One of the current topics hitting some of the game blogs was set in motion from an article on why players don’t finish games. Reading some of the posts led me to consider my own gaming history. I realized that, as far back as I can remember, I’ve only played two games through to completion, though I’ve come close on few couple of others.
The first game in which I ever came close to the end was Raiders of the Lost Ark on the Atari 2600 (I’m trying hard to ignore the fact that Wikipedia lists the release date as being 25 years ago). I was engrossed in the game for a long while, but never quite made it. I recall being stuck in the Mesa field for ages. The day I finally got past that was a happy one. Unfortunately, I can’t remember how far I actually made it. My 2600 was a few years old by then and had lost much of its appeal. I was spending more and more time in the arcades and eventually stopped playing the 2600 altogether. Raiders was one of the last games I bought. The very last, as I recall, was Journey Escape. I barely even got started with that one.
In the early 90s, while I was in the Army, I was working 12-hour nights, with three days on and three off, in a hospital ER. After the initial rush, most nights were slow after midnight. I picked up Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis from the PX and played it quite regularly during the slow hours. I don’t remember how long it took, but this became the first game that I ever played through to the end. As I recall, it seemed rather anti-climatic. After that, the guy on nights in the x-ray department turned me on to Wolfenstein 3D. That filled the slow ER nights for quite a while.
In the late 90s, I started playing Lords of Magic. This game captivated me. I had played Lords of the Realm 2 for a bit and never really got into it as much as I would have liked to. LoM, however, had me hooked. I played it religiously for months. The only problem is, never once did I finish a campaign. The goal was to defeat the forces of the Lord of Death, one of eight total factions. Beat him and you would be able to play that faction. So many times I defeated, or allied with, the other factions and mustered all of my forces in a massive assault on the Lord of Death. I still install the game every couple of years or so to give it another go. I have yet to win. This game, BTW, is the inspiration for the game I’m working on now.
A couple of years ago I found Knights of the Old Republic 2 in a Korean game shop. I bought it and dove right in. Being a huge Star Wars fan (the originals, not too much into that newer garbage Lucas felt compelled to put out) I absolutely loved the game. It played it daily, to the detriment of other things I ought to have been doing. It wasn’t long before it became the second game I’ve ever completed. Then I played it through again on a different character. Last year, I got my hands on KOTOR 1 while on a trip back home to the States. Again, I loved the game. Unfortunately, though I got quite close to the end I never actually completed it.
In the past three or four years I’ve bought more games than I did throughout the whole of 90s. Morrowind, Oblivion, Neverwinter Nights, Rome: Total War, Medieval: Total War… and many more. I’ve yet to finish any of them. I absolutely love Rome: Total War, but the time investment it requires is more than I’m willing to put in. I have it installed now and have a campaign saved that is farther than I have ever played before. But I haven’t played it in months. If I do play it again, I’ll likely start over since I’ll have no idea what was going on when I last played.
I would love to finish every single game I own, even the old ones that I’ve had for years. I doubt I ever will, though I am intent on getting through both Morrowind and Oblivion one of these days. The problem is, too many games these days take utterly too much time to complete. I’ve always wondered, if some of these titles really are targeted at adults, then why don’t the developers take into account the fact that (responsible) adults have jobs, families, and other commitments that make 100-hour games next to impossible to complete?
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