Percentage of people to even finish basic achievments?

Looking through some games I played myself and then some other games I keep wondering what the percentages of people to actually do basic achievments tell us about games and gamers. Usually one can see a sharp decline in the percentage pretty fast, many players don't even finish the first few levels after starting a game. Now consider that this is a gamer site, a place where many of the more "casual" players wont even bother to register.

Game: Space Pirates and Zombies, Players 845

Mr. Fixit - 99.2% (This is an achievment you get for playing about 10 minutes of the game.)

Good Riddance - 80.95% (It's the achievment right after the first one, about 2 minutes later.)

Chemistry Set - 53.37% (About half an hour into the game.)

Space Opera - 6.15% (Finish the game.)

Orcs Must Die!, Players 3015

Perfect 10! 99.6% (You get that achievment most likely during your very first time playing the game.)

Dead Orc = Good orc 64.94% (About 3 levels into the game.)

Master War Mage - 11.64% (Finish the game, on normal only. There's still the nightmare version left.)

Bastion, Players 3,955

The Stranger - 100% (First level)

The End - 39,56% (Finish the game.)

Calamity Kid - 22.23% (New game plus.)

Now take a good long look at these percentages. The sharp decline, how many people give up one games in the first few minutes and how low the percentage of people to actually finish these games is. Even a game like Bastion, that was widely praised and good great reviews was only finished by 4 out of 10 people. What do you think about that, what could explain this and how come games like "OMD!" who often were called "short" or "not long enough" and yet only about 11,64% of the people on a GAMING SITE finished them?

I think people can get bored of games and not finish them. That was my excuse for not finishing Bastion, anyway.

@Deleth: You mistakenly assume "can't" instead of "don't". You can't tell me you have never played a little bit of a game and then bailed on it? I am not going to go back and suffer through the rest of Force Unleashed just to get it's completion numbers up.

@DonChipotle said:

I think people can get bored of games and not finish them. That was my excuse for not finishing Bastion, anyway.

So, you got bored about 5-10 minutes into the game?

I think people like to try things out. That is why most have the first achievement. Some may go further into the game because they are intrigued but a good number drop off because the game is not to their taste. More of the gamers who liked the first part drop off because of various reasons like the story did not go the way they wanted, the concept got uninteresting or other reasons. Eventually only the people who like the game or can't leave something unfinished complete the game

That's my theory anyway.

@Deleth said:

@DonChipotle said:

I think people can get bored of games and not finish them. That was my excuse for not finishing Bastion, anyway.

So, you got bored about 5-10 minutes into the game?

Does it matter how much I played before I got bored with it? I'm not going to finish a game if I am bored with it just to get an achievement. I beat a few areas and got bored because the game wasn't doing anything for me. I don't see the problem here.

haha. More people on Giant Bomb have Holiday Dinner in Psychonauts than have Basic Braining. Glad I am not the only one that used someone's save game to knock out Holiday Dinner.

@RecSpec said:

@Deleth: Are you implying that Bastion takes 10 minutes to beat? I don't consider beating a game a basic achievement at all.

No I am not. It's about people often not having achievments that take about 10-15 minutes to do. It just looks to me like they started the game, and then immediatly shut it down again. I was wondering why's that. Look at Torchlight, only about 95% even ENTERED the first dungeon. And only 75% beat the first boss.

And completing the game is a basic achievment for me.

@RecSpec said:

@Deleth: Are you implying that Bastion takes 10 minutes to beat? I don't consider beating a game a basic achievement at all.

He makes the mistake of assuming that because @DonChipotle only has one cheevo, that he only played the opening area, which is pretty ignorant. I've now found 4 shards and beat 6 zones and I only have 2 cheevos, so far.

Is this going to turn into an achievement dick waving contest because it sounds like it's heading for a dick waving contest

@DonChipotle said:

Is this going to turn into an achievement dick waving contest because it sounds like it's heading for a dick waving contest

I'm all for dick waving

@DonChipotle said:

Is this going to turn into an achievement dick waving contest because it sounds like it's heading for a dick waving contest

I thought the thread started as an interesting chance for discussion. Didn't know it was gonna turn into a session of belittling people for not living up to some arbitrary standard.

Those percentages are indeed surprisingly low, thanks for taking the time to figure this out. I am one of those 22.23% in Bastion, never played the other games.

Achievements do nothing for me, if I'm not enjoying a game an achievement isn't going to make me push on even for 10 minutes more.

@BionicRadd said:

@DonChipotle said:

Is this going to turn into an achievement dick waving contest because it sounds like it's heading for a dick waving contest

I thought the thread started as an interesting chance for discussion. Didn't know it was gonna turn into a session of belittling people for not living up to some arbitrary standard.

