Gamasutra examines Gamerscore and game completion statistics
by Xav de Matos 
{ Oct 28th 2009 at 2:30PM } 
According to the feature, a game's overall difficulty is the biggest culprit from discouraging players from completing a game. Using data of 14,000 players regularly surveyed provided by Microsoft and the top 13 Xbox Live titles in 2008, it was concluded the group unlocked less than half of the possible Gamerscore on average. Gamasutra notes that the selected users in the survey tend to be more hardcore than the average player, so overall completion rates are expected to be even lower.
Another point of the study was to determine the average completion of a game's campaign mode. Using data of games that award campaign completion Achievements, it was determined that only 30 percent of the surveyed group did not play games until the end. Gamasutra theorizes that the reason so many gamers neglect a game's campaign is due to frustration. Having experienced the -- sadly, often horrific -- world of Xbox Live, we'd also guess many of the hardcore gamers examined skipped the campaign in favor of pwnin' n00bs online.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Samuel Vimes @ Oct 28th 2009 2:32PM
After Mile High Club, I don't blame them.
Anthony M. @ Oct 28th 2009 4:16PM
Think it took me about 20 tries, maybe 30 tops. Had it done in under a half hour tho for sure.
Games that keep me interested are games I finish. That and if I don't feel like I'm going to beat them too quickly.
I'll move away from a game because I don't want to finish it just yet, then end up never going back.
INTERNET SUPERHERO @ Oct 28th 2009 4:59PM
Meh with games like Halo 3 and Call of Duty 4 they forget that people may have 2 or 3 accounts. So they'll have one to complete the Single-Player and the other accounts to play multi-player online.
Or better yet.
When peoples XBL accounts run out they just sign up another account for a free month trial so they can still play. I think those two scenario's would increase those two games alone by half...
Monica Dickey @ Oct 28th 2009 5:29PM
I am surprised R6 vegas is so low. It's not that long of a game.
Vidikron @ Oct 28th 2009 2:36PM
I played 8 of the 9 (didn't play Fable II) on that list and finished all but GTAIV. I didn't finished that because I got extremely bored with it.
WREturns (Please buy and rate my iPhone game, Shape Tapper!) @ Oct 28th 2009 2:51PM
That's funny because I played every game on that list, but the only one I didn't beat was Fable 2 because I got so damn bored with it. But I guess that's why they release a ton of games; everyone has different tastes.
The Dark Wayne [Planeteer: Power of the Batusi] @ Oct 28th 2009 2:57PM
ive only completed the CoDs because they have no multiplayer achievements : /
I am really close with almost all of them though. I guess that's the thing, I like trying to get a huge gamerscore, but im not gonna do achievements that arent fun, which is why i dont have stupid ones like "Mongoose Mowdown or Steppin Razor" in Halo 3 cause it just messes up normal games.
copa @ Oct 28th 2009 2:57PM
I played everything but COD5 and Bad Company, and the only game I didn't finish was Rainbow Six... which is at the bottom of the list.
The correlation I see on the list is not that the least difficult games are completed, but that the highest quality ones are.
COD4 was the best single-player campaign I've played this gen, and it is at the top.
The Gears of War games are the best co-op campaigns I've played this gen, and they are up there, too.
The Halo campaign is pretty meh to me, but it seems to get pretty good reviews, and a lot of people enjoy it.
Bad Company and COD5 didn't get such stellar reviews, and they are near the bottom. I finished GTA4 and enjoyed it, but most reviewers complained about the campaign dragging too much at the end.
Eh @ Oct 28th 2009 3:35PM
Im surprised GTA4 even made the list. I would have expected that game along with Oblivion to be the least finished games. Sandbox games are really hard to finish because you can get sidetracked so easily, before you know it youve played the game for 70 hours and are only 60% through the story and are sick of playing it. With Oblivion it was INCREDIBLY easy to bury your story quests with dozens of sidequests.
Nathan-DTS [He is your father] @ Oct 28th 2009 3:36PM
Modern Warfare's story was terrible. Infinity Ward put a nuke in the game and suddenly the story's deep? World at war had a better story by far and was better quality overall.
The best story this generation is Uncharted 2; Its story is rivals most movies nowadays. .
bioadam @ Oct 28th 2009 3:42PM
GTAIV has an ending? Maybe I should dust it off and get access to the last island.
tenor77 @ Oct 28th 2009 4:06PM
Yeah I didn't finish GTA 4. It just got tedious after awhile driving around town, and waiting for a cab took too long.
