Not Playing a Game to the End - My Fault or the Developers?

In the past few years I've bought more games than ever, however, I have finished hardly any of them. That's not to say that I haven't finished some of them but it got me to thinking; is it my fault or the developers? Some games have completely hooked me in and I've played them to completion while many others I have just started and sort of lost interest. Many of these games that I have not finished are very well regarded and critically acclaimed so where is the disconnect? I'm wondering if most games just aren't as much fun anymore? I started gaming in the early eighties and I believe that the actual "feeling" of those early games is what made them fun and separated the great games from the mediocre. Graphics were not the defining characteristic or story telling, it was how they felt to play. I think that that visceral feeling is absent in many modern games. Developers tend to rely on shaders and Hollywood writers to make their games and forget that the actual "feeling" of the gameplay may be the most important thing. I also wonder if this is just a phenomenon with older gamers? What do you think?

your fault

I think its a case by case situation. You are buying more games so you have less time to play each individual game. You are probably making poor purchasing decisions by buying more games than you have time to play. If you only bought stuff you were 100% interested in (or only bought a game once you finished the previous purchase) then you would finish more games and buy fewer. That said, some games are fundamentally broken while others are put out in crowded release schedules that they just can't compete against.

I find that I still finish 95% of the games I buy. The exception is the free PS+ stuff that most of the time I had no intention of buying let alone completing but even some of those I've played all the way through.

I play alot of games and the only game i can remember completing last year was Portal 2.

I get bored fast and i feel alot of games nowadays are stretching on for too long just because it sells better to say your game takes 20-40hours to complete. Even if the content only is intresting for 10h.

Why does it have to be anyone's fault?

I find it so weird that people can make 6 or 7 playthroughs of a game, while I struggle to make one...seriously.
 
I buy way more games than I complete, and it's nothing to do with not having enough time...

@logicbombx said:

In the past few years I've bought more games than ever, however, I have finished hardly any of them. That's not to say that I haven't finished some of them but it got me to thinking; is it my fault or the developers? Some games have completely hooked me in and I've played them to completion while many others I have just started and sort of lost interest. Many of these games that I have not finished are very well regarded and critically acclaimed so where is the disconnect? I'm wondering if most games just aren't as much fun anymore? I started gaming in the early eighties and I believe that the actual "feeling" of those early games is what made them fun and separated the great games from the mediocre. Graphics were not the defining characteristic or story telling, it was how they felt to play. I think that that visceral feeling is absent in many modern games. Developers tend to rely on shaders and Hollywood writers to make their games and forget that the actual "feeling" of the gameplay may be the most important thing. I also wonder if this is just a phenomenon with older gamers? What do you think?

"aren't as much fun"

"how it felt to play"

"visceral feeling"

You're talking about purely subjective things here. Whose "fault" your predicament is is completely irrelevant when you're talking about such personal aspects of a game. I've seen more than a few threads lately talking about "getting old" and suddenly not liking games. I'm calling BS. Interests in all things ebb and flow. If you're getting older, you probably have less time, and may therefore be less willing to invest the time you do have in games for various reasons.

Maybe you're less willing to put up with mediocrity? Maybe you're less willing to get invested in larger spanning stories? Maybe you've got a tumor? But games aren't any worse today than they were in the 80's, 90's, or any other age. We all come to games for different reasons. I'm sure there are still games that scratch the itch for you, and if not, then I guess you've just become a different person.

Not everything is for everyone at all times.

Sometimes it comes down to what kind of game it is and what mindset you're in. If you got bored with a game and play it a month or a year later, you might actually really love it again and get hooked. There's so much at play when it comes to these things ...

But of course it might be that the game just gets boring. It's not at all simple or something that lends itself to make a general statement about.

It depends on the circumstances. For example, I quit playing Dirt 3, because it reached a point where I really couldn't progress without doing a lot more Gymkhana and I fucking hated that shit. It ruined the game for me. It made me regret the purchase. For FFXIII, I finally just tired of playing it around two thirds of the way or so. The QTE battle with the guys at the beginning of the final act (courtyard of the giant building you then have to enter) every time they touched you in Shadows of the Damned finally frustrated me so much that I quit what was otherwise in line to be one of my favorite games of 2011 (I gave it a couple more attempts over the month that followed, before just finally putting the game away for good).