It's you guys pushing it into that direction. It's not about "having achievments" deducing from said achievments how many people actually gave up on a game within the first 10-15 minutes and how low the number of people to actually finish a game often is.

The only thing off about this is thinking completing the game is basic. There is no way I am going to finish every game I have (especially when I picked up about 20 over the steam sale, and I just play them for 5 minutes to try them). 
 
The only "basic" achievements in my mind are Starting the game, finishing the first level, and finishing the first world. Or something similar (doing an action you do early in the game). Let's look at Modern Warfare 3. Only 83 percent of people even start the campaign. And about 5 percent of those people didn't finish the first level. (79% overall divided by the 83% that started the campaign). Five percent is a lot of people. Considering how much that game sold. 
 
While not basic, another one I found interesting was Sonic CD. 44% got the achievement "Just one hug is enough" which you get for beating Stardust Speedway (Act 6). The number of people that went on to finish the game? 24%  
So about 45% of people made it all the way through Stardust Speedway but couldn't be bothered to make it through one more act.

@Deleth said:

@BionicRadd said:

@DonChipotle said:

Is this going to turn into an achievement dick waving contest because it sounds like it's heading for a dick waving contest

I thought the thread started as an interesting chance for discussion. Didn't know it was gonna turn into a session of belittling people for not living up to some arbitrary standard.

It's you guys pushing it into that direction. It's not about "having achievments" deducing from said achievments how many people actually gave up on a game within the first 10-15 minutes and how low the number of people to actually finish a game often is.

Says the person who considers beating the game a basic achievement and uses the term casual as some sort of derogatory word. Some people can decide they don't like a game in 15 minutes. Especially smaller indie games where there isn't an extended tutorial section.

@RecSpec said:

While not basic, another one I found interesting was Sonic CD. 44% got the achievement "Just one hug is enough" which you get for beating Stardust Speedway (Act 6). The number of people that went on to finish the game? 24% So about 45% of people made it all the way through Stardust Speedway but couldn't be bothered to make it through one more act.

The Amy Rose hug achievement? Dude, you can get that in the demo for the game.

@RecSpec said:

@DonChipotle: Wow really? Didn't know you could get achievements through demos. Now I've seen it all.

You get it, the demo says "UNLOCK GAME TO GET ACHIEVEMENT, BRO" you do that and bam, achievement unlocked

@DonChipotle said:

@Deleth said:

@BionicRadd said:

@DonChipotle said:

Is this going to turn into an achievement dick waving contest because it sounds like it's heading for a dick waving contest

I thought the thread started as an interesting chance for discussion. Didn't know it was gonna turn into a session of belittling people for not living up to some arbitrary standard.

It's you guys pushing it into that direction. It's not about "having achievments" deducing from said achievments how many people actually gave up on a game within the first 10-15 minutes and how low the number of people to actually finish a game often is.

Says the person who considers beating the game a basic achievement and uses the term casual as some sort of derogatory word. Some people can decide they don't like a game in 15 minutes. Especially smaller indie games where there isn't an extended tutorial section.

Maybe my attitude towards a game is just different. If I play something I usually finish it. Even though I often don't do achievments that annoy me. There finishing a game is something "normal" to me. And I didn't use "casual" as a derogatory word, I used it to point out that people who actually bother to inform themselves about game or go online and then register on a gaming website are in fact not what I would call "casual" players. Thus the percentages might be even lower if the group of people you would've to take them from would be bigger and involve those players.

(Actually I made a thread about people going around calling other people casuals quite some time ago.)

@RecSpec said:

@DonChipotle: Wow really? Didn't know you could get achievements through demos. Now I've seen it all.

You get it, the demo says "UNLOCK GAME TO GET ACHIEVEMENT, BRO" you do that and bam, achievement unlocked

Torchlight is a odd case, it didn't have achievements at launch so a lot of people may have beat that game and never got any of them. Im guilty of this though myself, especially with these cheap indie games, i buy it on sale for a few bucks try it out and come back to it months later. I also jump around from game game a ton.

@Deleth: Since this is a gamer site the users have lots of games. All of the games that I've only played minutes of is because I had other games to play. I've never played Magic: The Gathering but when I got Magic for free on PS+ I played the tutorial. I have 19 unplayed games and Magic is very complex and takes time to learn. I'm not really interested in Magic but nerds seem to be into it so I gave it a shot. It's just not as compelling as the rest of my pile of games.

