Read this before you buy any new games

A recent study by Music Magpie found that gamers don’t seem to be getting the most out their games. The top 50 bestselling games of the last few years, on average have not even been half completed. Before you think about buying new release games this year, think about how many games you might already have that still have a few more hours of enjoyment left in them.

Of course, there is no single way to measure the enjoyment of a game. How do you know when you’re sick of one game and want to play a new one? There is no reliable way to measure this, you just know. This study measured game completion by taking the average achievements that were unlocked by players on PS4 and Xbox One. A few things might come to mind when you think about in game achievements, you often get most of them by accident, you have probably never achieved them all for one game and probably don’t plan on it. You might also know that no game is created equal when it comes to achievements, some games have 5 achievements and some have 100, the latter being much harder to achieve. Some games reward you with an achievement for completing the tutorial, some you’ll put in many hours before the little ‘Achievement Unlocked’ notification pops up on your screen. You will notice in the infographic below that the two Far Cry games and the two Assassin’s Creed games are clustered together, indicating similar achievement difficulties between different games of the same franchise. Many factors will determine the average completion rate for a game, other than it’s enjoy-ability.

Each of these completion rates, including the highest are considerably low. While it may not be the best indicator of how much enjoyment players got out of these games, it shows if you revisit an old favorite there still may be many more hours to get out of it. Before you go to spend your money on a bunch of expensive new releases, maybe you could go achievement hunting.