#oneaday Day 849: Do people really not finish games?

I've seen it often suggested that "no-one finishes games" these days. Is that really true? I don't know. I am certainly not a representative example here, because I tend to only start games that I know I am going to finish for the most part. It might take quite a while to finish some of these games, if they're epic-length RPGs, but I will generally make an effort to finish everything I start. I have a mostly positive success rate.

I'm interested in this perception that no-one finishes games any more, because it's one of those things that is an alien concept to me — particularly with story-based games. Can you really derive any sort of satisfaction from playing a narrative-focused game and just leaving it unresolved? I guess in some ways it's the same as watching part of a TV series and then dropping it partway through. But it's still kind of alien to me.

So I thought what I'd do today is go through some games I can think of off the top of my head that one might regard as "popular", then see what the Steam Achievement rate is for "finished the game" or equivalent achievements. I appreciate this is an imperfect metric, because it doesn't take into account other platforms (particularly those which don't have achievements, like Switch) but it'll do for a rough idea. All right, let's take a look.

Pragmata

42.3% of people who played Capcom's Pragmata on Steam finished it to the point of seeing the credits roll on a first playthrough. This is a reasonably respectable number so far as I'm concerned, and I'm unsurprised to see this so relatively high to kick us off. Pragmata was praised as one of the first genuinely excellent triple-A games for quite a long time, so it's encouraging to see this many people play it through to completion.

It is less than half of the people who started it, though.

We see a big drop-off when it comes to completing optional material, though. 13.4% completed the main objective in all the Training Simulator side activities, which I completely empathise with; the Training Simulator is by far the worst part of the game and I absolutely hated every second of it. I am, therefore, unsurprised that a similar number of people went through and completed the postgame scenario, "Unknown Signal", since that involves running through a series of Training Simulator-like missions — only without the annoying bits. However, if you weren't to know about the "without the annoying bits" part, I can completely understand you not wanting to bother with it. And the additional bit you get on the ending for completing Unknown Signal is absolutely not worth it, either.

Resident Evil Requiem

Would you look at that? Nearly 75% of people have beaten Resident Evil Requiem, one of the most well-regarded entries in the series for quite some time. Only 65% of them beat it on "Standard (Modern)" difficulty, though, suggesting that all the Difficulty Level Discourse we've been having for the last few years has had an effect; there's a small but statistically significant number of people who had no qualms about playing on the lowest difficulty level.

Interestingly there is a different percentage for "complete the game on at least Casual difficulty" and "complete the game" ("Hope and Requiem"). I wonder how that happened?

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33

We look at a longer game now with Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. Here, just under 40% of people actually finished the game. I can sort of understand it in this case, because although Expedition 33's main narrative is thoroughly compelling and emotionally engaging, the gameplay is challenging enough that I can see a significant number of people falling off before the end. It's one of those instances where although the developers made a huge, beautiful world and obviously want as many people as possible to see it, they also weren't willing to compromise on the mechanical intricacies of the game. Respect to them for that, but it does mean that significantly less than half of the players who started the game finished it.

Final Fantasy VII Rebirth

Pity poor Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, though, a game where only just over a quarter of people who started it played it through to completion. This is another one that is arguably understandable due to the vast size of the game, but the team behind the game have got to be looking at that figure and feeling a bit disheartened.

But at least it's not the original Final Fantasy VII, which only 8.7% people who played it on Steam have finished. It's a shorter game! But there's also the fact that a lot of the people who would be inclined to buy Final Fantasy VII on Steam have nostalgia for having played it on PlayStation back in the '90s, and as such they may have just fired it up for a session or two to indulge that nostalgia, then set it aside. Less than 10% kind of sucks, though, because I'm sure there's some people coming to it for the first time, starting it and then never seeing it through to its magnificent conclusion.

Blue Prince

Honestly I'm surprised that nearly 40% of people finished Blue Prince, because it's the kind of game that repels you hard if you're not into it. But then you might say that the sort of people inclined to pick up Blue Prince probably already know that it's a game they'll like, and thus there should be a respectable proportion of them who finish it.

I didn't stick with Blue Prince long enough to know if this trophy encompasses all the endgame bullshit you have to do other than playing the annoying house layout game, but either way, even getting as far as just finishing the annoying house layout game is worthy of respect so far as I'm concerned.

Fuckin' hate that game.

I think that'll do for now. I know that's probably far from a representative or statistically significant sample, but on the whole, it seems like, on average, less than half of the people who start a game on Steam finish it. The games that are more likely to get finishes are ones that are on the shorter side, like Resident Evil, while longer RPGs inevitably see a much more significant drop-off. More niche-interest titles likely enjoy a slightly higher completion percentage due to the people playing having a sort of "vested interest" in the game and the genre it occupies, but still.

Anyway, I'm not sure I have a point here. So long as games that you can complete continue to exist, I will continue completing them, one at a time, because that's how I enjoy playing. If you're someone who doesn't beat games, do make an effort to finish one or two. I can pretty much guarantee you'll find it to be a satisfying experience. Just be warned: once you start in earnest, you'll want to beat everything you play… and for some, that way lies madness!

At least you're not chasing platinum trophies. That really is a sure-fire way to ruin all enjoyment of video games.

