Survey: Completion rate of single-player games on Steam + 25 € voucher lottery

[Jan Solo 1]

Hello fellow Steam users!
 

According to media reports and studies, only few single-player games are actually played through by their owners on Steam.

Many players don't even finish the main story or main content - let alone other things.
 

In my Bachelor thesis I deal with the possible reasons for this in terms of media consumption.

Therefore I ask you to help me by participating in my online survey - it only takes a few minutes.
 

As a thank you I will raffle a 25 € Steam voucher among all participants.

You are welcome to share the link to the survey with others.

I thank you very much in advance.
 

Here is the link to the survey: https://forms.gle/3qhQ4dweBBzioufH8 

Greetings
 

Jan

[Aemony 141]

There was a good post on Reddit the other day that was sorta related to this, where the OP praised or highlighted games that included hints or tutorials in the game even long after the tutorial sequence.

A lot of times when life comes in the way of playing a game it can be daunting to try and get back into it if you've forgotten all controls, interactions, etc of the game.

 

24 minutes ago, Jan Solo said:

According to media reports and studies, only few single-player games are actually played through by their owners on Steam.

This is the easiest to spot through the percentage of players whom have unlocked an achievement. Through the public achievements statistics on Steam, you usually see somewhere around 70-80% having completed the tutorial/first level of a game, and less than 30-40% having received whatever achievement is awarded for beating the core of the game.

[Marioysikax 89]

I always like to bring up one game when this topic arises: Out there somewhere

The game was not that revolutionary or even too memorable, but it still stucks with me as that one game I could enjoy from start to finish in one day. It felt really nice to have great experience and have closure for it. 

It's actually sometimes bit hard to even decide what game to begin, because it's making dedication of using free time on that alone, usually multiple days and there is already so many to choose from. Sometimes it's simply much easier to make decision that the choise was wrong and time would be saved by simply moving onto next experience. 

When it comes to completing games, in most cases it feels like thing that's unobtainable without truly hard dedication to the game, at which point it becomes work rather than fun. However in some cases when that completion is only bit further ahead, I do sometimes dedicate the time to fully complete it and it is extremely satisfying feeling to have something fully done. Just finished Cat Quest, I could've just finished the game immidiately, but putting in 1 more hour I could do all the things in the main game and play around being overpowered and once again, give more fun out from the game rather than just having it being checked off from the list of games to be played. 

[Andytizer 269]

I have no idea who is completing these single player games these days as every kid I see is playing some kind of survival/F2P multiplayer shooters, or all the adults I know barely have time to game at all with work/kids in the way.

When I was younger, I'd get maybe a handful of games a year and I'd play an explore every single nook and cranny and extract the maximum value out of them. I'd play my shareware version of Descent over and over again or complete Monkey Island multiple times. Collecting games was a joy because each game would be worth dozens of hours of replayability, only a handful were released every month.

These days with all these free singleplayer games released on Humble or Steam or on Epic Games Store has really oversaturated the market with thousands of quality singleplayer game experiences. However I'm still collecting them (at least up until recently) because my monkey brain is still thinking as a child - 'free games' (or games on very low sale prices) seem like they are unlimited value. However with my hundreds of games unplayed, it's clear that these collections are never going to be played/completed. 

The worst is when enhanced editions or remastered editions keep getting released. For example Metro 2033 sits in my Steam library unplayed because I know that if I play it, I'll be getting a worse experience than the Redux version. However I can't bring myself to ever buy the Redux as I have too many other singleplayer FPS games to complete first.

[Antrad 37]

On 10/12/2019 at 11:34 AM, Aemony said:

This is the easiest to spot through the percentage of players whom have unlocked an achievement. Through the public achievements statistics on Steam, you usually see somewhere around 70-80% having completed the tutorial/first level of a game, and less than 30-40% having received whatever achievement is awarded for beating the core of the game.

I don't know where you get that 30-40% completion that is very optimistic. The ones I checked on Steam are closer to 10% or lower.

9 hours ago, Andytizer said:

I have no idea who is completing these single player games these days as every kid I see is playing some kind of survival/F2P multiplayer shooters, or all the adults I know barely have time to game at all with work/kids in the way.

When I was younger, I'd get maybe a handful of games a year and I'd play an explore every single nook and cranny and extract the maximum value out of them. I'd play my shareware version of Descent over and over again or complete Monkey Island multiple times. Collecting games was a joy because each game would be worth dozens of hours of replayability, only a handful were released every month.

These days with all these free singleplayer games released on Humble or Steam or on Epic Games Store has really oversaturated the market with thousands of quality singleplayer game experiences. However I'm still collecting them (at least up until recently) because my monkey brain is still thinking as a child - 'free games' (or games on very low sale prices) seem like they are unlimited value. However with my hundreds of games unplayed, it's clear that these collections are never going to be played/completed. 

The worst is when enhanced editions or remastered editions keep getting released. For example Metro 2033 sits in my Steam library unplayed because I know that if I play it, I'll be getting a worse experience than the Redux version. However I can't bring myself to ever buy the Redux as I have too many other singleplayer FPS games to complete first.

I have a similar experience. My nephews are stuck on Minecraft and now Fortnite for years. And those two games don't even have a story, characters or any depth (I know you can be creative in Minecraft, but I mean story-wise and stuff). There are so many games out there with whole worlds to explore, it is such a waste to limit yourself like that.

When I was a kid I barely had any games, I mostly played demos. Me and my friend played the demo of Worms Armageddon for months. I had a demo for Sudden Strike with only one mission and I replayed it at least 10 times, shooting my own troops to increase their experience. Then there was Warlords Battlecry, Cossacks , Machines... Between 1999 and 2007 I made a list of games I planned to play when I get a new computer (and a way to actually get the games) and even after 11 years I have not finished everything from that list, not to mention all the other games I discovere in the meantime. And now I also have around 200 games on various online accounts that I got for FREE that I haven't even touched yet and most of them are very good games. Metro is in there too and I also don't know which version to play, but I lean more to the original version. In my experience remasters always mess something up.

[Andytizer 269]

@Jan Solo can you keep us updated on this - for example if a user here wins the voucher, and how the data is used in your thesis and what kind of conlcusions you draw!

[RoyBatty 0]

I've been a gamer for some 40 years now, and the main reason I don't finish a game is that it's just not engaging enough to want to finish it. Some games are great and keep me going for years (Fallout 3/NV) and some I don't even play for more than a couple of hours (Prey reboot, Rage 2). It was never about the story or graphics (especially considering I loved Adventure on the Atari 2600) it's always about the fun factor. If something isn't fun, I won't play it to completion.