Smash hit video games – how many of them did we actually finish?

We are used to analyzing and evaluating games as individual titles, separate series or genres. We study them based on their mechanics, graphic design, atmosphere, or whether they are simply fun. Some of them turn out to be a disappointment and we abandon them without a moment of hesitation, others get a passing mark without being truly outstanding, while the rest are true gems nothing short of perfection. Anything can become a smash hit: shooter, RPG, action or adventure game – you name it – the genre doesn’t really matter. But can you evaluate a game not as a specific production but in terms of all thousands or millions of units sold? Sure you can, and it leads to many interesting observations, one of them being particularly striking: regardless of how much modern video games can differ from one another, most of both top-rated titles and mediocre productions have one thing in common – hardly anyone finishes them!

How did we reach this conclusion? It comes from global achievement statistics featured on today's most popular gaming platforms: Steam and PlayStation Network. Sometimes the trophies require the player to fulfill a number of conditions, but many of them are gained automatically, for example after completing a certain stage or finishing the game. Both services can instantly provide the percentage of all players who managed to collect the same trophy, and it allows us to assess how many people have progressed up to that point. Admittedly, that is not the whole picture, as such global data were never disclosed by Microsoft, Uplay, Origin or GOG, but the remarkable similarity between the numbers recorded by Steam and PSN, and the fact that the majority of PC titles require Valve's app either way, allows us to assume that any potential differences are rather small. It is also worth noting that we are only talking about the owners of legitimate copies with permanent access to the internet, because they are the ones providing the necessary data for the servers.

When viewing the achievement stats for many popular games, not just released last year, but also older ones, you can see a certain puzzling regularity – in almost every case the games were completed by no more than roughly 30% of the players. It wouldn’t be surprising if it only applied to the titles that have lived to see considerable price reductions or were included in bundles – we often buy such games on the spur of the moment even if we're not going to play them, but it seems that the rule also applies to debuting productions. Interestingly, regardless of whether we check them out a few months after the game's release (which means after enough time to complete even a few dozen hours long sandbox) or much later – this ratio remains more or less constant. A game that’s already spent a whole year on the market won’t be suddenly remembered by the owners who haven’t even bothered to complete it yet. Many of us tend to simply never come back to what we find boring, and some new buyers only spare a second glance.

Some interesting information is also provided by compulsory trophies, awarded mid-game, e.g., for completing specific story missions or killing certain bosses. The said info would suggest that not all players are able to even properly begin their adventure with a given title, because initial achievements are usually collected by 80–90% of the players; the farther into the game, however, the worse the numbers become. Subsequent progress marks are reached by a gradually diminishing number of players, and things such as completing the game in 100% or on a higher level of difficulty, finding all collectibles, or other particularly difficult to win trophies, are usually claimed by less than 5% of the players. Why is that? We've spent a lot of money on a game; why not enjoy it to the fullest? The reasons are numerous, as it turns out. A game can get boring, perhaps it was a failed gift or it turned out to be too difficult. There may be newer titles that we'd like to check out, or, on the contrary, we may have limited time to play, and we prefer to use it for a couple of rounds with an older favorite – out of habit, as a result of peer pressure, and so on. If we take a look at the most popular recent titles and try to analyze the information provided by achievement statistics, the abovementioned regularity appears in virtually every case, regardless of the game, genre, or the time that’s passed since its release. Here are a few examples that clearly work in favor of this concept!

Doom

Date of release: May 13, 2016

Doom (2016)

Let us begin with a fairly recent title, namely the new Doom. The game is not as recent as to have players rushing to finish singleplayer campaign. It hasn’t yet been part of any big sale. The statistics of chosen achievements are as follows:

Doom (2016)

The achievement “Knee-Deep in the Dead” is awarded for completing the game on any difficulty level. Out of all the people who boughy the game only a fifth has actually finished it on PS4, and a quarter on PC. According to SteamSpy, currently 903,000 players own the game on Steam, so that means only 234,000 have finished the new Doom, and this ratio on consoles is even worse. Not everyone played Doom for more than a couple minutes either – or even started it – as indicated by the “E1M1” trophy. Hell, which is further into the game, has been reached by only half of the players. The statistics regarding the bosses are even more interesting: the number of players decreases with every boss – would that be due to growing difficulty? Boredom? Even the cult BFG weapon – acquired by 35–38% of players – didn’t help in these fights. The search for collectibles engaged fewer than 5% of players. The list is concluded with the hardest and most demanding achievements, such as upgrading all the runes or finishing the first mission on the hardest difficulty. Similar results on both PS4 and PC suggest that even the more convenient controls of the PC didn’t help a whole lot. There is a clear difference in the statistics concerning the multiplayer: as we can see, the PC players were far more reluctant towards the social variant of the game than the console gamers. Then again, this achievement is required to get a platinum on PS4, so this may be the real reason.

Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End

Date of release: May 10, 2016

Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End (2016)

The last part of the Uncharted series came out at roughly the same time as Doom. The game met with fantastic reception from both the players and gaming sites – it was deemed a true masterpiece and one of the best games for PS4 so far. The adventures of Nathan Drake stand out thanks to their immersive, cinematic plot (linear and facilitating a reasonably short playthrough full of adventures straight from Indiana Jones). Has this helped the game to obtain better results in terms of achievements? Let’s see:

Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End (2016)

The award for finishing the game on the easiest difficulty is automatically given to anyone who completes the game, regardless of the mode they’d played – hence, as we can see, only 40% of players reached the end credits. Uncharted 4 doesn’t award any guaranteed achievements during the game, unfortunately, so we can only have a look at some trophies concerning collectibles and hidden trophies. The journal entries and treasures at the beginning of the game have been discovered by almost everyone, but a rather easy to complete encounter with a lemur has been ticked off only by a third of the players; only a tenth has found more than 50 items. Exploring every nook of the game and collecting all the items is, as always, a domain of only a handful of the biggest fans and completionists lot. Roughly the same number of people has finished the game on the highest difficulty. The statistics concerning the number of people who tried the multiplayer may come as a surprise, considering how greatly this game focuses on singleplayer. Not many people managed to play 5 games, but 20% is still a considerable score.

Rise of the Tomb Raider

Date of PC release: January 29, 2016

Rise of the Tomb Raider (2015)

In the case of Rise of the Tomb Rider we don’t have any data from Xbox where the game was Microsoft’s exclusive for some time; the company from Redmond simply doesn’t publish such information. There are also no PlayStation Network statistics, because the release for PS4 is still ahead of us. Hence we’re left with Steam’s statistics only... Does that change anything?

Rise of the Tomb Raider (2015)

Not quite. Among the PC players about 50% (ca. 420,000 out of 934,000 owners on Steam) completed the game, but the same pattern can be observed: around 80% of people get through the beginning of the game, and their number steadily shrinks as the game progresses, as seen through the achievements automatically awarded at different stages of the game. The collectibles aren’t enough of an incentive to comb through levels either – the bigger the collection, the fewer the people who own it. As usual, the highest difficulty level isn’t too popular, and as few as 3% of people managed to finish the game in this mode. What is notable, however, is the relatively large number of people who managed to complete 100% of the game.

Far Cry Primal

Date of release: February 23, 2016

Far Cry Primal (2016)

With Far Cry Primal we venture into the realm of sandboxes – games that are vast, have hundreds of collectibles and side quests, and usually take a lot of time to be finished, even if the player focuses only on the main story. Four months since the release proved to be too little time to finish the main plot for as many as 73% of players, but the statistics we have concern only PlayStation 4. Far Cry on PC is usually run through Uplay, and Ubisoft doesn’t share any information about achievements.

Far Cry Primal (2016)

While the number of people who completed the game might seem standard for a sandbox, the trophy awarded for finishing the first mission stands out. Nearly 100% completion means that the pre-historic setting attracted many players. Did the game make the right impression? Seems not, because the next mission in this chart – “Spearproof” – witnessed a significant drop in the number of players. This tendency is maintained throughout the game, which is ascertained not only by subsequent missions, but also by the quests completed and upgrades acquired during the remaining part of the game. As always, the players were least interested in looking for collectibles, with only 6% really dedicated to the task.

Batman: Arkham Knight

Date of release: June 23, 2015

Batman: Arkham Knight (2015)

Last year’s release of Arkham Knight was subject to a surprising and uneven take-off because of the dissonance between the well-received console version and the utter disaster that the PC port proved to be. The game was even temporarily taken off the shelves in order to get more time to polish the PC edition, which sure enough didn’t come immediately. A year has passed since that inglorious release, and Batman has been decently patched up. Does that translate to differences between platforms in any way?

