I can tell you the last game I played to completion. It was Paul Woakes Mercenary. This was in 1987. I received it for my birthday, and put it on the shelf, completed, two weeks later, having spent every waking moment when not at school submersed in Woakes marvelous creation. There may have been others since then, but I don’t remember them if there were. Being a games junkie means I like to keep up with what’s new, and to do that, older titles have to take a back seat. Sadly, they rarely fight their way to the front again.

With so many titles competing for your time these days, if you want variety of gameplay, you have to, realistically, sacrifice your completion percentage. Case in point: I played Burnout 3 obsessively. Then Grand Theft Auto San Andreas came along. I played that to a certain point, then Mercenaries came along. I focused on that, neglecting GTA:SA. After a few addicted weeks with Mercenaries, it was on to something else, then something else… Then the biggest time vacuum of all, Gran Turismo 4 arrived, and that has taken up mostly permanent residence in my PS2, except for the occasional baseball game. Since GT4 arrived there’s been Gods of War, Dynasty Warriors 5… It’s only my hardcore passion for racing that has kept me from fleeing GT4. In short, if I’m to stand any hope of finishing Gran Turismo, I’m having to avoid the seductive gaze of other titles. Of course, a big part of the problem is the way I play games. For many gamers, the prize is all that matters, and they must get there as quickly as possible. For me, however, the journey is the bigger part of the fun. Sure, in Mercs I could have gone straight from A, to B, to C. However, I’d be missing out on the simple pleasures of, for example, repeatedly driving my jeep off a cliff, or seeing how many times in a row I can successfully snipe before I miss. To use a Starcraft analogy, it’s the difference between winning via a Zergling rush, and keeping the game going long enough to send a horde of Ultralisks to do your bidding. One may show your tactical prowess, but the other is a lot more fun.

The following questions are aimed at the folks who have families and/or other responsibilities. Basically, those whose gaming time is limited by their circumstances.

If you want to experience the vast cornucopia of titles out there, and not just focus on one particular genre, or even franchise in some cases, is playing a game to completion even feasible anymore? I know that by the time I get to 100% in GT4, a lot of titles would pass me by. Titles which, as a passionate gamer, I can’t pass up. Those titles, in turn, will have to fight for attention against others, and so on. Does length of gameplay mean a damn thing anymore, when a sizeable chunk of people won’t complete the thing anyway?

If you focus exclusively on maybe six titles or less a year, do you still consider yourself a hardcore gamer, despite sampling only a very tiny fraction of what the gaming universe has to offer? If you’re someone who checks out as many titles as possible, do you even care if you complete a game anymore?

What it boils down to is time. Something which there’s never enough of. (Except in doctors waiting rooms. Maybe that’s the key.) Would you rather complete a game, and play only a handful of titles every year? Or would you rather be like The Littlest Hobo? Stick around for a little while, then just keep moving on?