Why most people don't finish video games

Once considered a cult pastime, video games have grown immensely in the last 30 years to become a mainstream fixture alongside movies and music.

But you wouldn't know it by how often players finish their games.

In fact, the attrition (or bounce rate) of video games is pretty pathetic. "What I've been told as a blanket expectation is that 90% of players who start your game will never see the end of it unless they watch a clip on YouTube," says Keith Fuller, a longtime production contractor for Activision.

That's a lot of unfinished games. And it doesn't get much better when isolated to just avid gamers.

"Just 10 years ago, I recall some standard that only 20% of gamers ever finish a game," says John Lee, VP of marketing at Raptr and former executive at Capcom, THQ and Sega.

And it's not just dull games that go unfinished. Critically acclaimed ones do, too. Take last year's "Red Dead Redemption." You might think Rockstar's gritty Western would be played more than others, given the praise it enjoyed, but you'd be wrong.

Only 10% of avid gamers completed the final mission, according to Raptr, which tracks more than 23 million gaming sessions.

Let that sink in for a minute: Of every 10 people who started playing the consensus "Game of the Year," only one of them finished it.

How is that? Shouldn't such a high-rated game keep people engaged? Or have player attention spans reached a breaking point?

Who's to blame: The developer or the player? Or maybe it's our culture?

The correct answer is, in fact, all of the above.

The aging gamer

At the beginning of the 21st century, the average gamer was pushing 30 -- mid-to-late 20s, to be exact. They weren't playing as often as they did in their adolescence, but in between entry-level jobs, earnest slacking and higher education, there was still ample time to game.

Fast forward to today, and the average gamer is 37, according to the Entertainment Software Association. The average age of the most frequent game buyer is 41 -- nearing Just for Men-type levels. They're raising kids. In the middle of a career. Worried about retirement.

Not only that, but time is precious for gamers of all ages.

"People have short attention spans and limited time now," says Jeremy Airey, head of U.S. production at Konami.

Source: http://articles.cnn.com

Its good to know im not the only one who doesnt finish games

Latest Game: Duke Nukem Forever
Status: Unfinished lol
its so true! But i brought the game back bc i dont enjoy making a 10+yr old game in HD and thinking its impressive, bc its not.

I have finished every game I've started and proud of it. Not only have I finished them once, I've done it repeatedly. I wonder if the study has lumped male/female gamers, it would be curious to see which gender tends to finish games. Perhaps female gamers tend to finish games more often than male gamers, even though we are a smaller group, we might tip the stats a bit with this research. I don't know why someone would spend all that money for a game and NOT finish it, honestly.

Something I've noticed in the Sims community when regarding contests and stories, sims players rarely finish their sims stories and contests often don't do well, the simmers just end up giving up, usually do to game malfunction which is not surprising how many ridiculous mods a simmer can have in their game. Same goes for why many gamers don't finish a game because of game malfunctions because they run too many mods, game crashes all the time and they lose interest. Instead of just a flat research to whether they finish a game or not, I'm more interested in the reasons for NOT finishing a game. For me? I finish my games and replay them again and again.

For me it all depends on the game, I've finished about 70% of the games I own, give or take. I own a lot of games (about 400+ actual disks, and another 300 or so 16 bit roms, plus 100 or so random computer games) some are more deserving of my time than others and some are only good for quick bursts, I tend to keep all my games and the one's I really like I'll play through several times. :)