I did beat most of the games on the list, but world at war I almost gave up on because the single player was horrendous.
johnnynumber5 @ Oct 28th 2009 5:19PM
I'm pretty bad about not finishing games that don't grab me within the first few hours. Perfect examples of recent titles (for me, doesn't mean it's bad) would be Arkham Asylum & GTA IV. There are plenty of other games as well that I didn't finish but those two just didn't get my attention past 3-4 hours. On the other hand the first Modern Warfare and Uncharted 2 were finsihed in a few sittings because I couldn't put down the controller.
As far as the list itself:
I finished World At War, Gears 1 & 2, Halo 3, Modern Warfare & Bad Company.
Didn't finish GTA IV or R6V2
Never played Fable 2
I think difficulty and fun are pretty important factors. I can handle hard but not boring, cheap and frustrating.
Lunastra78 (PSN: lunastra78) @ Oct 28th 2009 2:42PM
The only game I didn't finish in my collection was Conan. That last boss was just way too annoying!
Also, I guess a lot of people just play GTAIV for a while to run around and create general havoc, never caring much about the main campaign.
Darth Bradwart, Dark Lord of the Sith @ Oct 28th 2009 2:54PM
That was my main problem with Fable II. It was much more fun to run around, making money, killing people, nailing prostitutes, and generally being evil than it was to actually finish the story.
Geez, when I describe it that way Fable II sounds a lot like GTA...
Lunastra78 (PSN: lunastra78) @ Oct 28th 2009 4:08PM
Well there's no wrong way to play a game that you paid money for, as long as you have fun with it then power to you. But generally I do some research on the games I want before getting them (play demos, watch videos etc) so I know that it will be worth my time.
Neuromancer @ Oct 28th 2009 2:42PM
As a game designer I think I would do everything in my power to make sure anyone who wanted to beat a game and get all 1000 GS, could. Achievements should be more a matter of putting the time in, not beating the game on a crushing difficulty.
Samuel Vimes @ Oct 28th 2009 2:45PM
Even difficulty completions aren't that bad. It's the insane ones like GoW's kill achievements or the viral achievements. I mean the games are great but I don't think a small gamerscore increase is worth the hundreds of hours of getting 100,000 kills.
Shagittarius @ Oct 28th 2009 2:47PM
Agreed , encouraging the player to play a game on a level or to a degree that it was never designed for is assinine. It's like going to a rock concert for the purpose of counting liscense plates in the parking lot.
The Dark Wayne [Planeteer: Power of the Batusi] @ Oct 28th 2009 2:50PM
putting in time achievements suck. No one wants to play 250 matches in FEAR 1 when 13 people have ever played it. It's bad enough with crap like 100,000 kills in Gears or the 250 kills with each weapon type in RSV2
Punishment4Gluttons @ Oct 28th 2009 2:52PM
I agree mostly with this statement. I like trophies/achievements that make me play differently like "kill a dude using some funky way". I don't like the "be in the top 1% of online world rankings" goals. I'll never reach that nor will I even try to reach it.
Spike (GT: SitriStahl) @ Oct 28th 2009 2:56PM
the only achievements i'm putting time into are the halo 3 vidmasters, because i really want the recon chest, not a big fan of the rest of the armor set, and achievements that make the player do inane things suck, beating a level in halo 3:ODST without firing a weapon, or using a grenade on the highest difficulty, while wasn't hard, was ludicrous
Neuromancer @ Oct 28th 2009 2:57PM
"putting in time achievements suck."
By putting in the time, I meant more like, in Oblivion, going through all the guilds and the main quests. Not particularly hard to do but time-consuming.
Darth Bradwart, Dark Lord of the Sith @ Oct 28th 2009 2:58PM
Yeah. The Vidmasters make you work for it, that's for sure. Annual took me eighty-five minutes...and I haven't had a chance to really tackle the ODST Vidmasters, since my 360 is still down.
Neuromancer @ Oct 28th 2009 3:59PM
Wow someone please tell me why I got downvoted this time. Not that it matters but still, I'd like to hear the reasoning behind this one.
Orion @ Oct 28th 2009 4:15PM
I guess I'll answer you. It's probably because people don't think it should be easy to beat the game as long as you sit in front of the screen long enough.
If you grew up with gaming since the beginning, and not with systems like xbox and playstation, you'd know that games were VERY difficult, and that's the challenge and point to playing them.
