Despite my mom’s claims, I wasn’t a smart kid.

Yes, I knew how to organize my toys by type or color, but there was something about my kid brain that was a little behind everyone else. The school system told me as much – I was in resource, the lower level English and math classes and my high school counselor told me to consider trade school (not because trade school is for smooth brains, but because my grades weren’t good enough to get into university).

Despite my High School Counselor’s claims, I have a bachelor’s degree. (And I graduated Cum Laude).

Why am I mentioning this? 

Well, when I was a kid I loved video games. I sat for hours playing The Legend of Zelda Majora’s Mask, but I could never make it past the first 3 days. I never finished games as a kid. It wasn’t until I got games like Call of Duty and Halo that I was able to see a game to completion, and That messes with me a little.

There’s a sense of achievement that comes from finishing a game. It’s conclusive. “I enjoyed this so much that I stuck with it for X hours and now I can put it down.” It’s rewarding to see the end of a narrative, overcome the challenge, and see that final thank you from the people who made the game.

That being said, I own a lot of games I never finished.

I could reach deep into the crevices of my history and make a list of all the games I played but never finished, but I don’t think that would be helpful. I’ll list out just the major ones:

I could go on. Each of these games I’ve played for a while, enjoyed, then didn’t finish. Why I put them down is unique for each game. Older games I played when I was younger and either got stuck, decided to go outside, or found a new thing to obsess over.

Each of these games is considered good for a large group of people. When Death Stranding came out I ran to Target 4 days after it released and bought the last copy they had. I forgot it came out, and I am a big fan of the Metal Gear Solid games so I had to try it. I played it 7 times and stopped playing 10 days after I bought it. At the time I was living in a dorm and the last thing I wanted to do was deliver packages while listening to my friends play smash in the room next to me. 

I wrote in my Armored Core VI review about that game meeting me where I was. I didn’t have time to invest a large chunk of time just trying to figure out how the game works. Or meander through a sprawling world. I needed a game to give me a simple objective that I could beat in minutes (or even seconds). It was perfect, and I saw it through!

Armored Core VI was bottled lightning for me. It’s rare for me to focus on one thing at a time and finish it within a short period. For example, it took me 2 years to finish Persona 5, playing it on and off.

The question I’m trying to answer is; How do I finish more games? And another question; Do I have to finish more games?

There’s an obvious answer to the question “How do I finish more games?” – play shorter games. If you focus on playing tight, short, quick games, you will finish more games. This isn’t a bad idea either by the way. If you want to seek out games that can get you in and out quickly there are plenty of games that finish around the hour 4-5 mark. Some are even shorter.

However, this isn’t a satisfying answer for me. I’m drawn to longer experiences like Baldur’s Gate 3, Dragon Quest, and Persona. Getting lost in a large world or sprawling narrative is fascinating to me, and I want to be able to experience them more.

I’ve identified 2 barriers that stop me from completing games.

Time is obvious, I don’t have the time to play games for hours on end anymore. I can’t play Persona 5 for eight hours in one day like I used to. These two barriers are also connected. If a game is taking me a long time, my attention will wane.

After some thought and “experimentation” I have found a method for keeping me on task to see a game all the way through.

When I start a game I like to know what I’m getting into time-wise. I like to look up average completion times on HLTB to gauge what I’m getting into. I know my playtime is usually a little longer than the average so I like to add 5-10 hours for my estimate (unless it’s a shorter adventure game like Uncharted). Knowing how long the game will take to finish helps me stay on task.

Knowing what game you’ll be playing next is either a great motivator to finish a game or a motivator to put a game down and of to the next one. For me, it’s a motivator to finish a game.

I keep a list of games that I want to play next. When I finish a game I look at the list and consider if I’m in a good place to play it now. That being said, this list is liquid. It’s always changing.

This sounds antithetical to the goal of finishing more games, but it’s not… trust me.

The way I currently play games is by category.

Each of the games above has different reasons to be played. BG3 is a massive game with so much to do. It also has long load times, and fights take a while. It’s not the kind of game I want to play when I have under an hour for myself. On the other hand, Golden Sun can be booted up in a minute and I jump in and out easily. It doesn’t require a lot of my time to have a good time in Golden Sun.

It takes discipline to play like this. Sometimes when I have time for myself I don’t want to play Baldur’s Gate 3, but I’m always happy I did. I’d be destroyed if I forgot how to play that game cause I decided to finish Dragon Quest XI S: Echoes of an Elusive Age – Definitive Edition.

I encourage you to try this out. Have a game in each category and if one game doesn’t seem fun for you switch to one of the other games for a while, but never replace the games in each category.

Formalizing a hobby can make something fun feel like a job – For most people. 

For me personally, I like having a structured backlog, keeping track of what’s next, and categorizing my currently playing list. It helps me see through games I know I like, and it also helps me save money because I’m not buying more games than I can play.

I wanted to wrap this up by mentioning this; not beating a game does not mean you didn’t enjoy it, or that you’re not a “true fan”.

There’s a toxic gate-keeping stigma in the gaming community that makes it difficult for people to enjoy games however they want to enjoy them. And I think that’s a shame.

If you get to a place in a game that you’re happy with, you get what the game is trying to say, or you just don’t have time for it right now, that’s fine! Enjoy something else for a while. You can always come back, but you don’t have to.

Enjoying games on your own time and your own terms is more enjoyable than finishing a game you liked for the first 40 hours, but dragged in the last 60.

I hope you have a great day, and I hope you finish more games in 2024… If that’s your thing.