I don't know, while some achievements are awarded as the player completes story moments, generally they are given for stupid grinding that you'd never ever do if it wasn't stated in the achievement description.

Sure, I personally don't finish a lot of games, but even when I do, I never try to go for achievements. I think most games give you about 30% of the achievements for the basic game progress stuff, and the rest is just stupid (at least RPG's or games with both single player and multi player components, where around 30% is for story completion and the rest is if you grind ridiculous stuff like "kill 9000 rats with pointy sticks", "play online for 3 months (in-game time)", "top the leaderboard 500 times" etc.). As a result, I have hundreds of games on PSN, Steam and GFWL with 1-35% trophy/achivement completion ratings.

I get distracted easily and start new games before finishing old ones. Bastion is on my must finish pile, though.

@Deleth said:

If I play something I usually finish it. Even though I often don't do achievments that annoy me. There finishing a game is something "normal" to me.

As I previously stated, my main issue with your attack on Chipotle was that you assumed that you could gauge how much time he played Bastion based on his achievements. I have logged 2 hours and only have 2, thus far.

If I play something I enjoy, I usually finish it. I am not going to go digging through your history, but are you honestly going to sit there and say you've never bailed on a game? My time is precious to me, so if I am not getting something out of a game, I am not going to suffer through it for no reason. That is why I have never and will never finish Force Unleashed or Bionic Commando (dead wife in my arm edition).

There's also the fact that I routinely buy cheap games on Steam because they're on sale for 3 bucks. That is something that is going to heavily taint the numbers when it comes to Steam games, because I am not the only or the worst offender when it comes to buying games just to buy them.

Last but certainly not least is game rentals. If you rent a game to try it out and end up hating it, keeping it for another rental period just to finish it is idiocy.

The basic answer to your question is that not everyone has fun with every game they play and most people aren't going to finish a game that they do not think is fun. If you don't work in the gaming press, there is no logical reason to push yourself to finish a shitty game.

@Deleth said:

Maybe my attitude towards a game is just different. If I play something I usually finish it. Even though I often don't do achievments that annoy me. There finishing a game is something "normal" to me. And I didn't use "casual" as a derogatory word, I used it to point out that people who actually bother to inform themselves about game or go online and then register on a gaming website are in fact not what I would call "casual" players. Thus the percentages might be even lower if the group of people you would've to take them from would be bigger and involve those players.

(Actually I made a thread about people going around calling other people casuals quite some time ago.)

Your making the common mistake of taking something that is "normal" for you and extrapolating that onto others. It's the same thing that leads to people saying things like "Game X is shit, and anybody who doesn't think so is an idiot." or the reverse. People are different.

As for the achievements thing, sometimes I'll fire up a game for a few minutes after first getting it and stop, thinking I'll go back to it later. Sometimes if I can't decide what to play between a couple options I'll play both for a bit and whichever grabs me I'll continue. Sometimes there is something like the steam holiday gift pile which will compel me to play a game I had no intention of playing right away for the chance at winning a gift. Maybe sometimes I'll rent a game or a friend will bring it over and I'll play it for ten minutes and get an achievement but decide it's not my thing.

And for some games, like Orcs Must Die, which I've put 19 hours into now but haven't "finished", beating the campaign isn't my main goal. In that game I've been 5 starring every mission, and I burnt out after doing so about 5 missions before the final mission, because it's not like the story in that game is really the draw. I went back a couple times and unlocked the final mission, but still have yet to play it.

Shadows of the Damned has an achievement for hitting "new game" that isn't at 100%. I really wonder about that.

@Romination said:

Shadows of the Damned has an achievement for hitting "new game" that isn't at 100%. I really wonder about that.

new game plus, perhaps? basically a cheevo for starting back over after you beat it?

it's because people get lazy of the game. it's what i think, because i still have games that i never finished yet but i started them.

Yeah I need to finish Bastion. I am too wrapped up in SW:ToR to care right now though. Also, demo achievements. Our OP was unaware of this I think.

I really liked where this topic was going. It's interesting and yeah I think people really dude ruin the point of it by talking about dicks and waving and assuming. I think the only reason he brought up achievements is because it is away to track a persons progress in a game and that is it. He makes me think if Bastion which is highly revered in so many peoples lists has such a low completion rate that does it really deserve it's praise from so many people? but after looking at how so many great games suffer from people not finishing it then no it shouldn't.

I personally have the problem of playing a game mid way and then moving on to the next either through hating the game or saying "fuck I really want to try something else". But I am not your typical duder, I have a spread sheet that has every achievement game on it and the % I completed them. Hell if you go to the official site and compare your activity it will show you the percentage you finished your games. My total out of 286 games is only 31%. From that data I don't finish a lot of games. My goal in 2012 is go back and play through most of those games though since I know I don't have the budget this year to buy new games.

