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theerisFeb 3, 2012
In the last 8 to 10 years, most games are not simply worth my time to complete. I'm an avid PC gamer, but most games are just plain boring! I tend to play RPG's (which have been severely lacking in quality) and turn-based strategy games (which really are never "finish-able"). Grand Theft Auto IV, and it's DLC (I hate that term!) was the last game that was worth finishing. The story was great - especially the Ballad of Gay Tony, the game-play was good (except the final mission for the original), and it was a blast to play. However, I normally spend 2 hours max playing a game before I get bored. Game designers need to remember that a game is meant to be FUN! It seems that most games are almost like work - you need to spend way too much time reading strategy guides and planning what you are going to do then actually doing it. I want games to be fun again!
drunkrobotFeb 4, 2012
"Game designers need to remember that a game is meant to be FUN! It seems that most games are almost like work."
Exactly! It becomes work when designers create unrealistic grinding requirements / progression wall and design the difficulty curves from the hardest mode down instead of Normal then up. The result is Normal and Casual modes become misaligned with the preferences of the average players in the audience, a.k.a. the people responsible for the majority of all sales, in all genres. The games aren't too hard for them to play on normal or causal, they just aren't fun.
DiggfulFeb 8, 2012
The simplest explanation tends to be the right one: too many games, so little time.
drunkrobotFeb 10, 2012
I'm a "the glass is half empty guy" kind of guy, but I really think the root problem is the mentality of designers and developers rather than player time limitations. Games have always required large time commitments. However, if modern designers were more realistic about the amount of the average player can devote to gaming per day or week and they paced their games accordingly, I think the majority of the audience would progress much further. Still, time limitations are only part of it. Balancing difficulty curves and age appropriate content for players in their 30's or older (the age of the average core player is 37 yrs. old) have also become big issues in recent years.
grabateFeb 2, 2012
Guilty, my game back catalogue is depressingly high.
manicdvlnFeb 3, 2012
I'm the opposite, I hate starting a new game, but can't wait to finish it once I get used to game play.
darwininmotionFeb 3, 2012
I'm really stubborn, I have to finish. That said, my husband bailed on one of the Prince of Persia's as one of the final boss fights was damn near impossible. You want a game to be hard but not so hard that you want to throw the controller at your tv.
niceguyvanFeb 3, 2012
Why I stop:
Unfair/grinding/multiplayer trophies/achievements
The longest I've spent to get a single trophy is about 14 hours, to beat Dead Space 2 on hardcore mode. Dead Space 1 and 2 are some of the best games I've ever played.
Other games don't come close, yet they have the nerve to have grinding trophies that could take years to get.
Killzone 2's were so bad, that you had to stay in the top 1-5% of the entire WORLD's leaderboards for a whole week. I don't have entire weeks to dedicate to TRYING to get a trophy. Then there's 6 headshots in a row, in a game where EVERY enemy wears a helmet that randomly blocks headshots. That game was the first I ever sold back to a store.
There should never be a trophy that depends on other people or random numbers
I have dozens of games I haven't beaten yet. Once I beat a game, and gotten the fair trophies, I move on to the next game. I don't have time to waste on games where the devs think so highly of it that they think I'll devote my life to it.
Grinding is never fun.
Hyperdimension Neptunia just wasn't fun. The dungeons were boring. You couldn't even heal in-battle.
I gave up on the DS Zelda's due to crappy controls, Twilight Princess cause Nintendo refuses to evolve with the rest of the industry and use voice acting like fricken PS1 and PSP games do.
I gave up on Crackdown 2, which became the second game I ever sold back to a store, because it took place in the same city as the first game! It was 90% the same game! I bought Infamous because someone said it was like Crackdown, and now Infamous 2 surpassed Crackdown 2.
spc4Feb 3, 2012
I agree, Dead Space 1,2 was great. I gave up on Twilight before the last castle. Crackdown 2 was Crackdown with zombies. I will give Infamous 2 a try.
norman619Feb 2, 2012
Did you know most games aren't worth completing?
tuppe666Feb 2, 2012
I see these articles every so often. They pretty much make me annoyed. They have become the justification for short / bland / repetitive games with online experience, making you pay for even smaller DLC packs. When the truth is that just makes for a poor gaming experience Level one is just live level three...I have other fun things in competing for my attention, and the games lost out because of quality. That said after YEARS of not playing computer games, because of this..and its an expensive hobby. A few top notch open source games for their re-playability/balance and evolution. Indie games for their uniqueness and thoughtful design..loving super meat boy...and its a platformer wtf. Xpedia Play for cheap mobile gaming.
jaketyson85Feb 2, 2012
thx for the unrelated pointless rant. the truth is that people like u r probably stoners that are too lazy to even work enough to complete a friggin game!Comment is buried, click here to see the rest.
jjtuckerFeb 3, 2012
Accusations of laziness from someone who shortens words like "thanks," "you," and "are"? Ha, ha!!!
jaketyson85Feb 3, 2012
dude i am just eficient. who do u think u r tryin to call someone out when u dont even KNOW what sort of IRL gangster i am.
mtownFeb 3, 2012
efficient? Laziness has nothing to do with efficiency.
