It always come to my attention when browsing Steam achievements or PlayStation trophies just how many people never get around to completing a game. A quick browse through Steam reveals just how commonplace this is. Less than half completed Portal. Less than a fifth finished Batman: Arkham Asylum. Same goes for Deus Ex: Human Revolution.
The Walking Dead Season 1 is a great barometer of this. Basically all of its achievements are progress related, so you can directly see the drop-off from players. We can see 81.8% got the Out of the Frying Pan achievement for completing chapter one of episode one. This takes about 10 minutes or so to get. This tells us over 18% of PC players bought the game and played it for less than 10 minutes.
Going through the episode though, you can see a steady drop-off as players fall out, culminating in just 40.6% seeing it through to its closing credits. At some point 50% of the players who got far enough to get achievements just stopped playing before getting to the end of The Walking Dead. 2% were a single chapter away from completing it but packed it in just minutes before the finale of a game that won multiple game of the year awards.
Personally I see nearly every game out to the bitter end, where I like it or not. It’s clearly a waste of time to play something you don’t enjoy, but I can’t help wanting to see if anything changes or just how bad it can get.
What is that drives you to complete your games? What makes you decide enough is enough and you stop playing a game?