Batman: Arkham Knight (2015)

The number of people who finished the game is similar on both platforms – about 40%. In the case of PC, this means around 257,000 players (out of 643,000 owners, according to SteamSpy). It’s clear, however, that the beginning of the game captivated PS4 users much more than PC gamers – the automatic trophies were awarded more often, with the differences oscillating around 10 percentage points. The statistics converge near the end of the game – the credits were seen by a nearly equal number of players. The number of side quests completed seems to depend on the moment they appear in the game – which is nicely depicted by the case of the Riddler: his first riddle was solved by 60% of the players; ninth by half as much; only 9.2% of PC players and 8% of PS players solved all his riddles. All the peculiar challenges, such as performing a given move during combat, seem to interest only a small group of enthusiastic achievement collectors.

Dying Light: The Following

Date of release: February 9, 2016

Dying Light: The Following (2016)

Dying Light was met with enthusiastic reception of both fans and the press, and the case was similar with The Following, a DLC full of easter egg goodness. Theoretically, expansion sets should make for better results in statistics. After all, people who buy them are fans of a given franchise, know what they’re playing and want some more. What are the facts?

Dying Light: The Following (2016)

Judging by the numbers alone, the situation doesn’t look too good for Techland – only around a dozen percent of people who’d bought the game actually started it, and even fewer finished it. Still, if we consider the number of players who reached the end of the first mission as opposed to the number of people who finished the whole thing, the rate of completion is around 50%, which is actually better than, e.g., Doom. What stands out is also the contrast between PC and PS4 players – the former were much more interested in the expansion than the latter. Achievements such as the last one were awarded automatically to everyone who made it until the end of the story, but such activities as destroying scarecrows only attracted a very small group of trophy collectors.

Just Cause 3

Date of release: December 1, 2015

Just Cause 3 (2015)

Just Cause 3 is another action sandbox in our comparison. Apart from the main story it has a range of side activities that are actually pretty numerous. How many players finished the game during almost eight months that have passed since its release?

Just Cause 3 (2015)

It turns out that no more than 20% of the owners of Just Cause 3 managed to finish the game. With 669,000 copies sold on Steam it gives roughly 140,000 players who made it to the end. What’s even more interesting, while more people started the game on PS4, it’s the PC players who completed it more often. The subsequent story missions show the same downward tendency on both platforms, with a slight advantage on the side of PC. Only over a dozen percent of players managed to score 1 million chaos points by acting against the dictator, but considering how much time is required to complete this achievement, the score isn’t bad. Another significant value is the number of people who completed 100% of the game: 0.4% on PS4 and 2.4% on PC. We might chalk up the difference to the controls – using the mouse is very helpful during the challenges that require precision. Is there any relation between the time that passed since the release of the game and the number of achievements acquired? Indeed, there is a difference – the numbers went up a little but the proportions remained similar. In January 2016, two months after the game launched, 11.5% of PS4 players and 17.1% of PC users finished the game, while 89.2% and 86.6%, respectively, had begun the game. Still, the difference isn’t substantial.

Need for Speed

Date of release: November 3, 2015

Need for Speed (2015)

Are the fans of fast cars, tuning and racing, who had to wait for their game a whole year longer, more eager to complete it? In the case of Need for Speed ?we’ve only ?checked the data recorded on PlayStation 4, as the PC’s Origin platform does not provide global statistics.

Need for Speed (2015)

Need for Speed ??fares in a rather typical manner – 90% of players spent more than a few minutes playing the game, but less than 30% made it to the end. The title allows some flexibility in the single player campaign, as we can concentrate on a single career path or pursue several of them. Statistics don’t show how many people picked the minimum option, and how many had followed more than one career path, but the trophy "The Ultimate Icon" provides information that only less than half of those who completed the game actually finished all the story missions and watched all the cutscenes. Gradual decline in interest can be seen clearly with the trophies associated with reputation levels – the higher the level, the fewer players reached it. The most interesting conclusions can be drawn, however, from the trophy "Full House". Racing games are often criticized for offering too small a number of cars to choose from. In Need for Speed we can see that only 30% of the players managed to fill their garage, even though it ??required them to purchase the astonishing number of... five car models!

Fallout 4

Date of release: November 10, 2015

Fallout 4 (2015)

Fallout 4 is a huge sandbox, offering a whole bunch of places to visit and quests to complete; this fact alone is enough to suspect that the number of players who actually reached the ending was rather limited. Some interesting information is also provided by a direct comparison of numbers between PS4 and PC.