Other times, it may not be due to the quality of the game or the mechanics/progression of play that have failed, but that other things simply came along and a specific title fell out of my brain space.

It's nobody's fault. It just didn't work out.

I think it's unfair to attribute the cause to his lack of time. I'm sure if that were the case, he'd have had this realisation a lot earlier and he probably wouldn't feel the need to ask why: he'd notice the fact that he's not physically able to play them.
 
As someone who was raised on 80s and 90s video games, I can kind of understand. Most games back then were simply played. You stopped playing when you got bored. Not when you completed them. After all...you couldn't complete them (at least in the traditional sense). I have not been conditioned to complete games.
 
Thank you, OP. You have been catalyst to the answering of a long asked question of mine.

its the same with books for me, i bought a 1000 books last week and could read all of them. sure i finished a few but some just didn't grab me until the end

is it just me that feels this way?

Sounds like you're in the same boat as me. For me I generally just don't have time to finish game so I don't play a whole lot then another game comes out and I get side tracked. 
 
Sometimes it is the developers fault, if the game is just not interesting, but for the most part I think it's just because I'm older now and have less time to play. 
 
So anyway, it can be a little of both.

I'm experiencing the same, and I believe it's our fault. Low prices on Steam or PSN or whatever are very attractive, but in the end, buying a game that is even a few months old is not very smart. People are not talking about it anymore, graphics will "feel" a bit old, just because of monsters like Battlefield 3. Just a few reasons why we don't want to see it through, just what it's about. It's business! Developers want us to buy new AND old games, but most of these "old" games are not very useful to us.

There are exceptions, though. For me, these were Mass Effect, Red Dead Redemption, and maybe other that I can't remember.

I recently bought L.A. Noire. It's beautiful, it's awesome, but I just... I wanna stab my friends on Modern Warfare 3, know what I mean?

@mandude: Just depends on the game. I'm a stickler for seeing something all the way through(which is why i choose what I play carefully) and In the last 4 years,every retail game I've played I've completed....maybe some of them a year or so afterwards, but I still completed it. For example, I bought Dead Island(cause all my friends did) and we played through the first 4 acts....well then Gears of War 3 came out and I didn't touch Dead Island again until right after Christmas,but I finally beat it

Also, I played Mass Effect back when it first came out....I am just now finishing my first run thru....Shit happens

This is probably the crux right here:

@logicbombx said:

In the past few years I've bought more games than ever.

Just play one game at a time and don't buy a new one till you are done with that one, "done" meaning you completed it or ar not enjoying it anymore. Even if you enjoy a game you are playing, that newer game you just bought will always be more appealing. At least, that's the way my mind works.

You give no mention of the games you like to play so I have no idea where you're coming from. Also just because something is critically acclaimed doesn't mean it will appeal to everyone.

Just be glad we have too many choices rather than having no games to play. People grow older, tastes mature, responsibility increases, times change.

@mandude: I never delete anything. I have a 250 GB HDD, so....

It's both your own and the developer's, it's dependent on the game itself. Games, like books, are commitments, and it's up to you to see them through. But a game that hides away good content behind hours of blandness (FFXIII comes to mind) will always be more difficult to keep playing through.

mostly your fault for not completing them. some games are just bad for completing. skate 2 reminds me it. i just couldn't complete the game because of how glitchy the game was. one part i had to do a handplant on the hoop. in the end to beat it you had put a ramp ontop of a table and do it on the ramp.

@logicbombx said:

In the past few years I've bought more games than ever, however, I have finished hardly any of them. That's not to say that I haven't finished some of them but it got me to thinking; is it my fault or the developers? Some games have completely hooked me in and I've played them to completion while many others I have just started and sort of lost interest. Many of these games that I have not finished are very well regarded and critically acclaimed so where is the disconnect? I'm wondering if most games just aren't as much fun anymore? I started gaming in the early eighties and I believe that the actual "feeling" of those early games is what made them fun and separated the great games from the mediocre. Graphics were not the defining characteristic or story telling, it was how they felt to play. I think that that visceral feeling is absent in many modern games. Developers tend to rely on shaders and Hollywood writers to make their games and forget that the actual "feeling" of the gameplay may be the most important thing. I also wonder if this is just a phenomenon with older gamers? What do you think?

