Going the Distance

Last week I finished Super Scribblenauts. Actually, I didn't just finish it I 100% finished it. So not only did I complete all the levels on both hard and difficult mode I also completed all 50 of the special achievements. This made me think about what it is that drives people to fully complete a game. As a general rule I don't 100% games, actually I have plenty of games (some of which I consider to be great) that I haven't even finished. I did however collect all 242 stars in Super Mario Galaxy, and fully complete New Super Mario Bros Wii.

I think that in order for a game to encourage me to keep playing after the end credits it needs to first be a good game and second have the challenges not too difficult to complete. For example I really enjoy and play a lot of RPG games, but I have never fully 100% finished one because the amount of additional effort and time required to find every last secret is just too great. Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem is a brilliant game, but in order to unlock all of the features and the final ending you need to beat the game three times, with there being only a minimal change in each play through, which for me was just not worth it.

In Super Scribblenauts I enjoyed the game enough that I wanted to complete all the levels on both easy and hard mode. Doing this meant that I had already collected around 80% of the achievements anyway, which meant that it didn't seem too hard to collect the rest. In a similar way I was always intending to collect the first 120 stars in Super Mario Galaxy and after doing so I found that I wanted to keep playing, so I went on to collect the rest. Conversely, in Super Mario Sunshine I only collected the minimum number of stars required to complete the game.

I think that having a large number of achievements that players realistically see a way to gaining is an easy way to give a game an addictive element. I've noticed that more and more casual games are using this type of model, although they will usually let you jump ahead by paying a small fee. I will finish of by mentioning that Battlefield 3, has also recently implemented a pay to unlock system, so for an extra $39.99 you can get every item in the game with no effort required.