Almost no one finishes games, but what about episodes?

[toblix]

So everyone knows nobody finishes games. I don't remember the statistics, but most people give up before seeing the ending. Let me know if there is statistics that contradict this, but Valve's statistics from Half-Life: Episode One says between 30 and 50 percent (depending on how you interpret the numbers) of players actually finished it, and that's a pretty short game.

There have been a huge number of even smaller AAA games released since then, though. Telltale have released around a million episodes of different games. Does anyone know what the numbers are on these? Does the 30%-50% completion statistic match each episode (hard to believe) or each season in any way? Does each episode sell less than the previous one? What about subsequent seasons? Are sales for the first episode in a new season higher than the last episode of the previous season? I expect someone to just serve up all these numbers.

[Nappi]

You just reminded me that I still haven't played the last two episodes of Back to the Future: The Video Game.

On the one hand, I usually stop playing because the game gets repetitive, hard, frustrating or boring, and therefore a single, two or three hours long episode would have to be pretty bad for me not finish it. On the other hand, the fact that I have to download and install each new episode probably makes me more likely to give up in between episodes. On the first hand again, I'm not sure if I would have been any more eager to finish BttF if it had been a single, non-episodic game and I had found myself utterly bored three fifths of the way in.

I'm confused and I need numbers to guide me.

[a purple future]

kind of an interesting topic. When I buy a game that I really want (i.e. pay full price or almost full price) I almost always finish them, even if I have to bump the difficulty to "for babies" just to finish it.

Then again, when I buy something off of steam because it's <$5 sometimes I don't even install the stupid thing. Other times I'll play through part of it before throwing in the towel.

So if there's a significant amount of people out there that drop $60 on a game to not even finish it, I can't say I understand the mindset.

It did take me over a year to beat Demon's Souls (and then about a week to beat it the second time), but that's not really the best example.

I still haven't beaten Minecraft.

[Thyroid]

I always finish episodes. Sometimes it takes me more than one sitting, and in one case - Sam and Max: The Devil's Playhouse - I took a six month long break between different episodes, but in the end it gets done. Which is more than I can say for 90% of games I start.

[miffy495]

I've finished every episode that I've ever started. The only "season" pre BTTF that I haven't finished is Strongbad. On the other hand, I also finish pretty much every game I start, and it takes something drastic (hard drive failure causing loss of the save, for example) to stop me, so I may not be the best example.

[Roderick]

I've certainly never been polled about finishing games, and my consoles are not online so they can't track it. I can safely say I finish all my games. Even the big sprawly ones like Red Dead or Elder Scrolls. I can't imagine not finishing a game I started. What's the point playing it otherwise? It also depends on your take on gaming of course: for me they're stories and it's silly not to finish a story.

Episodic stuff, I can actually see myself having less incentive to finish stuff. Installing all those Monkey Islands wasn't a big deal, but having to wait between content can be killing for an attention span. But meh, it's a different thing altogether, can't really compare.

[toblix]

I can't imagine not finishing a game I started. What's the point playing it otherwise?

There are more than ten reasons for not finishing a game, like:

• it's boring,
  
• it's too hard,
  
• it's too long and you don't have the time
  
• it's by Ubisoft, and you're tired of having to re-enter your email and password every time you load up the game even though you've checked the "remember me" button.
  

[Forbin]

I finish the game when a developer finishes it.

Most are still poorly paced messes at the end. Even a game as critically renowned for it's story as Bioshock has a terrible ending (apparently, I haven't finished it).

Honestly, I'm starting to enjoy turning single player games down to easy just to get through them. If I want a challenge, I find fighting other players a better experience than fighting AI and design problems.

[mikemariano]

I'm only in this thread to wait for Tanukitsune's comment.

I pretend I'll finish every game; they'll just sometimes get displaced (I stopped playing Bully in order to play New Vegas for 4 months).

Really, though, you owe a game nothing, and there's always YouTube if you don't feel like it's worth it to finish a game but you're still curious about the ending.