At least for me, many games bore me to tears because I feel like I'm on a track and doing the motions, and there's never any fear of messing up because I'll win anyway. Kinda like Bioshock's respawn thing, or games like Super Paper Mario that felt more like time commitment and not a challenge commitment.
The reason I play games till dawn is because I enjoy trying to beat them. I remember countless nights of playing Mario Bros, Roadblasters, Sonic 1 and Daytona USA simply because it was a challenge, and I got such a good feeling once I got past a difficult part.
Games like Demon's Souls I applaud because it gives me that same sense of satisfaction. I laugh when game review sites say it's too hard, because honestly it's fairly tame compared to older games. I've sauntered through it quite easily in fact. But unlike the games listed above, I'll probably finish this one because there was a challenge and I won't get bored of it half way through.
Anywho, I think that's why you got downvoted. Don't take it personally, it's not like anyone hates you bud. It's just they didn't agree with what you said.
Later
Neuromancer @ Oct 28th 2009 4:20PM
^Well I appreciate the response. I've been playing games since my family had an Apple 2, so I also played on the NES, the Genesis and onwards. I always thought games getting more manageable was a good thing. Guess I'm in the minority, personally I play games to have fun and not beat my head against a wall.
Anyway getting stupid stuff like this downvoted really makes me not want to participate in this site any more. It's like no one wants to hear an opinion that doesn't closely match theirs which I would have thought would be the point of a comments section.
Anthony M. @ Oct 28th 2009 4:22PM
Stupid achievements are stupid. I hate playing through an entire game and completing the story, only to have 180/1000 gamerscore.
Whats the point if PLAYING the game doesn't unlock them?
A good example is Mass Effect.
You HAVE to play through the game 2 times or more to get all the achievements, and at that have to work at some of them. It's stupid.
Vcize @ Oct 28th 2009 4:26PM
I have no problem with things like 100k kills in Gears 2. At least in that sense they're rewarding fans of the game as opposed to just people looking to fill up on achievements. Many people will end up with that Gears 2 achievement without it being a grind for them, because they were playing the game for that long anyway.
Granted, the majority of achievements should be stuff that you do (L4D is a perfect example), but with 50 achievements and 1000 gamerscore to dole out there's no reason 1 or 2 of them can't be relegated to only the biggest fans of the game. If everyone had 1000/1000 on every game it wouldn't mean anything.
L4D did it perfectly now that I think about it. Lots of stuff that involved extra playthroughs and was fun and intense to do (no friendly fire, don't get vomitted on through an entire playthrough, beat it with pistols only, beat it without healing, finish a finale without taking damage, kill all 4 survivors in one tank run, crown the witch, headshot a hunter as it leaps, etc) but also had a couple sprinkled in that only people that stuck with the game could get (kill 53,595 infected).
Orion @ Oct 28th 2009 4:28PM
Don't look at it as people downvoting you because they think you're stupid or something, it's just a way without having to put in a response to say they don't agree with you.
And no no, I wasn't trying to say you weren't old enough to know what older games were, I was just saying that just to let you know where most of the people were coming from. (IE: Older games were more about a challenge).
Don't get me wrong. I think when games are way too hard it gets annoying. There's a fine line between hard and "throw your controller down in a furry of anger and never play it again" hard. Then again, games like that are usually not "hard" so much as broken, but I digress.
Basically, games that almost leave you in a vegetate state where there really is no difficulity leave people bored. There's only so much you can play of a game that is very repetitious and without challenge. I think when you said that you like games that just require you to put your time in, it made people think of those types of games. I think games like Batman AA on a harder difficulty are perfect. Not easy, but not aggravating. It gives you a sense of accomplishment instead of you just coasting through and getting to the ending in a few hours.
I don't think you should leave the site, but sometimes .. at least for me.. the best thing is to just not comment for a bit when people get all up in your face and take your message out of context, and come back when you feel comfortable. There's a lot of jerks here, but unfortunately you (not YOU you, anyone) can be thought of as saying something harsher than what they really are just because it's text and it's hard to gauge emotion. Sometimes it can seem like you're being a tool or a troll when you're just trying to say a simple opinion and it's taken out of context.
Anywho, just my two cents. Hope this helped and I hope you can understand it wasn't personal, just people trying to voice their opinion back to what they interpreted your comment to mean.
[deleted profile] @ Oct 28th 2009 4:47PM
Thanks Orion I appreciate it, I'm going to follow your advice and take a breather and try not let it get to me.
