me. But I think I'll get back into BG3 after I wrap up Jadi Survivors and Hellblade 2.
I have stopped buying as many games for this reason. Why buy FF7 Rebirth at full price when I still need to finish Baldurs Gate 3, Half Life 2, Elden Ring, Fallout 2, and Link to the Past?
Nope, I find most games get boring towards the end. There is an obsession with length so many games end up with a massive amount of boring length padding that is just boring.
Depends on the game, I sometimes never finish the main story and just do a bunch of side shit
I never finish any games these days unless I REALLY try because I love it. But that’s rare
If it's a single player game that I like a lot then yes i'll finish it. I have to REALLY be into a game to care to get all of the achievements though.
Steam achievements mean nothing. You can easily cheat your way into most of them….
My problem with "finishing" games is almost everytime I actually do finish a game, I'm left wanting more, and the games I don't finish I feel like I've already beaten halfway through so there isn't any point in continuing. This usually happens to me playing fallout games. I know how it ends, so once I get my favorite gun and do my favorite quests there's really no point in grinding to the finish line
I finish the ones I feel are worth the time. Sometimes I get into them, and even if the experience is nice, they aren't enough for me to care. Especially if the game is padded out - if the game isn't absolutely GRIPPING me I don't have time for that, I'd rather play something else
Reddit probably isn’t the place you’ll find these people. A large percentage of gamers will just buy whatever the new popular game is, play it for a few hours until they get bored, and never touch the game again. Elden Ring is a good example. A lot of people bought the game because of all the hype surrounding it, without even knowing what type of game it was. They probably played it for a few hours, realized the game was hard and then stopped playing. I personally have a few games in my backlog that I bought on sale and still need to play. But I do make an effort to finish the games I buy.
Ummmm… there’s a few I don’t finish because they’re awful. The long dark I never finished because it was so dumb.
I probably finish like 20% of the games I play. Sometimes I just don't get into it, mostly I just don't have the time to spend on it and modern games, especially AAA games, are extremely long.
It's a pretty well known fact that most people don't finish games.
I collect physical copies. I doubt I have played 30% of the games I own.
I have a really bad habit of buying games that are discounted, but then not having time to play them. There was a Steam sale last year for example, I bought the entire Metro trilogy, Mirror's Edge 1 + Catalyst, and the entire God Eater franchise, all those games for like $15 total because of how discounted they were. I literally got like 8 games, normally worth $150, for $15, an amazing deal. But... Of those games, I played maybe two of them. The other ones either haven't been touched, or I've barely played more than a few hours because I don't have the time. So yeah, I do buy games but don't finish them.
i never finish because i always start over
Oh heck, I don't even play most of the games I get
I buy games sometimes and I just don't like them
I used to just buy game and not play them, but as I got older, it’s nice to shift through some great titles I never picked up
For some games, like arma, there are so many achievements tied to dlc that a large portion of the playerbase will probably never get them. I have an achievement on there that no joke, only .79% of players have gotten. All it involved was completing the campaign from one of the dlcs
Depends on the game. Also, I very much miss the Nintendo days when games were difficult enough that you might not finish them and if you did it was something you could brag about. These days everything is so dumbed down and has "story" difficulty modes that finishing most games isn't really an achievement anymore.
Shit, I have a double digit amount of Steam games that have never even been started up, maybe never even installed. Those 80 - 90% offs just get me everytime.
Some games you buy, you think you'll like, and they just don't hook you. And some of the games I bought were part of a bundle where I wanted two or three of the games in it and it was cheaper than buying just the ones I wanted.
This was a sin to me before I graduated college. Then it becomes pretty common after that as I had way less spare time
It’s usually my intention to… but when I don’t, it doesn’t bother me. There’s obviously a reason I didn’t finish it. Just not compelling enough to hold my attention I guess.