[elmuerte]

There are more than ten reasons for not finishing a game, like:

• it's boring,
  
• it's too hard,
  
• it's too long and you don't have the time
  

I haven't had a game that is too hard. Although I sometimes do encounter meat circus and might cause me to put the game aside. But that doesn't mean I won't come back in the future to finish it off.

The "it's boring" is usually the reason for me not to continue a game. But I often try to finish it anyway. Proof of this is me finishing Dragon Age 2.

An other reason why I would never finish a game is because the gameplay clashes with me. I have this problem with The Witcher, I simply do not like a lot of the game mechanics.

And then there is of course the thing Rodi mentioned. Getting games with extreme discount to simply try it out. But I see that more as demoing the game. Normally I would simply pirate the game the game to try it out, but if it's sold for a good price I might simply fork over the money.

• it's by Ubisoft, and you're tired of having to re-enter your email and password every time you load up the game even though you've checked the "remember me" button.
  

I haven't bought a ubisoft game since the first incarnation of always-on DRM, so it's not an issue for me. I don't have the feeling that I'm missing out, there are plenty of other games I can spend my money on.

[Tanukitsune]

Episodic games require so little time investment compared to others I'm pretty sure I've finished every episodic game I have and I have the same reasons others have mentioned for not finishing the non episodic ones.

Although if a game is boring, too hard or a bit bad, I cheat if I can or maybe watch a longplay or Let's Play.

I tend to play the game enough to at least be completely sure of the exact reason I hate the game before quitting it, that way I can avoid whatever bothered me in future games. It's usually thing like bad controls, bad pacing or broken in way that makes the game harder for the player (I'm fine when it's broken in my favor, though! )

Toblix, I played a pretty new Ubisoft game on my PC and while it did ask for email and password, it only asked for it once? I'll pretty sure they asked for email and password in the last console Ubisoft game too?

[Sno]

I try to finish most games i play and it often results in me completely putting off some games for a protracted period of time until i am sure i will have time to go through it.

Games i haven't finished tend to be JRPG's, which i find a have a love/hate relationship with. I can end up hating one game and loving another for what seem to be the same reasons. (I've never really had a firm grasp on why.)

So right now, in fact, i'm going through a few JRPG's i've been wanting to play for a while. A game i just finished, Nier, took some determination to struggle through some of the bad parts, but i'm glad i did, because the conclusion to the story ended up being pretty rewarding and memorable.

I always cringe a little bit when somebody tells me that they gave up on a game because they were bored or stopped having fun or something. When you're dealing with some games that can be multiple dozens of hours, it seems like a given that at some random point it might start being a bit shit, but there's probably a whole lot of rewarding stuff on the other side of that too.

Though i'm just speaking out of frustration for knowing people who never finish games.

[Gwardinen]

Toblix, I played a pretty new Ubisoft game on my PC and while it did ask for email and password, it only asked for it once? I'll pretty sure they asked for email and password in the last console Ubisoft game too?

There are various states of Ubisoft DRM, and the company isn't consistent with its implementation. I hate pushing my own stuff to people I expect to be able to think for themselves (like you guys), and I'm particularly wary of linking to anything I write for this site since I'm really still very unsure of them, but I did talk about some stuff related to this just yesterday.

[Nappi]

I always cringe a little bit when somebody tells me that they gave up on a game because they were bored or stopped having fun or something. When you're dealing with some games that can be multiple dozens of hours, it seems like a given that at some random point it might start being a bit shit, but there's probably a whole lot of rewarding stuff on the other side of that too.

I have eventually forced my way through a few games that I initially gave up on because I stopped having fun or something and almost none had anything rewarding to offer me apart from the knowledge that the game won't be mocking me in some dark corner for years to come. The final 2 hours of Uncharted 2, for instance, were very much more of the same, except a little bit more frustrating and worse, and the final part was just stupid. It actually made me lower my expectations on Uncharted 3 and glad that I never took it upon myself to finish Uncharted 1.

I would think that most people are capable of differentiating between a boring or repetitive section of a game from a boring and repetitive game.

[ThunderPeel2001]

Telltale have released around a million episodes of different games. Does anyone know what the numbers are on these? Does the 30%-50% completion statistic match each episode (hard to believe) or each season in any way? Does each episode sell less than the previous one? What about subsequent seasons? Are sales for the first episode in a new season higher than the last episode of the previous season? I expect someone to just serve up all these numbers.

