Game completion
This is by no means hard data science or anything and I want to collect more/better data on this topic, but I was glancing through my PlayStation trophy list and looking at the rarity of some of the awards I’ve earned for different games. The ‘rarity’ is a measure of how many players have obtained that trophy.
For example, checking the rarity of Demon’s Souls trophies, it shows that only 60% of players have gotten the trophy for beating the first boss. Demon’s Souls is nonlinear and hence you can choose which boss you tackle next, but the percentages for the bosses that can be challenged after the first one are pretty dismal, from 45% for Tower Knight (the next boss on the starting stage, Boletarian Castle) to just 31% for Leechmonger (the first boss of arguably the most difficult stage, the Valley of Defilement).
Only 20% of players have gotten the trophy for finishing the game. Less than two thirds of players finished the first stage and less than a fifth finished the game. Demon’s Souls is notoriously ‘difficult’, but it turns out that it’s not an outlier amongst the games that I have looked at.
Now, I know that there are some players who never connect their consoles to the Internet, and so their data is missing, as well as players who buy the same game on a new/different console but lack the motivation to finish it a second time (like me with MGSV), but let’s assume (without justification!) that these players don’t drastically alter the stats. Here is a sample of some completion data from my own Playstation trophy list (it’s just a fairly ‘random’ sample of games I have played or thought about recently so don’t judge me for having bad taste or whatever). For games with multiple difficulties I looked at the largest %, although many games “stack” these achievements i.e, completing ‘normal’ automatically gives you the trophy for completing ‘easy’.
- Alien: Isolation — 15%
- Control — 15%
- Cyberpunk 2077 — 24%
- Hollow Knight — 10%
- Ghost of Tsushima — 50%
- Subnautica — 5%
- Sonic Forces — 12%
- Gravity Rush 2 — 17%
- Horizon Zero Dawn — 31%
- Death Stranding — 29%
- Night in the Woods — 52%
- Transformers: Devastation — 11%
- Journey — 40%
- Bloodborne — 18%
- Nier: Automata — 27%
- Metal Gear Solid 2 HD — 35%
- Metal Gear Solid 3 HD — 38%
- Metal Gear Solid 4 — 25%
- Metal Gear Solid V — 21% (I’m counting people who viewed the reveal of the game’s ‘secret’ rather than completing all missions)
- Watchdogs 2 — 26%
- Doom (2016) — 25%
- The Last of Us — 41% (4% stayed to complete New Game+)
- Shadow of the Colossus (2018) — 25%
- Shadow of the Colossus HD — 18%
- Ico HD — 18%
- Ōkami HD — 22%
- Shadow of the Colossus — 26% (only 45% of players defeated the 8th Colossus to make it halfway through the game)
- Final Fantasy XV — 20%
- What Remains of Edith Finch — 74%
- RIME 17% — (41% completed the first stage, whereas only 26% completed the second stage…)
- JoJos Bizarre Adventure: Eyes of Heaven — 39% (interestingly, only 45% of players have earned the trophy for using a flash counter 10 times. It’s a very basic technique. How are more than half of the players not using the basic game mechanics? Poor conveyance? Is that related to why so few players completed it?)
- FURI 4% — (55% of players defeated the first enemy. 27% defeated the second enemy…)
- Abzû — 30%
Pretty consistent that between a quarter and a half of players actually finish the games they play. For every game that manages to have even nearly half its players actually reach the end (like Journey at 40%) there are games like Transformers: Devastation where only 11% stick it through. Maybe that’s because Transformers has limited appeal or whatever, but 90% of players not knowing what they were getting themselves in foris pretty incredible to me. Imagine 90% of people walking out on a film!
Given that so few people are finishing games they start, it’s strange that this isn’t a bigger part of the conversation we have about games. It’s something of a minor taboo to admit to starting but not finishing a game you were enjoying and it shouldn’t be imo. It’s okay to just enjoy something and then move on. You don’t owe it your time, especially if you’re not enjoying it anymore.