And if you where really where an "IRL gangster" you would not be posting on digg.com, of all places.
fonderplagueFeb 3, 2012
Hahaha..."gangster".
igorunchainedFeb 3, 2012
Please dont let the bury brigade get you down, Jake. This might be the best comment I have ever read. If I could give you +16 right now I would. (and that is coming from another IRL gangster....real recognize real).
jaketyson85Feb 4, 2012
respeck.
razorsfuryFeb 3, 2012
I also believe that the author was not much of a gamer to begin with. (a large MMO) common... we are talking about WOW and plants vs. zombies? seriously?
superkendallFeb 3, 2012
Time is the biggest issue. There are a lot of games I'd love to finish, but simply lack time... you can get really into a game and get through it, but if you can't have a long enough period playing it's really easy to get to a point you can't get past because your game skills have fallen out of practice. You almost need to play through again to get good enough to finish!
drunkrobotFeb 4, 2012
The problem is games need to conform to your schedule, not the other way around. The reason why they don't is core designers still haven't accepted the audience has completely changed over the past 10 years and they also have major competition from new forms of gaming. Core games need to be designed around the lifestyles and preferences of the actual audience, not around the lifestyles, preferences and egos of designers and hardcore players. Yet many of them still think common sense stuff like auto-saving / allowing players to save as needed is heresy. Many even bitch that basic tutorials are "handholding." The bottom line is the hardcore audience doesn't pay their bills, the core and mainstream audience does. And I am a hardcore players! When some of us start saying stuff like this, you know it's out of hand lol.
seroevoFeb 6, 2012
I partially agree.
Games have long done that not just to appease hardcore but to just beef up play time. Same with secondary objectives and side missions and achievements/trophies.
Whether it's having set lives, limiting save points, re-using levels (eg reverse tracks in racing games), it just lengthens time required for the average person, or in the arcade era it allowed machines to eat more of your quarters.
The reason people bitch about tutorials is because they often ARE ridiculously simplified, and often cannot be skipped.
drunkrobotFeb 7, 2012
But tutorials are necessary, even for experienced players. I've been playing Gears of War 3 for the past week and just discovered today there are control options I wasn't aware of. A quick tutorial at the beginning of the campaign would resolved the problem. Epic didn't explain it in-game or include a printed manual with the info. They instead stuck it in an on-line manual... not good.
dustysantosFeb 3, 2012
The games I don't beat I go back to later. I don't like the idea of not finishing a game. That being said I have very little time to play now that I've started a new business. (selling fan art)
vitriolandangstFeb 3, 2012
MOST platform games I don't finish.
there was this Sponge Bob game that I played with my son that almost drove us nuts. Especially the really repetitive "don't make one mistake or you do it over" sequences -- which were every other puzzle.
It took sheer dog-headed determination to make it halfway through. It took the disgust with the time wasted coupled with the "at least we can finish it" drive to get another eighth of the way through. The next eighth was a bit of sadomasochism. I don't know if we could have gotten further through morbid curiosity, because the memory card on the Wii got corrupted.
So like a year later, my son says; "you remember that game?"
After a sad pause, I said; "yes."
And then we started over on it. I think I accidentally on purpose lost the disc somewhere.
>> The reason a lot of games don't get finished is because some games make you LONG to be at work, not trying to hop over a lava-filled pit with a hamburger.
dandoniaFeb 3, 2012
I get bored as soon as strategy stops developing (run, kill, run kill)
If I see a zombie in a game that has not been about zombies (Uncharted) or a wizard in a game that has not been about a wizard (assassins creed).
Within an hour of any GTA/GTA clone as I realise that format still hasn't evolved.
As soon as I got out the hatch in Fallout. For me the graphics went down hill and the game went from being an intimate story driven masterpiece to beating off crazed animals in an ugly open world.
If I'm watching instead of playing for any longer than 30 seconds, I'm turning off.
boson3Feb 3, 2012
Yes. That's why DNF doesn't stand for "Duke Nukem Forever". If the story goes lame, if the plot is replaced by SOS (same old shooter) action, if another insanely difficult "boss" appears, if the gameplay eats it... it gets shelved for an undetermined length of time.
seroevoFeb 3, 2012
I'd imagine it's the time more than anything. Even a short game is 6-10 hours, and a longer game can be 20-30 or even 50+ hours, depending on your skill level and whether you blitz it or take your time doing things other than a main story (or equivalent).
After all, look at other forms of entertainment. How many people watch a TV show at least once compared to how many people have watched every episode? How many people who have seen one movie (or the first) in a franchise have seen all of them? It's relevant because watching 3 episodes of a (hour) show is around 2 hours, or watching one movie could be 2 hours. That's usually barely starting a video game.