I wonder if asking this on the TTG forum may yield the answers you're looking for.

For me, I often go through this pattern with TTG games:

Episode 1, "Ooh! New TTG game! I wonder what it's like..." (Plays) "Not bad. I wonder what they'll do with Episode 2?"

Episode 2, "A new episode. Cool. I hope this one is really good." (Plays) "Hmm. Well maybe Episode 3 will be great."

Episode 3, "I really should play this."

Episode 4, "I really should play Episode 3."

Episode 5, "I'll wait for my DVD version to arrive and play through them all".

*DVD sits on shelf*

Eventually I'll usually go back and play through them, but I still haven't completed BTTF or S&M 3.

[Thyroid]

Eventually I'll usually go back and play through them, but I still haven't completed BTTF or S&M 3.

You ought to finish The Devil's Playhouse. It's a little bit inconsistent, but it's Telltale's best and is surprisingly emotional.

[miffy495]

True, Sam and Max 3 is probably the best thing they've done. Play it.

And oh my god why did you guys have to remind me of the ending of Uncharted 2. That was so fucking bad, after such a great game up to that point. What the hell, Naughty Dog? What the hell?

[Nappi]

And oh my god why did you guys have to remind me of the ending of Uncharted 2. That was so fucking bad, after such a great game up to that point. What the hell, Naughty Dog? What the hell?

Glad to hear I'm not alone.

[elmuerte]

True, Sam and Max 3 is probably the best thing they've done. Play it.

damn it... so I need to play it?

Weird thing though. I have a lot of unfinished telltale games. I did finish the Wallace & Gromit and BTTF seasons. But on the level of S&M and Monkey Island I'm quite under performing.

And oh my god why did you guys have to remind me of the ending of Uncharted 2. That was so fucking bad, after such a great game up to that point. What the hell, Naughty Dog? What the hell?

Uh... what?

Actually... I can't remember how it ended. Are you talking about the rather mediocre stroll through the quite awesome looking environment? Or the rather dumb boss battle? Or what happened after that (which I cannot remember).

[Roderick]

Oh yeah, I forgot about games being too long. That's the reason the only JRPG I've ever finished is Chrono Trigger. The few others I played I always dumped after the nth hour of grinding or stupid story not going anywhere.

But I don't encounter that situation very often, because I'm quite deliberate with what I buy and play. That's the reason I so boldly stated I finished everything. I forgot about the existence of bad games that I wouldn't want to finish.

[Tanukitsune]

I don't mind if a game is long if it doesn't feel long, Persona 4 was ridiculously long, but it never felt long to me.

Although I always thought the length of game can affect how you feel about a game, a short game doesn't give you that much time to find all the annoyances, repetitiousness, bugs and other problems you'll find if it's longer.

But yeah, Rodi, games are getting too long now, even modern "arcade" games are way too long.

[elmuerte]

I don't know about games getting too long, for me it's more getting too tedious. I don't know if it's a recent development (i.e. artificial lengthening by adding tedious crap) or just me.

But if I look at the time I've spend on New Vegas, it's clearly not games being long.

[ThunderPeel2001]

I thought Tim Schafer said that modern games where the other way around? He said Brutal Legend had to be shorter, or something didn't he? It struck me as odd at the time, though.

[Tanukitsune]

I guess you hit the target with the "artificial tedious crap" thing.

Fallout has a world where they put of work and is worth exploring, other games want you to find 200 "generic item #54" just for an achievement or the ever popular "you can't leave this area until you're fight monsters for 20 minutes".

[elmuerte]

I thought Tim Schafer said that modern games where the other way around? He said Brutal Legend had to be shorter, or something didn't he? It struck me as odd at the time, though.

Hmpf, what does Tim know.

Brutal Legend wasn't too long, it was just wrong with the RTS stuff. They created a really awesome world, but I think they didn't put it to good use. There should have been more variety in the "missions". Seriously... this is by the people that brought us Psychonauts, and they pull a 480 and dumb down variety (but still create a really awesome gameworld).