Preston @ Oct 28th 2009 2:42PM
Or because the game got incredibly repetitive halfway through and we gave up out of boredom. Ohai thar Mirror's Edge.
ducttapeBigSexy (PSN&XBL: ducttape12) @ Oct 28th 2009 3:09PM
It's like a 6 hour game - got ADD or something?
Preston @ Oct 28th 2009 3:15PM
@ducttape: Unlike some people here, I'm not interested in playing all the way through a game that is no longer fun.
Eh @ Oct 28th 2009 3:28PM
Mirrors Edge was one of the easiest games for me to finish. It was short, linear, and fun.
Vcize @ Oct 28th 2009 4:30PM
Heh, funny that you brought that up. I force my way through boredom to the end of game's almost to a fault, but half-way through Mirror's Edge I just had to move on from. I got almost as much dread booting that game up after I got about half way through the campaign as I did when I pulled out of the driveway to go to work in the morning.
Captain Planet [Planeteer | Power of Captain Planet] @ Oct 28th 2009 2:43PM
I imagine most players stopped playing the Halo 3 campaign at the level 'Cortana'.
Darth Bradwart, Dark Lord of the Sith @ Oct 28th 2009 2:46PM
Yeah, that was so totally fun on Legendary with the Mythic skull on, right?
*shudders*
What the heck was Paul Bertone thinking?
maveric101 @ Oct 29th 2009 12:54AM
i love halo in general, but i fucking hated those god damned needle turrets.
jdbriseno @ Oct 29th 2009 10:47AM
Needler is a godsend on that level against pure forms. I don't think I could've shot my way through that level on Legendary without it.
Darth Bradwart, Dark Lord of the Sith @ Oct 28th 2009 2:44PM
I generally complete a game (unless I absolutely hate it) but I don't try for Achievements or Trophies unless they do something for me (like Doughnut Drake).
That low level of completion for Bad Company is a tragedy...that game is a classic.
Electro Poof [Super Nintendo IT ONLY DOES EVERYTHING - Now Only $29.99] @ Oct 28th 2009 2:48PM
The only one I didn't finish was Rainbow Six Vegas 2. It was more fun to play multiplayer than the campaign.
Lunastra78 (PSN: lunastra78) @ Oct 28th 2009 4:10PM
But then you lost out on what is perhaps the worst ending of all time! Yeah even worse than Condemned 2's ending. :p
But yeah I agree, Terrorist Hunt is more entertaining.
Vidikron @ Oct 28th 2009 4:36PM
I thought both the RSV games made for great co-op campaigns. That's how I played and finished both. But, yeah, after that is was pretty much all Terrorist Hunt.
Mazrael @ Oct 28th 2009 2:49PM
It's the Campaigns I complete.. usually ignore the MP, I get bored with it far too easily
Punishment4Gluttons @ Oct 28th 2009 2:49PM
Can you be considered a hardcore gamer if you find a majority of your games too hard to finish? I've not completed some games, but it has never been due to difficulty. I typically start on the level above "normal" because normal these days is just too easy.
The Dark Wayne [Planeteer: Power of the Batusi] @ Oct 28th 2009 2:53PM
A lot of games dont even give a whole lot of achievements for beating them on hard. Brutal Legend for example only has 25 points for completing it on Brutal difficulty, i mean there's still the level completes but even with that it's only like 300. I think it's not always the difficulty of the game but the difficulty of the achievements. Like I've beaten Gears 2 on Insane but there's no way I'm gonna just grind the brumak level for 5 hours to get the Seriously 2.0 achievement.
Punishment4Gluttons @ Oct 28th 2009 2:57PM
I was speaking more to the part about people not playing the game to the very end due to a difficult campaign. Perhaps these people have too much pride to set the game to easy. They clearly need to stay away from Demon Souls.
Mazrael @ Oct 28th 2009 3:06PM
I slugged through CoD2 & 4 on Veteran first time.. that was tough.. now I think it's better to do normal/hard first.. getting stuck because of constant flashbanging gets to you after a while..
Chief Oddball @ Oct 28th 2009 2:54PM
I don't often finish games anymore because there are so many great games to play, and I don't have many hours for gaming in the week. During the slow release seasons I try to go back and finish some of the ones I put aside midway through in favor of something newer.
But in total I've finished the campaigns of...I dunno, maybe 25%-35% of the games i own.