Most People Don’t Finish Video Games

Last week my buddy Jeff sent me a link to the following CNN article: Why most people don’t finish video games. The article quotes a few industry insiders who say that 90% of gamers don’t finish (or “beat”) video games. In other words, only 1 out of every 10 gamers “beats” the games they buy.

One of the examples cited in the story was Red Dead Redemption. Using some sort of tracking software (“Raptr”), it was determined that 90% of the people who played the game never beat the final mission. I don’t know what’s more troublesome here: the fact that 9 out of 10 people who played 2010’s “Game of the Year” didn’t beat the game, or the fact that somebody somewhere is tracking how far I get in video games.

(Note: From a journalist’s point of view, this is a fairly big leap of faith. “Raptr”, I discovered, only supports PC games, Xbox 360 games if you use Xbox Live, and doesn’t track PS3 players at all. And, it’s not mandatory. What the headline should read is, “9 out of 10 Raptr customers didn’t finish Red Dead Redemption.” Semantics, I know.)

The article mentions the fact that Red Dead Redemption “takes upward of 30 hours to complete.” What it doesn’t mention is, it is also an “open sandbox” game. What that means is, you can do anything and go anywhere you want inside the game. You could literally spend 30 hours wandering around inside Red Dead Redemption looking at things and interacting with people and never beat the first level. While the game might take 30 hours to beat, you could literally spend hundreds of hours wandering around inside that virtual world without beating the game.

It’s been years since I completely “beat” a video game. Every gamer has their own reasons. Here are some of mine.

For starters, I’m 37 38 years old and married with children.

I get up at 6:15am every morning, get my kids ready for school, and then go to work. After work I meet up with my wife, pick up my kids, and eat dinner. By the time dinner’s over it’s somewhere between 6:30 and 7pm. From 7pm-9pm I spend time with my family, until the kids (and sometimes Susan) go to bed. This gives me approximately 2-3 hours a night after that to myself for doing what I want. This small slice of time gets divided among many interests. Yes, sometimes I play games, but more often than that I watch television, or a movie, or play on the computer, write a blog entry, or (God forbid) read a book. So it’s not like I can play through a 30-hour game in a week, or probably even a month. I wanted to try Red Dead Redemption because I heard it was great, but I knew I wouldn’t finish the game before I ever even picked it up.

Remember that small sliver of free time I mentioned? And the smaller, sub-sliver of that sliver that would be set aside for playing video games? If I were to dedicate that small sliver of time to only playing Red Dead Redemption, I could probably beat it in a month or two. Unfortunately the reality is, over a two month span, hundreds of video games are released. Last month, dozens of Xbox 360 and Xbox Live games were released. And not only do I have all the major modern systems (Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and Nintendo Wii) along with a Nintendo DS and a PC, but I also have dozens of older systems (both computer and console). However, truth be told, most of my gaming these days takes place on one of two platforms: iOS (iPad and the iPhone), and emulation.

While I still own more than two dozen arcade cabinets, these days it’s a lot easier to fire up M.A.M.E. and play any one of thousands of arcade games in the comfort of my game room. It may not be authentic, but laziness and convenience often wins out over authenticity. Arcade games (and many retro action games, be it on computers or consoles) were designed to last only a few minutes. While I enjoy playing video games, historically, I’ve also used them to “kill time”. A quick round of Mortal Kombat might kill five or ten minutes. I’m okay with that. I don’t need to “kill” 30 hours. If Susan finds out I have 30 hours of free time available, I can guarantee she will not be letting me spend it playing video games.

For years, I never understood the appeal of portable gaming. Now that I have two kids, I do. Much of my gaming takes place in the car, in the living room while the kids are watching TV, or while sitting on the pot. (Don’t laugh, it’s true.) Working my way though 30-hour games just doesn’t fit my lifestyle anymore.

Something that the article didn’t touch on is that fact that, to be quite honest, beating video games isn’t that important to me. I’m what you call a “classic” gamer, and most classic games weren’t winnable. Games like Asteroids and Space Invaders and Missile Command and Centipede and Robotron and Galaga … there’s no “beating” those games — they just go on forever until you die, kind of like life. (Well, isn’t that depressing!) Technically there were arcade games with “kill screens,” 8-bit games like Pac-Man and Donkey Kong and Dig Dug that crashed when players reached level 255, but I’ve never met anyone in person who was good enough to reach those levels so it’s never affected me. I remember playing Gauntlet for hours and hours, only to discover that at a certain point the levels begin repeating themselves in random orders. Lots of games did that back then, and that’s the culture I was raised in. It wasn’t about “beating” a game — it was about getting as far as you could and obtaining the highest score possible before the game ended.

Personally, my enjoyment comes from playing video games, not beating them. That may be hard for younger gamers to understand, but while I haven’t seen (nor will I ever see, most likely) the ending to Red Dead Redemption, that doesn’t affect how much I enjoyed the game in the slightest.

I can’t speak for the other 90% of gamers who don’t finish their video games, but those are the three big ones for me: the fact that (a) I don’t have time to “beat” most games, (b) with so many old and new games to play I rarely stick with one long enough to defeat it, and (c) beating a game has never been all that important to me.