I like to keep track of my games that I have completed, with most of the games it is pretty easy. When the credits roll, I consider them beat, there are a few exceptions of course like Nier, Resident Evil 2 etc. What I struggle with are fighting, racing games and 4x games. I enjoy these genres, but I don’t know what is “satisfactory” amount that would make me think that I played these games to completion.
Some examples:
- Guilty Gear Strive (or any fighting games that are not Mortal Kombat, injustice or SF6)
- Civilization 6
- Project Cars
Whenever you’ve had your fill. Whether it’s 5 minutes for 500 hours, there’s no sense wasting your time playing something you don’t enjoy. I’ve played Pavlov for over 300 hours and am still going back every week. There’s no longterm goals and that’s perfectly fine, if I ever get bored with it I’ll uninstall and move on.
This is just to keep a tally for myself. I don’t force myself to keep playing if I don’t like the game then I just stop (skul was the most recent game that I just stopped playing). Just wanted some milestone for these odd genres for fun.
Got it! One thing you could do is see if the game has any time trial/challenge mode, or if there are any community challenges (like nuzlocke for Pokemon).
Just play until you don’t feel like it anymore. If you need a milestone, clear a match/run/whatever on the highest difficulty. Or maybe every variety, so in Civ, a victory of each type. Or if you feel like going hard, find a rating you want to get and get there, like Celestial in Strive. I would say just play until you feel satisfied though. Don’t worry about what others think of your completion metric. None will satisfy everyone.
Thank you! I would like to say that this is not for anyone, but myself. I just like to keep a tally for myself to make my way through my backlog, I almost never feel satisfied with just doing some match in civ for instance, so I like your idea of getting different win types.
When you’re no longer having fun.
Whenever you want it to be
For Civ 6, I’d say winning each victory once. Try to do it with different civs each time too. You can set your goal as winning a game on the highest difficulty if you want, but personally I don’t find that to be as interesting as the shift in gameplay necessary to win the different victories without just militarily crushing everyone else.
For something like Civ or Stellaris, I’d count “completion” once I’ve won at least one game. Because, ideally, I’ve shown some mastery of knowledge, skills, and mechanics that allowed me to win. I don’t need to play and win as each leader in Civ or every race/trait and combo in Stellaris to say I’ve completed it.
This is similar to how I’d view “completion” in open-ended games like Cities:Skylines or Banished. Having played a city or town for several hours, was I able to keep the residents alive, stabilize the city if there were any issues, and also grow and develop the settlement for a significant, though arbitrary, length of in-game time? If the answer is Yes to all of these, then I’ve “completed” the game. I’ve understood how things work in the game. Doesn’t mean I have to understand every nuance or know every little trick. But I know enough that things are going well and largely continue to go well. And every time I start a new map, things tend to always go well.
Earlier this year, I stopped playing Eve Online for the nth time after mostly playing straight through since 2019. Because I viewed my time during this last 4-5yr stint as “complete.” I achieved practically all the goals I set out to do: join a major alliance, join massive PVP fights, engage in smaller PVP fights, make money that I ever had before, buy and fly ships I’d never used before, learn how to explore and navigate wormholes, try out specific types of industry, play with IRL friends, own and run my/our own station, and more.
In all of these, “completion” obviously doesn’t mean I’ll never go back. There’s always more to do, new things to see. But for now, I am satisfied with my progress, experience, and understanding. I’m no longer a noob.
If the meat of the game is in it’s multiplayer, then you just need to be declared as the grand champion.
As someone that played R6 siege for over 6 years. It is complete when the game’s dysfunction can no longer be overlooked because of the intermittent highs you get from a good play you made in a round.
Just to add some even longer time goals to the other replies: you could get all achievements for games that have them. Though some of those, like the ones for Civ 6, are excessive. It could give you ideas or shorter term goals to work towards, then you can decide if you’ve had enough at any point before 100% if things get too BS.
You’re right, achievements are excessive in some games, that’s why I don’t rely on them too much. I like the idea of short term goals though, and if those goals seem “fulfilling” then I can use them as my completion milestones.
I play a lot of board games. And I own a lot of board games. Not all of my games get played very much, so I like to track each play and over time see which games are forgotten gems or which games I’d be best to just trade away.
In the board game community, you might come across people talking about the “Friendless” metric of their collection. It’s a totally made up measurement, invented by a person with the user name Friendless. In that way, it’s like the Elo rating in chess and other games. I find it’s useful to know when I’m “done” with something that doesn’t really have an end, like playing board games. You can always play one more game.
Friendless hypothesized that if you play a game 10 times, you’ve gained 90% of its remaining utility. So after 10 plays, you consumed 90% of the game play that game provides. After another 10 plays, you’re at 99%. By the time you reach 30 plays, you’ve consumed 99.9% of the game.
You can do the same with games. Maybe the number of plays changes a bit. Maybe it’s not the number of plays, but the number of hours. I would say that games of Civ are like games of any other board game: 10 = 90% utility gained. Matches in COD, probably not the same.
Thank you! I also have a big board game collection, and that sounds genius and fun, I will start doing that with board games. And I can also see it being applied to some games.
Given that I mostly play heavily-modded games, a run is usually “complete” when it is abandoned due to its inevitable TPS death.
Typically, for any game that has a campaign, I would consider completing that completing the game.
That doesn’t mean you can’t continue to have fun in endless modes or multiplayer. That’s a different orientation.
For multiplayer games, there’s no completion really. Play the tutorial? All maps once? Win once? Ranks? Endless leveling progress? All achievements? None of those really fit. There is no completion to a game without designed, completable progress. If there’s a max level, one could consider that a kind of completion. All achievements may subjectively fit too.
As others have said, the best answer is “whenever you want”, though obviously sometimes you don’t know when that is! If you need a little more structure you can see what the game presents to you as all the things you can do, for instance by completing all the achievements. Remember that sometimes the final achievements are ludicrously difficult, so if you’re not enjoying it just call it a day!