Fallout 4 (2015)

As you can see, not many Fallout 4 owners have made it to the end, regardless of the platform; although in this case, given nearly 3.5 million registered game users on Steam, "not many" means 700,000 players who witnessed the ending. The difference shows, however, in the number of people who completed the introduction and actually left the vault. Here, PlayStation 4 can boast a higher number of curious players, as many as 96% versus 87% on PC. It is worth noting that console gamers lost their interest after this stage, while PC users continued the exploration of post-apocalyptic Boston in an overall bigger number. As many as 75% of PC players reached 10th level of experience while almost 30% progressed until level 50. On consoles, it was 69% and 20%, respectively. The initial side quests were completed by a similar number of gamers in both cases, but it was the PC gamers who were more eager to gather collectible bobbleheads. On both platforms the achievement least likely to be gained was "Mass Production", awarded for having crafted at least 100 items in the course of the game; less than 0.5% of the players achieved this trophy.

The Witcher 3 and its expansions: Hearts of Stone / Blood and Wine

Dates of release: May 19, 2015; October 13, 2015 (Hearts of Stone); May 31, 2016 (Blood and Wine)

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (2015)

And finally, the smash hit from Poland. Virtually everyone played it, and some very determined individuals even completed it several times. The time that’s passed since its launch lets us presume that whoever began playing The Witcher 3 must have reached the ending by now. The game's amazing expansions hit the market a bit later, but they are also definitely shorter and don’t require as much time to complete. First thing we have to explain, however, is that the PC user-related data presented below came from Steam, the less popular platform in this particular case, as GOG, which was probably number 1 Witcher-running platform, doesn’t provide global statistics (same as Microsoft or Origin).

Wild Hunt

Hearts of Stone

Blood and Wine

Wild Hunt has been present on the market for over a year now, but the number of people who completed the game increased only by 4% on PC; Sony's console takes the lead here, recording a 9% increase. This doesn’t change anything in the fact that 75% of the game's owners failed to see its finale. Data from Steam clearly show the effect of price cuts and promotions on Witcher 3 – the number of those who completed the first quest is only 68%, recording a 6 point decrease as opposed to a similar comparison from August last year. PlayStation users, who also were able to purchase the game at a reduced price, maintain a constant level of above 80%; although, like in the case of PC gamers, a slight decline can be seen when compared to the last summer. The main storyline of The Witcher 3 was visibly more popular on the console, and the numbers for all the trophies related to the story missions are always bigger than on PC. PC players. on the other hand. are more likely to play the game on the higher difficulty levels. Unfortunately, few owners of the core game were tempted to try out the brilliant expansions. Here, the PC rules unanimously, and both Hearts of Stone and Blood and Wine were started by a dozen percent of fans of The Witcher universe. It's nice to see, however, that almost all of them reached the end of the expansions’ short plot, which can be seen clearly in the case of Hearts of Stone; the second DLC is still a fairly new release and the situation here will certainly improve with time. One can only hope that the console players will eventually grab the expansions, because right now Blood and Wine was started by less than 8% of the people owning The Witcher 3, and less than half of them made it to the end. Trophies from Geralt's adventures in Toussaint also show that the vast majority of players prefer to choose the optimistic conclusion – the second option was preferred by a very limited group of players.

The Witcher 3: Blood and Wine (2016)

There are dozens of similar cases. We don’t finish our games – we start them and then lose interest halfway through. Gaming, often seen as simple entertainment, is, in a way, like studying at a university. Many people begin, but barely a handful manages to complete the course. Education, however, requires great effort and overcoming many obstacles along the way, while gaming is simpy fun and we are the ones deciding the dose. For people who read industry articles or news, spend hours on dedicated forums, and, above all else, play and finish many titles, this may seem unbelievable, but let's remember that the market for video games also includes a considerable number of players who don’t bother to comment on the Internet or even use it for information on the latest productions. But I guess we all feel guilty about the same thing – somewhere out there a pile of shame is growing as we put off the completion of yet another game for later, pick up the latest titles or the classic ones, and simply don’t have enough time to play everything we want. Or maybe, in many cases, this is exactly what we want? We don’t finish the game, putting off the moment we see the end credits roll on purpose, because we want to enjoy the game longer and not simply put it on the shelf after a few evenings? And what is your reason for failing to complete video games?