Anyway, I love numbers so I do like to look at this kind of stuff myself. The problem is people play games for different reasons and even though it shocks me that 60% of the people stop playing it shortly after level 2 in a game isn't that surprising but it makes me think on the reason.

@Romination said:

Shadows of the Damned has an achievement for hitting "new game" that isn't at 100%. I really wonder about that.

new game plus, perhaps? basically a cheevo for starting back over after you beat it?

I got about half way through Bastion and just stopped playing because I was bored out of my mind. 40% seems about right.

As noted, people play games for various reasons and honestly, not all games will be worth people's time to see through. I would sooner respect someone who quit a game on the last boss because it got boring than someone who spends hours upon hours wasting it away on something that at some point just isn't fun. Sometimes, the game just isn't worth your time.

And sometimes, your hard drive dies and you're forced to replay everything. And that shit just isn't happening. Unless it's Mass Effect, that shit I am running through a second time just because of previous hard drive failure, because I want my Shepard to power on.

@EightBitShik:

Thank you very much. It wasn't even me who brought up the "dude didn't finish a game" or something like that. I was adding numbers in the very first post to achievments you simply get BY playing and looked at the time it took me to finish those. Somehow someone felt offended by that, for no reason at all and then started acussing me of saying one could finish Bastion in 10 minutes out of nowhere.

@BionicRadd said:

@Deleth said:

If I play something I usually finish it. Even though I often don't do achievments that annoy me. There finishing a game is something "normal" to me.

As I previously stated, my main issue with your attack on Chipotle was that you assumed that you could gauge how much time he played Bastion based on his achievements. I have logged 2 hours and only have 2, thus far.

I did not in fact attack him. Go back and look through the posts and you will see that it was him who came up with "10 minutes" and things like that. I was talking about some of the achievments I mentioned, where about 25% of the people stopped playing within 10 minutes of a game. It looks to me like he either wanted to feel offended or tried to deliberately derail the thread.

And as said before, I don't consider anyone who actually goes out of his way to register on a gaming website a "casual" player. I only mentioned those, because of we would add them to the total numbers the percentage of people to either finish a game or even make it halfway through might be even lower.

And the "I didn't like the game" thing might be true. However these numbers aren't exclusive to a few games. Most of the games have very low completion rates. And that's what baffled me. Even highly praised games such as Bastion suffer from this. It's not out of ordinary but actually normal for most players to not finish a game.

I just asked myself how that might come to be, what the reason for people to give up halfway through, if games are maybe "to hard" or just "to long" or get tedious over time and what could be done about all this. As for me, I even played through Dragon Age 2, a game I absolutely despised. I however start "rushing" at one point usually wrapping up such games very fast.

I dont even try to get achievements. I just try to unlock in game stuff. I beat Orcs Must Die, I just have to get 5 skulls on each level and do the DLC I bought

@Deleth said:

@DonChipotle said:

I think people can get bored of games and not finish them. That was my excuse for not finishing Bastion, anyway.

So, you got bored about 5-10 minutes into the game?

Just going to leave this here and let this thing go.

I don't think it is fair to include Orc's Must die in there, I didn't finish that game because it was fucking hard later on. There was a point in the game where I had no idea what to do anymore and it became more of a puzzle game than a "tower" defense that I went into it to play. Reminds me of Dungeon Defenders, which is an amazing title that did everything right by me. It has the same formula as OMD but with multiplayer and a chance for newbies to grasp the concept without feeling completely overwhelmed. I may be sitting here and talking out my ass about it and it was really that I wasn't good at it but the game just turned from easy to hard to quickly and discouraged me from playing.

EDIT: I wanted to add that achievements have become somewhat of a minority thing in my opinion. I really enjoy finishing an "act" or "chapter" and seeing recognition for it. However, I rarely go after the achievements that require you to play the game differently than was fundamentally intended. This may be because I am a story-nut and after the completion of a story I feel it arbitrary to go back in but who knows, I am only one gamer in a pond of many.

I've finished Bastion, but for some reason it glitched and I never got the achievement for finishing it. Haven't decided if I want to do New Game+ mode yet.

It's natural that completion percentages are going to drop as you look across a game's checkpoint, but that doesn't tell the whole story. I think what we're running into is that some people view downloadable games as essentially disposable, so they're more likely to drop games before finishing them if they aren't having a good time.

