Only 20% Of Players Will Finish Hitman: Absolution?
Take a step back. I want you to really think, how many story-based games, with a definite beginning, middle, and end have you completed over the last few years? Now, with that in mind, how many story-based games have you played in the last year but never finished?
Chances are, you’ve probably only finished a small handful of them. At least, that’s what Tore Blystad, the director for Hitman: Absolution seems to be saying. By using different metrics, IO has determined that around “20 per cent of the players will see the last level of the game.” And, apparently it doesn’t have to do with the game itself, but rather the fact that sometimes life gets in the way, and people end up shifting priorities around.
I’m not going to lie, it concerns me when a company says that only 20% of people will see the end of the game, and it’s not because of the difficulty or length of the game. While Blystad suggests that they won’t be moving content around to put the good stuff up front and leaving the ending to suffer, I can’t exactly say I believe that, especially when that 20% metric seems to be a trend for games in general. After all, I would argue that EA had a similar kind of metric drawn up in regards to Mass Effect 3. Let’s face it, the original ending for the game was rather weak, and if I had to guess EA wanted that game out soon, and something had to be sacrificed. They figured that most people wouldn’t see the ending, so they had no reason to really flesh it out. But here’s where the use of metrics is flawed, because when you have a series like Mass Effect, where people are invested through 3 games with the same character, you’re going to have a much higher percentage of people finishing the game. So, with that in mind, I have to hope that the makers of Hitman: Absolution actually take their time to make a decent, proper ending, and not just phone the ending in at the last minute.