Sounds like we may be close in age, I have the same problem

For me there are a variety of reasons why

If you are like me, the main problem is you bought too many games. I used to pound much more time into games when I had fewer of them, but now as an adult that I can afford to buy my own, the temptation to quit and move on is much greater at first boredom/frustration. I probably played a hundred hours of Contra and Super Mario Bros. back in the day, but I didn't really have other options.

Also now that I have probably played at least ten hours or more of 500+ games, there isn't much that feels totally new to me and it feel easier to get bored.

I do agree that games in general also seem to focus more on the aesthetic than physical gameplay action the player undertakes. But fortunately there's been a resurgence of old school-ism in downloadable (Mega Man 9, Street Fighter IV etc). I do miss the simplicity and instant intensity some of the old 2d games used to provide. They still feel like a much quicker fix than many 3d titles. Tieing into that I think too many modern are way too slow, too slow starting and too long.e.g. I really don't think many RPGs benefit from being 100 hours long instead of 40-60 like they used to often be. Just drop me in man, I'll figure it out, I don't need or like all this in-game tutorial crap.

Then of course being an adult all that, there's tons of other stuff that eats up time I used to have for gaming which makes me less tolerant of boring gaming experiences when I actually get to play one.

@mandude said:

As someone who was raised on 80s and 90s video games, I can kind of understand. Most games back then were simply played. You stopped playing when you got bored. Not when you completed them. After all...you couldn't complete them (at least in the traditional sense). I have not been conditioned to complete games.

I think you're onto something there. I certainly didn't quit playing Contra after the first time I beat it. It's like some genres have adopted some RPG elements which aren't always needed or beneficial. For me at least though, the fault is mostly mine for giving myself too many options.

For those of us with a finger to the pulse of GiantBomb or equivalents, there is always going to be a "grass is greener" effect where the newest release will rub a scuff on the shine of the game we're currently playing. Also, I've been enjoying games in the past but then hear someone on the Bombcast talk about their experience and I've gone back and those issues stand out. If we could all play games like we were sequestered we'd finish more of them.

It depends on the game, but I think that if you play 60-70% of a game and don't feel like playing any more, that is probably the result of something the game has done. I wouldn't say it is the developer's fault, more that it is the point where you decide that you no longer want to play the style of game.

The only time i fail to finish a game is if its absolute garbage,Quantum theory i'm looking at you.

So from that id say the developer's. But that's my personal take.

The main thing you can do is just reduce the number of games you purchase. I've noticed that once I cut back on purchasing games, it really helped me stop playing games for a few hours before wanting to move on to another one. Those Steam sales may seem awesome, but its a waste of money if you are just buying handfuls of games that you never get around to playing.

One of the biggest things that helped me realize how many games I really haven't beaten is http://backloggery.com

Having a visual that shows how many games I've never played let alone beaten helped drive home the point that I really need to cut back on my new game purchases.

The only game I started and didn't finish lately was Skyrim, but that was both our faults. Theirs for not hiring more voice actors and making me watch a load screen before I do virtually anything, and mine for playing the Fallouts and becoming completely bored of this style of game.

Probably because we have alot of options or games to choose from. There are so many games out there that we want to experience them all, and yeah we're so spoiled that we get tired for things very quickly.

I remember back then that I wasted years and years in just counter-strike alone. I dunno what's in that game but even until now, I wanted to go back in the past, the time that CS community is still at the top, just to play it again.

So much fun and frustration haha.

Maybe its also in the game. Because these days, you get a sequel after a year. You get the same gameplay with added features.

It's the developers fault I can never play to the end of Fallout 3: New Vegas as part of the Legion because the writing was so damn good they convinced a moral person to do the right thing.