But for me, the weirdest one is Avatar. You essentially mash a button to earn points in that game and it seems wildly unlikely that someone would put the disc in their system and not get a 10-hit combo. Yet around 25% of players did exactly that. Also, the player count is high enough to make the number of people who didn't even get that first achievement significant.

@BionicRadd said:

@Deleth said:

@DonChipotle said:

I think people can get bored of games and not finish them. That was my excuse for not finishing Bastion, anyway.

So, you got bored about 5-10 minutes into the game?

Just going to leave this here and let this thing go.

Taken out of context. It was meant for the achievments you get for playing about 5-10 minutes. I was talking about the sharp decline between two things that take about 5-10 minutes at best to accomplish and yet about 25% of the players stopped playing during that short time.

@Jeff said:

It's natural that completion percentages are going to drop as you look across a game's checkpoint, but that doesn't tell the whole story. I think what we're running into is that some people view downloadable games as essentially disposable, so they're more likely to drop games before finishing them if they aren't having a good time.

But for me, the weirdest one is Avatar. You essentially mash a button to earn points in that game and it seems wildly unlikely that someone would put the disc in their system and not get a 10-hit combo. Yet around 25% of players did exactly that. Also, the player count is high enough to make the number of people who didn't even get that first achievement significant.

I just thought it was weird. Afterall those people paid for the games just the same. Yet in Torchlight about 5% did not even enter the very first dungeon, after they started the game. Many never made it halfway through. It's the same for many other games. At the same time we have people often complaining about "games being to short".

It just makes me question if there's something being done wrong, or if a developer could prevent so many players from bailing out on a game. Afterall if more people would stick with the game, the developer might be able to benefit from it a great deal. I mean a completion rate of 5-6% doesn't look so good for a game. It just doesn't seem like many people would stick around, or be as interested in a sequel.

I've admittedly become horrible at finishing games over the last few years, even though I've always been bad at it. This is why I buy fewer games now and spend less on them. I don't think that the criticism is entirely valid, though. Yes, I subscribe to this site, and yes I am a gamer. However, I am also a husband with a very demanding job, working as much as 24 hours straight. It took me three maps to decide that I will probably not play Orcs Must Die again, and Sanctum is looking iffy, too. I only played one map of that. I just feel that my free time is too valuable of a commodity to not spend it doing what I want, which right now is alternating between Saints Row, Deus Ex, Red Dead Redemption, and Bastion. I doubt I'll finish it all, and that's OK. Saints Row and Red Dead are on my PS3, which I haven't synched to the site.

Im not the kind of person that gets so many games that I cant finish them.  I always just focus on one game until I beat it so this is kinda weird.  Jeff's post cleared up a lot of things for me.  I think the only game I didnt beat was Kingdom Hearts because of the long ass cutscene that you couldnt skip for the last boss....

@UlquioKani said:

@DonChipotle said:

Is this going to turn into an achievement dick waving contest because it sounds like it's heading for a dick waving contest

I'm all for dick waving

This. I need more dick waving in my life.

I don't think I'm a good example, but I frequently load up games I don't intend to play yet so they show in my game list.

@Deleth said:

@BionicRadd said:

@Deleth said:

@DonChipotle said:

I think people can get bored of games and not finish them. That was my excuse for not finishing Bastion, anyway.

So, you got bored about 5-10 minutes into the game?

Just going to leave this here and let this thing go.

Taken out of context. It was meant for the achievments you get for playing about 5-10 minutes. I was talking about the sharp decline between two things that take about 5-10 minutes at best to accomplish and yet about 25% of the players stopped playing during that short time.

No it wasnt. He said he got bored of Bastion, you checked his achievement list, saw he had 1 cheevo for finishing the Wharf District and then assumed all by yourself that he only played the game for 5-10 minutes.

As for why this happens, it's been explained in several places throughout this thread. Not everyone feels a need to finish a game they are not enjoying. It is not a reflection on the quality of the game, it's a reflection on basic human nature. If you are doing something in life and you are not getting satisfaction from doing it, then you typically stop doing it.

Also, the Torchlight thing has been explained over and over. The achievements were added a good while after it was added to Steam, so I am sure a lot of people never went back to redo all that.

I usually try to go for achievements that are within reasonable limits for me. Love Dead Space - am I going to get the One Gun achievement (beat the whole game using only the first gun you get) heck no. Am I gonna get all 100 data fragments/feathers in Assassins Creed? Nope, but I probably will train 7 of my assassins to reach the master rank cause thats alright.

I also have a rule that I force myself to beat all the games I buy on principle. Even if I don't like it, I already spent money on it so I should at least see it to the end. That also goes hand in hand with achievements.