I cant seem to finish my games!!! GAH!

Iv just counted and I have a total of 37 Xbox 360 and PS3 games.  
Knowing that i have a bad habit of never finishing games, i also decided to count how many i have finished in terms of single player (as in finished all missions/levels/whatever, not how many i have all achievements/trophies).  
Of my 37 games, i have finished a total of 15 of them.  
What i want to know is, does everyone out there have to finish all there games to be happy? and if so, how do you remain motivated throughout?  

I play a game until it stops being fun.  I don't really feel the need to grind through a game that I'm not enjoying.

Yeah, same with me, i think i have a short attention span because i have no problem finishing the Uncharted or Modern Warfare games which are all fairly short. However atm im just past half way of InFamous and am struggling to keep going with it :(

I have a shit load of games I really should go back and beat.  Right now I have Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia and Zelda: Phantom Hourglass on the mind right now.  It's been a year since I played OoE because I got stuck on this one boss.  Just a few days ago I finally beat him so I want to finish the game.  For Zelda, I really want to beat it before Spirit Tracks comes out.  If I don't, I will probably never finish Phantom Hourglass.

i use www.backloggery.com to track all of my games, that way I know what's done and what isn't, so they eventually get 'did' as it were.

Me finishing a game nowadays is just me getting the rest of the achievements I can tolerate getting.  Right now, I'm getting the the last two achievements for Assassin's Creed (minus killing templars and collecting flags).  But, I, too, have a shit ton of games that I've yet to finish and hoping to get to this weekend.

You can be happy with unfinished games, but yeesh, don't remind me of how many I still have to be also! There's still a couple I've never even once played! FEAR, I'm looking at you! And man, your sequel has been out for like 4-5 months already! WHAT AM I WAITING FOR?!

I finish games always. No matter how much I hate it I will finish a game unless I know I have 10+ hours left. 

Oh man, I have this same problem. Even bought Forza 2 and never even touched it!
Gotta finish GoW1+2, which i fucking love, :/ weird...

I try to play most of my games through, but some times I end up getting bored with some and stop playing them. Also a lot of the games that I have not finished, I didn't finish because of a new game that came out. I have finished about 70% of my games

Unless there's a story that I'm interested in and want to see end somehow, I'm often totally disinterested in finishing a game. Many brilliant games have no definite ending. I also hate the way the end of games is often made artificially hard just to make it mean something more as a challenge. A good deal of games I have got right to the end and then got bored of the challenge at the end.
 
I think this idea of having to finish the thing comes from other media like films and books. It often simply doesn't apply to games, which are an interactive medium. Nine times out of ten you create your own ending, by deciding that the game has become disinteresting and switching it off.

You should buy less games :-)  If you buy too many games at the same time, which many people often due from September to November, you can feel overwhelmed and burn yourself out.  Try not to buy the next game until you've beaten the one you're playing.  Easier said than done but at least you won't feel regret over not completing your games.

I have a lot of unfinished games, and by "unfinished" I mean just the single-player campaign.  I don't chase trophies or achievements, so getting 100% is never on my "to do" list.  I tend to play just one thing at a time these days, because if I get side tracked on another game, it's going to be a long time before I get back to it.  Right now, I stopped working my way through my second run-through of Borderlands to play InFamous.  As such, I probably won't get back to that game for a month or more this being the holiday season and all the craziness that goes with that.  And, I was in danger of losing my focus on InFamous when I started playing Modern Warfare 2, but the single-player is pretty short so I returned to Cole's electric adventures the following night.  
 
I tend to play games for as long as they are fun.  Even when they get frustrating, if they're still fun, I'll continue although I might take a break for a while.  Then there are the ones I still have every intention of returning to...someday.  I had a good time with Fable 2 and only scratched the surface of all things Fallout 3, but it's been months since I've played either.  On the bright side, I finished Killzone 2 and Halo 3 only a few weeks ago and I started both around launch.  There is still hope for the game I still want to play.  I just need to get that urge again.  That's something I can't schedule.  
 
I don't feel it's important to finish a game if I've gotten a good amount of fun from what I have played of it.  I've paid good money to see movies that really weren't worth the price of admission, so by comparison, if I can get some fun from a game, then it's okay by me.  I guess what I am more uneasy about are the games I've bought that I've never even booted up yet.  Fortunately, those are all used games I got for about $10, so it's not a huge deal, but the list is extensive.

" I play a game until it stops being fun.  I don't really feel the need to grind through a game that I'm not enjoying. "

GIVE THEM TO ME

"how do you remain motivated throughout?"

