Koki on 8/11/2010 at 10:19

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Because they say a lot about life, universe and everything.

For example, (http://steamcommunity.com/stats/Metro2033/achievements) Only 54% people ever got the Demolitionist achievement in Metro 2033. It's required to finish the game, and you get it about halfway through. If It's Hostile, You Kill It and Enlightened are ending achievements. What that means is, even if you add them up, barely 38% of people who played the game actually finished it.

(http://steamcommunity.com/stats/Aquaria/achievements) Aquaria is one of the indie games everyone loves right? Less than half of people who played the game reached the Open Waters; for those who never played Aquaria, that's like never getting out of Med Sci in SS2. Divorce is required to finish the game(I don't know if United is so I'll go with this one); 16% of people who played Aquaria have it.

How about something more indie-famous. Like (http://steamcommunity.com/stats/WorldOfGoo/achievements) World of Goo. I don't remember if you need to complete all the levels in the game to finish it(Executive Producer of Goo Product) but if you like the game you'd probably do anyway. 24%.

Well, there's also a pretty big possibility that people simply didn't like Metro 2033 and they don't give a damn about indie games, or they got them as part of some bundle, played once and never came back to them. Right? So let's take something massive for a change, like... (http://steamcommunity.com/stats/ModernWarfare2/achievements) Modern Warfare 2. Results? Surprising for sure. 18% of people who played the game did so for less than five minutes(Danger Close). Then their numbers kept dwindling. Only 71% managed to reach the invasion of the US(Royale with Cheese), and 59%, now veterans for sure, managed to finish the game(For The Record). Let's restate that - a game in an extremely popular series, hyped to all hell and back, which sold 4.7 million copies in the first 24 hours and is barely five hours long... and only 60% managed to finish it.

At this point I went to some XBox 360 achievement site to see if they kept track of how many people get which achievements but alas, they don't.

Some other stuff:
The ratio of finishing a campaign in L4D2(on ANY difficulty) oscillates around 45%. I guess people really suck at this game.
Boredomlands lives up to its name, only 47% of people who played it got past level 5.
46% of people who played Fallout New Vegas were too busy modding hermaphrodite furry models and touhou remixes into the game to get past level 10.

Thirith on 8/11/2010 at 10:52

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Do those numbers say anything much about the games or about the people who play them? They're interesting numbers, definitely, but interpreting will involve a lot of assumptions and guesswork, I'd wager.

Personally, I could imagine that the kind of gamers who post lots on a forum such as this one tend to be fairly different from the majority of gamers in those terms and their stats would look pretty different.

Eldron on 8/11/2010 at 12:01

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I like games, I buy them, but time is not something that I have a lot of, I've yet to finish any of the baldurs gate games for example.

modern warfare series though is notorious for people buying it just for the multi player though, and metro2033 just went on sale for like 75% cut, so that added a shit-ton of new players who has yet to finish the game.

nicked on 8/11/2010 at 13:38

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Yeah, the stats aren't necessarily 100% accurate. Some will play in offline mode, some have bought the game but not played it at all yet, and may finish it when they finally do. There's also some games on Steam that didn't get achievements until after release, so people could have played them before achievements were introduced. Torchlight and Half-Life 2 are two examples.

Tonamel on 8/11/2010 at 14:20

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(http://www.massiveincorporated.com/) What's with this "when" business? I saw a demo of theirs at this past GDC for software that made heatmaps of which surfaces in your game levels get looked at the most, so you could maximize billboard placement.