Beyond that you have other variables, like what exactly is "finishing" a game. That term really only applies to story-based games, but even then when games have so many secondary features or online. Is "finishing" Battlefield 3 reaching top rank (essentially impossible for the average person) or just finishing a 5-6 hour tacked on campaign? Or is it getting all acheievements/trophies, and what about games that have lazy or arbitrary ones?
drunkrobotFeb 4, 2012
Finishing a game means unlocking and completing all single player campaign missions. Achievements and trophies are secondary concerns but they do show developers when or where most players gave up. Multiplayer is different as it's designed not to have a definitive end point so people will keep playing. But similar problems do exist, last year the multiplayer lead for Black Ops noted that about 40 percent of the people who purchase COD games never sign into one multiplayer match.
seroevoFeb 6, 2012
That's my point though, is even if you go by that more traditional definition, you're off the bat eliminating a huge number of games and many genres right off the bat.
For games that may have single-player "missions" or races or levels or whatever, in games not based around a story this often means a lot of filler to lengthen the "campaign," such as reverse tracks or yet another tournament that just compiles all the tracks you've already beaten, etc.
Even when a game like Battlefield, which has from the beginning been about online play, the campaign is tacked on and contrary to games of old, it's not the online that's added but the offline. No one that knows anything about the game would say you "finished" Battlefield just because you beat a 5 hour campaign that had nothing to do with the main element (online). At the same time, no average person would be able to invest the time to hit top rank online as it takes hundreds or thousands of hours, usually on par with a full-time job.
drunkrobotFeb 7, 2012
If you go to sites like Raptr, which track console achievements and trophies, you can get an overview of how far players progress by viewing the percentage of unlocked progress or grinding based achievements and trophies. Developers do track PC progression but as far as I know they don't publish the data. So even if a game doesn't have a traditional beginning or end, it still has milestones to measure progress. What you see across the board is the percentage of players who unlock main story or grinding based achievements and trophies dramatically drops as the time requirements increase. By the "half way" point of almost all games, the majority of players tracked never unlock those achievements. With the big multiplayer titles you'd expect to see a lower percentage of players unlocking single player achievements. But if low to medium skill players actually did devote (as claimed) hundreds to thousands of hours to grinding in multiplayer, they would unlock all progression and grinding achievements. But they don't which means the majority simply stop playing or they didn't have friends on-line to continue playing. The point being the vast majority of the audience being tracked never reach the milestones the developers use to determine progression or completion.
brandanmeisterFeb 3, 2012
As soon as a read this was a woman with kids who played mmo & plants & zombies th credibility of th story & interest I had it in went out th door. She is No longer a gamer. Gamers always finish GOOD games they like, now a days their SO easy, even on hard.
sndsFeb 3, 2012
There are a large variety of gamers, old, young, busy, bored, man, woman. It's very crass to dismiss someone who may have been a gamer their entire youth and they just finds that reality has set in and they don't play as much as they USED to. Not everyone has the energy or attention span to complete all the games they want to play these days. Be a little more open minded. I think this article hit on it very well.
seroevoFeb 6, 2012
It can depend. I know some people who would claim they don't have the time to finish some games, but spend 30 hours a week watching shows. They have the time, they're just using it doing another recreational activity.
Point being it sometimes has little to do with age or "reality." And it may be semantics, but when people claim they don't have time it should refer to unavoidable things like work or kids etc.
luigisonFeb 3, 2012
I think a better explanation is that gamers are intelligent and intelligent people crave novelty. When a game's novelty wears off gamers lose interest and move on to the next novelty.
In other words, most people don't want to do the same thing over and over. It may be hard to believe, but this applies to games as well as hot significant others. Games and significant others that offer more than novelty are the ones people stay with.
heaphFeb 3, 2012
I just don't want the game to end it took me 2 months to finally watch the end of ft7
drunkrobotFeb 4, 2012
It's no coincidence that 90 percent of audience never finish AAA games because the target audience for practically all AAA game designers is the hardcore audience. Problem is only 1 out of 10 players in the core audience is a hardcore players since the hardcore audience only represents about 10 percent or less of the core audience.
So AAA games rated teen and higher are custom tailored around the preferences and skill set of a small and demographically narrow segment of the audience, then publishers and developers mass market and advertise them to all segments of the audience. The result is players from the other segments walk away from best selling, critically acclaimed games long before reaching the end.Comment is buried, click here to see the rest.
gigeorgeFeb 3, 2012
Pretty one sided piece
sndsFeb 3, 2012
It's an opinion piece so yes, it's a bit one-sided.
particleman420Feb 3, 2012
according to whom?
on what platform?
there are too many missing details
drunkrobotFeb 4, 2012
Collectively, AAA games across all platforms.
particleman420Feb 4, 2012
i must be weird then since i always try to finish games