I usually finish my games because I bought it with money and don't want to waste it not finishing it.

" @mrfizzy said:

"how do you remain motivated throughout?"

I only buy games that I'm sure I'll like and find fun to play? D:  I find this out via the demo, videos, reviews, etc.  If you have an issue with finishing games, why don't you just rent them?  If a game just isn't clicking with you, why play it? :P "

i would say just sit down and start palying the games. i have that problem also, i just bought god of war collection, while i still have modern warfare 2 to continue to play multiplayer and forza 3.

I finish most of them. I don't finish the ones that bore me or are not so great, usually.

I won't lie. I'm not really an achievement whore (look at my score for proof) but I do admit they give me a little extra push to finish games I might put on the shelf or return. I have to give developers credit though, last generation I would hardly ever play a game to completion, but now that most games are tigher, better, and more focused experiences I don't seem to have this problem any longer.

For me, just finishing the single player part of a game is finishing it. I don't chase an achievement unless it really sounds fun and those to me are few and far between. Though I must admit, I do finish most of them. I play many more single player games than I do multiplayer so maybe that is why, I don't get bogged down with mutliplayer in games (like in MW2) where I would loose interest in the singleplayer part of that game.

It's called a back log. Almost everyone has one. Just stop buying new games until you finish your old ones, by the time you're done the "new" games will be cheaper and you'll feel better about playing them. It's the same way with girls. 

I'm hopeless with completing some games if I get stuck in them. For example, I bought all the Tomb Raider games (that is, the revamped version of the first one, Legends and then Underworld) but got stuck on some greek level in the first one, and since I always complete games sequentially I never bothered to boot up the other two. Same with the Halo games, although I finished 3 and ODST in multiplayer, but I'm slowly working my way through Halo 1 so I can beat Halo 2 which I haven't played at all, and then I got Halo Wars to complete too... *sigh*  
 
Coming to think about it, I got lots of Sam & Max episodes to complete too. So much games, so little time...

Just saw the STEAM sale that has started today and goes for like a week. Bought Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic for $2.50, it was like a rip off if i didnt buy it right???

I have quite a few games I need to beat still. Usually, they get put on the shelf because other games are released and I forget to go back to them. The game that I really need to beat is Batman: Arkham Asylum. The reason I put it down was that I was about 5 hours into the game, and my save became corrupted. I didn't feel like restarting the game, so I decided to move on. Hopefully I will finish it over Christmas break.

crazy ass long games i'll never finish, hell i gave up on dragon age right away knowing it'd take to long and even the moderate to shorter ones have to be entertaining for me to finish and sadly not to complicated.  games today for me are about relaxation and release, not work.
 
there was a time when i thought beating games was my job but that time is long gone.

Evently unless they're shit.

I'm the same way. I have about 300 console games and 300 PC games (not counting stuff from ages ago, that I've just lost or thrown away over the years) and the number that I've played -- at all or more than an hour or two -- is perhaps 20%. The number that I've actually beat is probably closer to 5%.
 
Part of it is that I just don't play as much as I should or would like to and this has been the case for most of my adult life. The other part is that I often buy a few games, try them all for an hour (maybe) and intend to go back to them, but never do. And they sit somewhere for five or ten years until they're thrown away.

The only reason I wont' finish a game is if I  get stuck.  I'm not a very good gamer, so I do have several I have never finished.  But I also don't  buy a lot of games either.  I don't rent,  I just don't have a backlog because I buy fewer games.
I do get frustrated about not finishing certain games.
I LOVED Dead Space, but got stuck on the first boss (the giant wall sized one, with the tentacles)   I know it's easy for everyone else, but I tried about 30 times, run out of weapons, and finally just said F%$k it.
I've been doing pretty good lately though.

I have the same problem. I always want to finish the games I'm playing, but only if it's fun. If it's not, I just sell it.

Ok so update on my failure to finish games. I bought Frontlines: Fuel of War last week off steam, im about half way through it and am now giving up coz iv just decided that it is no longer fun, the first few missions were great until i realised you die in like 10 seconds and the AI is horrible. oh well, just going to have to learn to deal with my failure i think. haha. 

I don't finish games either.  Still haven't beaten GTA4 Heavenly Sword...If the game stops being fun I quit.  So what?

I have the same problem with some games that are really long like racing games and RPGs i have Forza for the 360 and i have not beat it yet and i bought Tales of Vesperia (which i am trying to beat now) about 5 mouths ago. out of my collection of games i have beat 21/25