A report just published on CNN.com gives some surprising numbers regarding how many players actually finish games.

In the article, author Blake Snow quotes Activision production contractor Keith Fuller, who says, "What I've been told as a blanket expectation is that 90 percent of players who start your game will never see the end of it unless they watch a clip on YouTube."

John Lee, VP of marketing at Raptr and formerly of Capcom, THQ, and Sega, says that "bounce rates" (players that quit a game before completion) have risen in recent years. "Just 10 years ago, I recall some standard that only 20% of gamers ever finish a game," says Lee.

Lee's company, Raptr, is an online service that tracks players' online play sessions and achievements. According to Raptr's internal data, only 10 percent of people who played Rockstar's epic Red Dead Redemption (shown above) completed the final mission.

While it should be noted that this data is only from players who are a part of Raptr, and should't be considered as such, I can say that the 10-20 percent completion rate gibes with numbers that several people in the game industry have told me over the years.

The article gives several reasons for this trend. One, as the gaming population continues to age (the average age of a gamer today is 37 years old), time becomes a more precious resource to gamers engaged in parenthood, careers, and other activities.

Secondly, the rise of online multiplayer mean that players often spend less time with a game's single-player component. Other factors include other digital distractions like Facebook, smartphones, and Twitter.

While this article isn't the last word on the subject, due to a lack of hard numbers to back up some of the claims, it does seems to strike at a phenomenon that is real – at least in a growing segment of the gaming population.

What do you think? Do you often abandon games before you complete them?

http://www.gameinformer.com/b/news/archive/2011/08/18/cnn-report-only-10-percent-of-players-finish-games.aspx

Not really surprising, we had an discussion about this a few years ago VGCHART. An discussion that started with Patcher saying only a small group of gamers finish their games. I even have games that I didn't started yet ^^'..

yes, i have a lot of games that i have not completed for various reasons.

There's a different reason for this lol.. I am not going to say it though, people who have played red dead redemption will understand what I am saying.

Yeah, I wonder which 'final mission' they mean. If it's the final final mission probably many people haven't finished it simply because it's obscure, I wouldn't have known if I didn't read about it by accident online.

Can't say I do understand.

OT: On this site it is probably because people spend so much time speculating on game sales. Also, games like red dead are really long. I think a more in depth study would be interesting to see what types of games are most likely to be finished.

I can believe it. These days I game has to be really good for me to finish it.

This I guess is another arguement why games should be shorter, I played Vanquish, didn't like it so I gave up at the end of Act 1. I can't remember the last game I completed to be honest x_x

Personally I finish at least 80% of my games, I rather buy few good ones and finish them than buy a ton of them and not finish them. I've got about 30 games for my PS3 and I've finished almost all of them.

I have a lot of games I begin to play and stop because I buy new ones. I understand that people may not finish games, but I also noticed that there a lot of games on Steam with low % for quite early achievements. only 71% of Darksiders players got to Vulgrim, and I say only because you don't need a lot playtime to meet him!!