Do you complete games?

[Max_Caine]

When I have bought a game, I play it to completion. I may play several games at once, swapping between them when my rage meter builds too high for a particular game, but I will play the games I have to completion. Even if they suck. The only time I won't play a game to completion is if the game actively tries to block me from doing so, whether sucky level design, a sucky engine or an incomprehensible UI. But I was looking at some stats recently, and I learn that in general, people don't complete the games they buy not because the game sucks, but because their enthusiasm for the game dies long before the game is done. It seems that devs could have just done 2/3rd of many of the games they write and many people wouldn't know any better.

So, I'd like to ask, do you complete computer games? I feel a somewhat completist need to do the games I buy, and they can feel an awful slog near the end. When I finished Tiny and Big, the tears of joy flowing from my eyes were that of someone who could finally uninstall the f****** thing at long f****** last.

[maackey]

For the most part, no.

Short games that are easy to complete of course I will finish, and I've even played to the end some serious sit down games like Baldur's Gate and Total War. However, if I lose interest, or the game starts to become a chore I simply stop playing. Achievements, progress bars and final cutscenes aren't powerful motivators for me, personally. When I can feel myself being part of a virtual Skinner box I have a hard time trying to ignore bad/boring/tedious game mechanics.

Although I think a lot of it has to do with developers trying to make a game around a story, rather than a story around a game. Games like chess I can come back to and play over and over -- it has no story, no achievements, no progress bars, no extra fluff, just a few hours of strategic fun. Not to say that those things are bad, just that the core gameplay doesn't need those things to be successful. Zero-K is a RTS game I've worked on which started off with no story, achievements, etc. and I've clocked in hundreds of hours playing the game. It has since gained a few new trinkets -- custom commanders, experience and unlocks, a simple story -- but the core gameplay is what keeps drawing me back to it, because it keeps being fun.

[StellarRat]

Most of the games I play don't have a "completion point". They are usually single battle type strategy games, so, you either win or lose fairly quickly there really isn't a story line underlying them that needs to be finished. That said, I have "completed", XCOM, TFTD, hundreds of games of Civilization, Baldur's Gate I and II, Homeworld, NeverWinter Nights II, The Pool of Radiance, Curse of the Azure Bonds, Obilivion (one of my all time favorite games), and probably some others I can't even remember. I have been playing Skyrim on and off since it came out, but I like it so much that just wondering around the countryside and doing the side quests while ignoring the main story is quite fulfilling.

[Tobbzn]

Pick-up-and-play games that focus on gameplay over story often come with high replayability, and will see me coming back to them from time to time. FTL and XCOM, for example.

However, I haven't finished any of the Mass Effect or the Dragon Age games, nor The Witcher 2, even though they are all very much relevant to my interests as someone who is somewhat-above-average interested in both epic fantasy and sci-fi.

My hypothesis is that the "social" aspect of those games drives me mad. I have to look up walkthroughs whenever a conversation appears to make sure I'm not accidentally saying no to a +10 Vorpal Blade or, in the case of Dragon Age, making a character disapprove because I brought them them to an unforeseen event where another character would have approved of the optimal choice. Leaving behind my most powerful spellcaster because the game says she doesn't like seeing me be kind to a kid makes my inner perfectionist rage.

In many of these games, this means I spend more time in my browser than in-game. I've concluded that I much prefer my character-driven epic fantasy in book form primarily due to this effect.

Oh, also, I think Quantum Conundrum gives me nausea and headaches from all the flashing color changes. Either that, or I've just happened to have eaten something bad every time I've played it.

[S0ny_B1ack]

Pick-up-and-play games that focus on gameplay over story often come with high replayability, and will see me coming back to them from time to time. FTL and XCOM, for example.

However, I haven't finished any of the Mass Effect or the Dragon Age games, nor The Witcher 2, even though they are all very much relevant to my interests as someone who is somewhat-above-average interested in both epic fantasy and sci-fi.

My hypothesis is that the "social" aspect of those games drives me mad. I have to look up walkthroughs whenever a conversation appears to make sure I'm not accidentally saying no to a +10 Vorpal Blade or, in the case of Dragon Age, making a character disapprove because I brought them them to an unforeseen event where another character would have approved of the optimal choice. Leaving behind my most powerful spellcaster because the game says she doesn't like seeing me be kind to a kid makes my inner perfectionist rage.

In many of these games, this means I spend more time in my browser than in-game. I've concluded that I much prefer my character-driven epic fantasy in book form primarily due to this effect.

Oh, also, I think Quantum Conundrum gives me nausea and headaches from all the flashing color changes. Either that, or I've just happened to have eaten something bad every time I've played it.