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#oneaday Day 182: Unpopular gaming opinions

As a veritable old fart of video games, I am, of course, fairly set in my ways, as older folks are wont to be. And as such, I have come to hold certain opinions that appear to deviate from "the norm" among younger folks. You are not "wrong" to think differently to what I am about to describe below, but know that you are not going to convince me to change my viewpoint, because I have felt this way about all these things for years now.

So why am I writing this? I dunno. Something to write about, innit? Plus there might be some of you out there who actually agree with some of these. It doesn't really matter. Let's just start, shall we?

Games don't "need" updates for months or years after their release

Baldur's Gate 3 happened to drift across some form of feed that I was looking at the other day, and the thumbnail image that came with it proudly boasted something along the lines of "Community update 30".

Now, whether this was just the 30th blog post for the community or the 30th actual update for the game I don't actually know, but both are equally offputting to me. I haven't even considered touching Baldur's Gate 3 yet because it launched unfinished and apparently is still getting bits and pieces bolted onto it after the fact.

I hear it's very good. I believe that it's very good, as Larian has a good track record. But I have precisely zero desire to play it until it's finished, because when a game as big as this gets significant updates after I've already ploughed a significant number of hours into it, I feel a bit hard done by. Worse, if I've already finished it by the time a significant update shows up, I feel very hard done by, because I should just have waited to play it.

Unfortunately, regular updates to games are expected by a certain class of The Gamers™, particularly those on PC. Look at the Steam reviews for any game that hasn't had an update for a month or two and you'll see people complaining about "devs abandoning the game" and it being a "dead game".

No. Sometimes it's just finished, and sometimes the devs would like either 1) a break or 2) to go and work on something else. I am, sadly, in the minority on this, but few things make me lose interest in a game faster than if it launches with a "roadmap". Just delay the thing a few months and finish the fucking thing. Then I will play it.

DLC is worthless

As an extension to the above, if a game releases and then immediately announces that it is getting a bunch of DLC, I will also immediately lose interest. Not only does it make me feel like stuff has been cut out of the base game to make the DLC — and don't throw the "well actually it's developed at a different rate to the main game" argument at me, that is an easy problem to solve — but I am struggling to think of a piece of DLC that I have genuinely thought was actually worth the money.

I remember being particularly disappointed with the DLC chapters for stuff like Dragon Age and Mass Effect back in the day, and I haven't seen much to change my opinion ever since those days. And, at the other end of the spectrum, you have games like Stellaris, where there is now so much DLC that it's impossible to know what the "best" way to get started with the game is. So I just… don't.

Mods are vandalism

"You should play games on PC!" the PC gamers say. "Because of mods!"

Fuck mods. I hate mods. A significant portion of them are outright vandalism to both the artistic and mechanical design of the teams that worked on a game. I saw someone on Bluesky earlier sharing an image of someone who had installed a "QoL" ("Quality of Life") mod to STALKER 2 to remove all encumbrance mechanics from the game. STALKER 2 is a game about survival in difficult circumstances, and the encumbrance mechanics force you to determine whether you really need to carry various things around with you. By removing it, you're stripping out part of the game.

Likewise, graphical mods can get in the bin, too. Games are designed with both a particular artistic vision in mind and are a reflection of the era in which they were designed, and I don't really give a toss if you can add ray-tracing to something that didn't have it before, or if you can make a game look like Generic Photorealistic Open World Game #927.

And I'm sure I don't need to say anything about nude mods. I say this as someone who enjoys a good sexy game.

"But I need 357 mods to make Skyrim fun!" Then Skyrim isn't a very good game, is it? Maybe play something else.

My only begrudging exception to this is in the case of games where extensibility is designed to be part of the game — stuff like Doom/Quake/Duke/whatever levels are fine with me, because those games were designed to be extendible. Although I must confess, when I play any of those games, I tend to stick to their official campaigns. And in some cases, mods for a game specifically designed to be mod-friendly inevitably remain perpetually unfinished and not as good as the stuff built-in to the game: most stuff for the excellent driving sim BeamNG.drive falls into this category, to name just one example.

I don't want to join your Discord

I use Discord when I absolutely have to, for work and for the few groups of friends who are only reachable there. But I do not want to join a fucking Discord for every single game I play, and I don't want to be bugged to join your Discord on the title screen for your game. Go away, leave me alone, and if I decide I want to engage in the official community for your game, I will seek out your Discord myself.

I absolutely do not want to have to join your Discord to read documentation or download helpful files. Host that shit on your website like a normal person.

I want your game to end

It's all very well offering "potentially limitless replayability", but I do actually want to be able to finish your game. If I can't finish your game, I almost certainly won't start it, because the way my brain works means that I will get annoyed by the fact I'm playing something that doesn't have a "point".

This is one of numerous reasons I think idle games and incremental games are dumb. Sure, numbers get big to a point that they become largely meaningless… but that's it. There's no sense of having achieved anything there. And I strongly suspect that a significant number of idle game fans have no idea that the genre largely stems from a pisstake at the expense of people who grind their way through mobile games with no conclusion.

Anyway, that'll do for now, because I'm sure I've pissed someone off with at least one of the above. As noted at the beginning, though, I don't care. I am an old man, I have things I like and things I dislike. And all of the above can get in the bin. A good evening to you!

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