Why I Don’t Finish Video Games

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Why I Don’t Finish Video Games

Mon, Mar 17, 2008

Last week, Leigh Alexander at Gamasutra and GameSetWatch wrote an article pondering the question of why we, as gamers, are completing fewer games. She outlines the possible reasons for this result. First, though, one needs to accept that gamers are completing fewer games, and I doubt that many gamers would argue with that thesis.

It has gotten to the point where I often have a hard time remembering the last video game I completed. The same goes with most of my friends. The games that they continue to play are those with strong multiplayer components, but where first player experience is concerned, they rarely make it through the total experience. Now, I know people who are completionists or Achievement Point fiends, who will finish games because they need the notes in their Xbox Live profile, but those are the exceptions to the rule.

The first possible explanation Alexander presents for this lack of completion is a matter of time:

There are a few easy theories close at hand as to why we're finishing fewer games. "Failure to Complete" almost sounds like a condition for which we'll start seeing prescription drug ads on morning television, doesn't it? And as a matter of fact, size, length and depth are involved.

It's quite possible that in these areas, modern games have outgrown the available free time of the average player in all of these areas. And a core portion of the gaming audience has begun to age, meaning time is even more at a premium.

This is a rhetorical device, folks. If she's mentioning it at the beginning of the article, then it will not be the explanation she uses to conclude. She presents the most plausible theory first because she is going to debunk that theory. Are you watching?

WoW fans, for one thing, don't seem to have a problem making time for their hobby. And the most oft-cited reason is instant gratification -- the game can scratch that itch with a relatively low investment of attention, behaviors that are almost automatic, small rewards on the way to bigger ones. Are we an audience of gamers who just doesn't want to put time and effort in for the payoff?

Bam. There's the debunking. As a side note, I love that a game writer uses the same tricks I learned for writing essays about The Odyssey. I can appreciate the craftsmanship. Of course, I disagree completely with this waving off of the explanation.

The last game I beat was Portal. I finally played it over this past weekend, and I finished in a little over four hours. As I progressed through the game, each new challenge had a small amount of activation energy. I would walk into a room and be compelled to look at the beginning of the new puzzle. And then I would start trying to solve it. I fully intended to put down the controller after each level, but that never happened. The game did reward me steadily. There were definite points where I could have put the game down and returned to my preparations for dinner. The fact that I kept playing is beside my point. Portal is, I've finally found out, an extraordinary example of a game.

What is really notable about the game is the reason I decided to play it: I knew that the levels were segmented such that there would be a clear demarcation of progress. I would be able to put the game down at sensible points. I wouldn't have to save in the middle of a battle or storyline, and I wouldn't have to worry about remembering my engagement with the game when I returned to it. Once I returned, the moment I walked into the next room with the puzzle staring at me, I would remember my reasons for playing.

This might make it sound like I have a limited attention span, but the game I last beat before Portal was Final Fantasy XII, and I put 100 hours into that game. So, I am capable of spending a lot of time with a game. Truthfully, though, I think that games are getting too long. Too epic. Too freakishly impossible to put down. Why should I start playing Mass Effect when I know I only have an hour or so to play. I know that I'll end up having to put down the game in the middle of something.

The point about WoW is only semi-valid because it's not about the reward system. Certainly, that does help early on, but most players dedicating a lot of time to WoW are at the end game, so pay off is not nearly as common. The reason it is easy for players to invest time in WoW is because of the segmentation of the experience. It is broken down so that the player can take breaks. If I only have an hour or two, I can run into a Battleground and PvP. If I have two hours, I can run an instance. And then I'm done. No worries about picking up the narrative later. I can have an entire gaming experience with completion, if you look at each dungeon as a mini-game.

I can't do that with normal RPGs. I love normal RPGs, but I just don't have the patience for them anymore. It takes me too much time when I start playing to remember what it is, exactly, that I'm trying to do, and it also takes me too much time to remember why I enjoy the game at all. If I had afternoons of time like I did when I was a kid, then RPGs would be great. Dropping eight hours into an RPG negates that activation energy, or, at least makes that activation energy seem negligible. When you only have small bits of leisure time available to you, that small amount of time becoming reacquainted with the game becomes precious. Why bother with it? That's why Portal was so excellent. Actually, that's one of the many, many reasons why.

Yes, gamers have less time, and they complete fewer games because they aren't made in such a way as to accommodate pick-up and play approaches. I do, however, know some players that do not beat games because they are too attached to a character:

You poured hours into your character. You navigated an inscrutable chain of events to obtain his weapon. You grit your teeth against boss battles, and you came to care about your character's success. You fell in love with the world -- why would you want to face its ending? After all that work, there's probably no replay value left unless you're hardcore. And even then, the second playthrough is an architecture, a science experiment, a manipulation, not a new discovery.

Actually, the only gamer I know who does that, who stops right at the end of the game, now doesn't even bother playing games. He plays WoW instead. Perhaps all the gamers I know are exceptions to this grand theory, but I doubt it. I do find the comparison of video games to lovers, however:

Failure to Complete analogizes us to the social archetype who breaks up with their partner just when they start to fall in love. Who bails just when it looks like this could be forever, or who flees at the first suggestion of commitment.

The main problem with the metaphor is that, in this scenario, completing the game is falling in love, and when you're finished with the game, you're in love. By the time you're "in love," you no longer play the game anymore. Not that I agree with this as the reason for fewer games being finished, but the reality is that gamers who stop just before the end are already in love with the game, and they want to prolong it. I'm not sure it's possible to tweak the analogy to properly express this idea.

While Alexander might not be completing video games because she falls in love with the experience, I think the vast majority of gamers aren't completing video games because each time they sit down to play, they have to remember what it is love feels like.