About the RPGs you menioned - role play them It is far more interesting, don't think what is the optimal choise; think about what the character you are playing would say in such a situation. And usually most options get evenly rewarding in the end (there can be some exceptions - but you can always finish the game )

EDIT: i also force myself to never reload such games (unless they crash of course or i'm forced by a game over...), what happened, happened and it's part of the story.

[Wraith_Magus]

Sometimes, but not usually.

I tend to play games as if I'm going for 100% completion, just because I do love the exploration bits of games, but I never really felt much of a need to actually complete a game once it starts to get boring and grindy to get those last few percentage points. When it's one of those games where you are supposed to play through twice just to see the "good" and "evil" sides of a game, I generally only play one, (but often play those to the end,) because why restart the game to see most of the same stuff?

If I'm playing something like Skyrim, why bother completing a plotline, when the exploration and modding is the whole point of the game? I clocked a thousand hours on each of the TES games Morrowind and beyond, mostly playing with mods. Never completed one of them, because there was no point in doing so. (Some of the lore mods are fantastic in those games, by the way - I've never spent so much time in a game enjoying reading a book.)

Many of the games that I enjoy most are games that, in the strictest sense, aren't even "completable". Dwarf Fortress, Minecraft, several kinds of city-builder type games, etc. They're all games you just play until you get bored.

Oftentimes, when I'm playing something I can complete, I don't want to complete it if there's more content I can still sniff out. If I want to complete the game, it's because I've gotten tired of it, and want to do something else... So why should I keep playing once I'm already tired of the game, and stopped finding it fun? (That includes tons of games against the CPU in games like Civilization or Total War - once you know you're winning, there's no point in mopping up the remnants, it's all just logistics from there.) Just stop now, and enjoy playing something else.

[Tobbzn]

About the RPGs you menioned - role play them It is far more interesting, don't think what is the optimal choise; think about what the character you are playing would say in such a situation. And usually most options get evenly rewarding in the end (there can be some exceptions - but you can always finish the game )

I can do that in games like Skyrim. There, I just faffed about having fun despite the somewhat limited in-game roleplaying capabilities, because the game never put a number on how well I was roleplaying. Dragon Age tells you "Your choice lost THREE points with Morrigan! Christ, how socially inept are you?"

[Gorlom]

Theoretically yes... but in actuality no.

[Wraith_Magus]

I can do that in games like Skyrim. There, I just faffed about having fun despite the somewhat limited in-game roleplaying capabilities, because the game never put a number on how well I was roleplaying. Dragon Age tells you "Your choice lost THREE points with Morrigan! Christ, how socially inept are you?"

Actually, one of the big problems people had with Skyrim was the lack of dialogue options that really hurt role-playing.

Basically, many quests assume/give as your only option dialogue choices where your character is a psychotic murderer who will do anything for money or power. The only option you have besides those choices is to just not do those quests. You don't even have the option of just plain saying "no", just closing the dialogue box.

Even if they were empty choices that changed nothing, just plain having the theoretical ability to say something different would have made a big difference. As it stands, dialogue is definitely one of the weakest links of that franchise, at least, after they started having voice acting. (Dialogue was much more rich when they just had text.)

[NineCoronas]

When I was younger, I played many, many games to completion, and that's all I did for many summers. As I grew older, my time has become more limited and as such, sometimes the breaks I must take between gaming sessions also happen to break my interest.

Command and Conquer (never Covert Ops, and when I tried recently it CTD'd me) as well as Tiberian Sun and Firestorm XP

Red Alert (no XPs), Red Alert 2 + Yuri's Revenge

Age of Empires and the Expansion

Starcraft and Brood War

Fallout, Fallout 2

Baldur's Gate, Baldur's Gate 2, Throne of Bhaal (I've played this through more than twenty times. I always come back to it, it's been kept alive thanks to a highly active modding community)

Neverwinter Nights - It took me four years to actually play the singleplayer campaigns... the OC sucked, Shadows of Undrentide I had to force myself to finish, but Hordes of the Underdark sucked me right in. I mostly, and still do play, on an online RP server for the last ten years.

X-Com I played when I was maybe 12. It was included for free on a PC Gamer Disc along with a bunch of other old games like Wing Commander for example. It wasn't part of the main feature or the autoplay disc, I had to dig to find it

It sucked away hours of my life, but being that young I gave up on the difficulty and started editing my bases and soldiers, but sparked a passion for strategy games.

I content mined the entire Mass Effect trilogy and Dragon Age (not the sequel, can't get into it) and all of the Halo's.

Nowadays I play more than one game at a time.