Comments on: Most People Don’t Finish Video Games

By: John Feinberg

John Feinberg — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 23:17:01 +0000

The last big game I remember completing was Ultima III. It took me months. It was especially slow on the c64 with the stock 1541 drive. Countless afternoons were spent raiding towns and killing guards for gold pieces and experience.

By: Earl Green

Earl Green — Tue, 30 Aug 2011 01:17:28 +0000

There are few games in my library where meeting the “win condition” is really that important to me. It’s possible to win at Dune 2000 (my favorite RTS, though nowadays it’s almost certainly regarded as really old-school), either in mission mode or multiplayer mode. (Multiplayer isn’t supported anymore, and the servers are long since gone – the game came out in 1998 – so the best I can do is multiplayer “practice mode” with the difficulty ramped up. Or set it up in LAN mode and invite people over, which is problematic – I really don’t need my son asking me “Daddy, why did those men scream and spill their raspberry jelly when the tank ran over them?”) Even then, I prefer to drag the game out rather than race to the finish line. The game’s resource pool is finite, it’s almost more fun to figure out how to keep the wolf from the door with less spice and fewer credits coming in.

But as you said, these days I wind up having to deal with real life, where it’s not so much fun to figure out how to keep the wolf from the door with less spice and fewer credits coming in.

By: Joshua Risner

Joshua Risner — Sun, 28 Aug 2011 17:27:07 +0000

Due to this summer being so brutally hot in Oklahoma I have been spending more time inside playing games. I finally finished Alan Wake and it’s DLC which I picked up on release day last year. It wasn’t a hard game but trying to find the time to finish games is damn near impossible if your married with kids and responsibilities. I’ll probably finish L.A. Noire sometime in 2012 at my rate. Fallout 3? Forget about it!

By: Fraze

Fraze — Sun, 28 Aug 2011 13:28:19 +0000

Games like Red Dead and GTA make it VERY hard to finish…I’ve owned GTA 4 for ~3 years and STILL havent finished it. I’ll do a mission or 2 and then get completely distracted IN the game and end up going on a killing spree for an hour! That said, I did actually finish Red Dead (with the help of friends and about 3 game nights) … But then they went and release Undead?! Too many games…too little time…

All that said…I pre-ordered MW3 last week :D

By: Steve Davis

Steve Davis — Fri, 26 Aug 2011 23:28:13 +0000

This post reminds me of a cartoon I saw in a magazine a long time ago. It was simply an arcade cabinet and the marquee read ‘life in general’.

By: Clint Robison

Clint Robison — Fri, 26 Aug 2011 18:09:43 +0000

I always finished or tried to finish the campaign up until COD2. After that, my purchase behavior changed. All I was interested in was online play. I went out on a limb a couple of times. I loved Grand Theft Auto, so I wrongly expected Red Dead Redemption to be western GTA. I felt that way about all the Rock Star games…hell I think they even came out with a ping pong game. Weird. Since COD about the only game I’ll play JUST for the campaign is Ratchet and Clank. I wish I’d never gotten rid of my PS2/3 because there are new Ratchet and Clanks out there I have never seen. I might just go out and buy a PS3 JUST so I can play those Ratchet and Clanks. Thanks for the post!

By: Brian Hanifin

Brian Hanifin — Fri, 26 Aug 2011 16:48:44 +0000

Two weeks is about my limit for a good game. There are some exceptions: any Super Mario game for example. I played Super Mario Bros. Wii with my wife and 4 year old son through to the end (family bonding time), and I played Super Mario Galaxy 1 & 2 until I beat all 120 levels (it helped that my sons loved watching me play). Wait, I take that back in SMG2 I beat 119 levels and tried about 40 times to be level 120. I came very close multiple times, and ultimately decided that while I could do it, it just wasn’t worth all the frustration just to say I beat that last level.

Now that I have both an Android Tablet and an iPad2 I find that I prefer the short form games that don’t take up much of my time. (I just found an APB inspired game called Reckless Getaway that is awesome! :-)

By: Brent

Brent — Fri, 26 Aug 2011 14:12:06 +0000

There are just too many games out now.

By: Zeno

Zeno — Fri, 26 Aug 2011 14:04:07 +0000

Coincidentally enough, I got a copy of Red Dead Redemption for Father’s Day, played the heck out of it for a couple weeks….then got promptly distracted by this thing called Life. I was going to get back to it this week but then I got distracted by the greatness that is Portal 2. I really do want to finish RDR eventually, but will I? Maybe, maybe not. It’s not as if I really do need to save my family from rogue U.S. Marshals…