To some extent, games are often bound to have a happy end: climactic fights with the bad guys are always fun, and if you wouldn't have them in your game, people (including me) would be very disappointed. However, this makes it even more unexpected (read: fun) when a game does have an unhappy ending. I like it when a game does have a somewhat happy ending, but the evil perseveres anyway: for example, the way Wesker survives and gets his data at the end of Umbrella Chronicles (Umbrella's End). This also leaves room for a sequel, and with good games, this is never a bad thing of course. I hate endings where 'everything becomes alright again', like Zelda. Unfortunately, most of the time this is the case.

I completely agree with you when it comes to game endings.  Also,  I feel MGS3 is my favorite for so many reasons.  Much thought was taken into consideration when this game ending was made.  It is going to be a hard task to take on inorder for MGS4 to compete with this ending.  I trust Hideo Kojima will out shine it though considering the fact that it is the last game and he has great writing skills.

Sure, for £50 a massage I expect a happy ending.

Leaving my private life out of this and going back to gaming. I just want a satisfying and appropriate ending to a game.

Some happy, some a bit sad and some that combine the two. I personally like things to be relatively well tied up at the end of the game, even if it's just hinted at. I don't want everything spelled out for me, a little bit left ambigious and the player having to use their imagination a bit as well.

I always quite liked endings of games or films that leave people thinking 'Do you think that...?'. I quite like reading peoples theories on what could happen next or what the characters would do next. It makes the game feel like a bit more immersive.

Happy endings are crowd pleasers, but they often aren't true to the message, or theme of a film/game. I prefer whatever ending is appropriate for the experience, and I don't go for the casual audience ending being the absolute best, and the "I paid for it so it better be happy" is the very reason their is a disconnect between the academy best picture choices and ticket sales.

Movies like Transformers, Spiderman 3, and Pirates are huge successes, with happy endings. The movies are audience friendly. Movies like There Will Be Blood and No Country for Old Men don't have audience friendly endings, but they are far superior films to the former ones I've mentioned(imo).

It's this disconnect that causes critics to snub their noses at the casual audience, and also causes the casual audience to hate critics for being stuck-up pricks.

Great videogames often have ambiguous endings -- joy mixed with sorrow, to paraphrase Kojima.

Final Fantasy 12: joy at vanquishing the Empire and freeing a people, sorrow for the lives lost in the Empire's wars and the unspeakable crime of Nabudis

MGS3: speaks for itself.

Half Life: wisely done, Mr. Freeman!

well i dont really care if its a happy ending as long as i know the story and for it to be good

I like the endings to MGS3 and the first Kingdom Hearts

You figure out which kind of endings I like :)

I only like happy endings when I'm at the massage parlor lol.

 That does not have a proper endings, it just stops suddenly and you think, why has it ended? It has no conclusion, the baddie gets away, the old cop is retired, and nobody lives hapily ever after, and nothing is concluded, it is not a proper ending