The business of completing a game. Is it true that many games go unfinished?
Over at Destructoid, Colette Bennett seems to think so, and Alec Meer of rockpapershotgun (I love that title) agrees. But I have to wonder at the generalizations they throw off in that regard.
Colette writes: “Considering the average attention span is twenty minutes…”. I’d like to know where that number came from. Things must be really bad if any game grabs one’s attention for that short a time.
Of course, there are terrible games that we might look at briefly and then try to sell to some unsuspecting person. But that statement seems to be to be a bit too sweeping in scope.
And then Alex starts off with “Most people don’t finish games, even games they’re dead excited about”. “Most” is a pretty big word. It sounds like by far the majority of players are tossing aside games by the cartload.
Nonetheless, it is true, as I know from my experience over the years, that a fair number of games don’t get finished. Between them, Alex and Colette cover the major reasons.
And I think the biggest reason overall is that games are too repetitious, with “too difficult” coming in second. We’ve discussed more than once how a typical RPG tends to become tedious after a certain point; that the larger the game, the more “sameness” it has in combats and “quests”, however pretty the visuals may be.
I also suspect that’s the true reason when someone says “I don’t have time to play”. If a game really grabs you, you’ll find the time to play it. But if you know that there’s going to be a lot of boring “grind on, grind on”, not having the time is a good excuse.
Difficulty – well, we expect that as we progress, the opposition will become tougher. However, for some players, it becomes too tough, requiring so many reloads that gamers just give up, however close to the end they may be.
For that, possibly cheat codes can help, although some players take pride in not using them, and therefore the game goes unfinished. Nothing, though, can help much with the “same-old, same-old” gameplay.
Would shorter games be the answer? Not likely for the hard-core crowd; they’d complain that the games aren’t long enough, that they aren’t getting their money’s worth.
So once again, we come down to that lack of creative spark, that “do what everyone else is doing” rut. However interesting a game may start out as, in time it ends up looking/being much the same as any other in the genre.
Yeah, I can see where players become bored, frustrated, and eventually disappointed, to the point where they chuck the game aside and look for something else.
I just don’t know if that fits the majority. But I have no doubts that a significant minority of players aren’t completing games. Even with the Internet to help with tips, advice, walkthroughs and cheat codes.
For myself, there are only a few games I never finished, which is saying a lot, given how long I’ve been playing these things. That doesn’t mean I enjoyed them all, of course. There were plenty of clunkers, though I somehow managed to struggle through most of them. As for the ones that were never completed:
Moebius from Origin. That had an Oriental setting. Unfortunately, every game I started began with either a drought or a famine going on. So I was always dying from either thirst or starvation. That was frustration. Finally gave up after about three days of it.
Elvira II: The Jaws of Cerberus may have been the ultimate in frustration, though. I made it to the very end (of a tedious game) and couldn’t complete it because I lacked matches to light candles. There was only one set in the game, and I’d used those for something else much earlier. No way was I going to replay it, even if I’d had the time.
Betrayal At Krondor had so many things I didn’t like about it, that I gave up shortly after reaching town. It was a miracle I stayed with the game as long as that.
Several products from Crystalware on the Apple. Sands Of Mars, where I always died in space, however much hydroponics I created. Fantasyland 2041 had bugs, some of which precluded being able to finish the game. I don’t think anyone was able to do that. Beneath The Pyramids, where I finally found the treasure, and died on the way out because of a graphics glitch. Three losers from the same publisher. Just goes to prove that gamers are masochists ;)
Looking over that list, we see that in just one case (Krondor), I gave up out of sheer dislike. The rest were dumped because of poor design and/or bugs.
Returning to the original theme, if a large number of players aren’t finishing the games they buy, why do they continue to buy them? Hope that the next one will be “it”, the game that draws them in to the finish?
Or has buying games become a habit? An addiction, a sort of thoughtless “gotta get the latest eye-candy extravaganza”, even though most of the products won’t be completed?
Y’know, back in the days of the 8-bit machines, it was said, more than once, that most games went unfinished. There may have been some truth in that remark. Players had far fewer resources to help them along. Until the rise of the Internet, along with hint guides, there wasn’t much a gamer could do except either tough it out or put the game aside.
Now, or so it appears, despite the wealth of materials freely available for just about any game, players are still putting them aside unfinished. Yep, that’s one deep rut we’re in. Anyone have a ladder?
i can think of 3 i didn’t finish. One which i earlier called Wizardy 9 may have been M&M X i quit almost immediately cause it was mouse control free movement and not the standard move one sqyare of the earlier 9. was just too big a departure from the eariler ones and wasn’t somtrhing i would have purchased had it not been for the other 9
another was pretty complex and before i had internet access for help. should have gone back for help later but by then the computer system/game were just too slow by the current standards to bother with.
but then I don’t buy every game that comes along.
would darkland count as unfinished as it was too buggy to complete? i’m not counting it cause if it hadn’t been buggy i would have finished it.
the third was i think the first of the elder scrools programs and i hated it or had so much trouble with just running it that it was the first and last of the series that i purchased.
oh wait there was a fourth but i’m blocking on which game it was. I can say it wasthe very last game i ever or will ever purchase from Ubisoft.
I don’t feel I have to finish everything I start, and as long as I was entertained while playing it, I don’t feel it was time or money wasted unless it was too short. Leather Goddess of Phobos II comes to mind, I finished it in a single evening. But then again, a single night out to dinner and a movie costs us more than a game.
Many times I get distracted. These days my gaming time is much more limited than before the kids came along. I might really enjoy a game but then something new comes along and I start playing it instead. Currently I have Dark Messiah of Might and Magic, Command and Conquer 3, Spellforce 2: Dragonstorm (even had to download that one from the European site), Divine Divinity, and Sam & Max Season 1 installed on the hard drive, started but sitting neglected while I play Bioshock.
Over on the VOGONS website, a topic was started listing which games you have completed. I try to keep mine updated when I finish something. I post as Xian97 there since my usual nick was already in use.
http://vogons.zetafleet.com/viewtopic.php?t=11328
Ah… Darklands… how I hated thee! The only game I’ve ever intentionally destroyed… and I enjoyed it. :)
I have lots of games I never finish. But being a developer changes your gaming a bit… well, at least for me it did. I have lots of games I get just to look at with no real intention of “finishing” them. Just have a look at what there doing and if anything is new or different, which it usually isn’t. Bioshock fit into this category, but I finished it. Now, I still buy games for simple gaming as well, but while I buy more games than I used to, fewer of them fit into that category. Civilization, D&D Tactics and KOTOR (though I waited for the PC version) are all examples of games I’ve gotten with the intent of finishing. Of course, you can’t finish Civ, but that’s a different issue. But even games that can be finished, don’t always make it to that point (eyes NWN2).
Everything mentioned is a factor… difficulty, size and how engaging the story and/or gameplay is. Then there is the natur of release timing. Too many good games at the same time and they all suffer from non-completion. I interrupted D&D Tactics to play Bioshock, which increases the chances that I won’t finish D&D Tactics.
I Am a Game Grazer.
Been that way for a long time. I’d say the majority of the games in my collection which can be finished haven’t been finished.
And it’s a pretty sizable collection.
Some might be the fault of the game. I played all the way through Twilight: 2000 three different times trying to finish it… and it always crashed before the climax. Dang it. And some games really drag around the middle.
But too often I just play to get a good feel for the game, get familiar with it, and then I move on.
I don’t know if I’m the exception or the rule.