I don’t remember the first game I ever played.

I do, however, remember the first game I ever beat. It was “The Lion King” for SNES, and I was about 10 or 11 years old… in other words, I’d already been playing games for nearly a decade by that point. (It was actually a pretty terrible ending, but it did feel good at the time.)

Since then, I can count the number of games I’ve actually played all the way through on, well– probably just a couple of hands. Ocarina of Time. Super Mario World. A handful of other platformers, like Yoshi’s Story. A few different RPGs. Mario Kart and Mario Kart 64. Goldeneye 007. Probably a few other racing and FPS games that I can’t think of off the top of my head.

Then you get to all the games I played a very great deal of and never actually beat. Sometimes it was because the game got genuinely very difficult– Banjo-Kazooie, I’m looking at you. Other times, I don’t know why I quit playing. I got bored, I guess. I have an FFTA save parked outside the final mission and I just never got around to beating it. Actually, I’m sure there are more games I’ve played to 90% than there are games that I’ve actually beaten.

If you’re like this, then you’re not alone. According to a recent article, of all the people who started playing last year’s Game of the Year, Red Dead Redemption, only about 10% of them beat it. In fact, the article also says that game developers are actually making games with the thought in their head that most of their game’s players won’t see all of their carefully crafted content. What a bit of a sobering thought. Imagine writing a story and knowing that 90% of your readers won’t read through to the end.

I think there are a few different reasons why games have such a low completion rate. The fact that we’ve grown up is a big one. And I don’t mean that in a stereotypical “We’re too old for video games now” way. This is what I mean: Remember when you were a kid? You only got a few games a year, one or two for Christmas, one or two for your birthday, and maybe a couple others at special occasions throughout the year. “Someday,” you resolved to yourself, “I’m going to grow up and I’m going to buy SO MANY GAMES.” So then you grew up, got yourself an income, and did exactly what you said you were going to do. Which is great. Unfortunately, there are only 24 hours in a day. And you’re probably spending most of that time either sleeping or working.

Or perhaps your gaming tastes have changed a bit and now you mostly play stuff that doesn’t really “end” (MMOs, Minecraft) or you play games that can be played as a “match” in one relatively short session (Starcraft, Civilization, LoL, TF2, etc.)

For whatever reason or variety of reasons, though, people don’t beat a whole lot of games. I’ve acknowledged my own problem in this regard, and my current quest to either beat or re-beat as many Final Fantasy games as I can is part of a personal goal of mine to prove that I’ve still got what it takes to play a long game all the way through.

What about you guys? Do you have a backlog of games that you still need to beat?