[Lakyn Ellery]

With regards to PC players:

• Only 28% have completed the main quest.

• Only 41% have maxed a skill to 100.

• Only 14% have reached level 50.

• Only 22% have gotten married.

• Only 7% have completed the Thieves Guild questline.

These statistics (and many more) are observed from the global gameplay stats for Skyrim on Steam. They are fascinating.

Most astounding is that nearly three quarters of players haven't even finished the main quest. That figure is amazing, and we could spend hours theorising why that figure is so high. These are some obvious considerations, such as:

• Of the 72% of players who haven't even finished the main quest, a sizeable portion would be of consumers who have never played the series before and simply purchased due to Skyrim's powerful marketing, disliked it, and put it aside before completion.
  
• There would also be a sizeable portion of veteran players who became alienated post-purchase, due to Skyrim's radical simplification.
  
• And of course, there is naturally a portion of players who play slowly and haven't gotten around to beating it yet.

There is no way to ever know the extent of why, these are just theories. But I wonder if Bethesda find these figures worrying. (Or whether they don't give a flying hoot because they already have the $$$..... Hmmmmm).

[Janette Segura]

With regards to PC players:

• Only 28% have completed the main quest.

• Only 41% have maxed a skill to 100.

• Only 14% have reached level 50.

• Only 22% have gotten married.

• Only 7% have completed the Thieves Guild questline.

These statistics (and many more) are observed from the global gameplay stats for Skyrim on Steam. They are fascinating.

Most astounding is that nearly three quarters of players haven't even finished the main quest. That figure is amazing, and we could spend hours theorising why that figure is so high. These are some obvious considerations, such as:

• Of the 72% of players who haven't even finished the main quest, a sizeable portion would be of consumers who have never played the series before and simply purchased due to Skyrim's powerful marketing, disliked it, and put it aside before completion.
  
• There would also be a sizeable portion of veteran players who became alienated post-purchase, due to Skyrim's radical simplification.
  
• And of course, there is naturally a portion of players who play slowly and haven't gotten around to beating it yet.

There is no way to ever know the extent of why, these are just theories. But I wonder if Bethesda find these figures worrying. (Or whether they don't give a flying hoot because they already have the $$$..... Hmmmmm).

People play the game in different ways... There is nothing worrying about these figures at all.

[Olga Xx]

Or it could be that people just want to play around with the game first before completing the mq

[Alister Scott]

Or it could be that people just want to play around with the game first before completing the mq

Please see point 3 above. *wink

[He got the]

Please see point 3 above. *wink

*cleans his glasses*

[Liii BLATES]

• Of the 72% of players who haven't even finished the main quest, a sizeable portion would be of consumers who have never played the series before and simply purchased due to Skyrim's powerful marketing, disliked it, and put it aside before completion.

I disagree with this theory. This is a huge game, with many, many distractions throughout. While it's true that some may have purchased it and quit shortly thereafter, realizing it wasn't to their liking, I think it's far more likely that people played their fill, enjoyed it and moved on to the next shiny thing. Personally I've put in over 150 hrs, haven't completed the main quest, yet enjoyed every minute of it.

The best stat for figuring out the success of this game is average hours played per player. Are there stats for this?

[Ice Fire]

Only 22% got married
Maybe because of the bug that ruined the wedding with a corpse dropping in?

[Silencio]

People play the game in different ways... There is nothing worrying about these figures at all.

Of course. The Elder Scrolls is a deeply personal and varied experience for all.

Still - the fact that after more than three months, there is not a single guild completed by more than 35% of players..... is quite amazing. We can reasonably justify that the figure is so low because of casual players and those who spend their time doing nothing, but assuming that makes up 65% of players is somewhat rash.

[Da Missz]

You have no way of knowing what demographic didn't do the main quest for what reasons given this data.

[Nice one]

Since Arena there been a large TES fanbase that doesn't care about the main quest, they just want to explore and "live the world" and it will take years until they finally do finish the main quest, if ever.

The global Steam achievements are also a bit misleading, because they won't activate if you play with Steam in offline mode, and I suspect a fair share of people do. Why would they use online stuff to play an offline game?

[Steven Hardman]

Yeah I dont fall into any of those percentages. Im in a weird position when it comes to playing Skyrim. I have maybe close to 100 hours played except Ive never made it to level 20, completed any faction/MQ fully, or even visited every city. My main problem is that I cant make a character that I like for the life of me. Pretty messed up.....

[zoe]

Of course. The Elder Scrolls is a deeply personal and varied experience for all.

Still - the fact that after more than three months, there is not a single guild completed by more than 35% of players..... is quite amazing. We can reasonably justify that the figure is so low because of casual players and those who spend their time doing nothing, but assuming that makes up 65% of players is somewhat rash.

I have done the DB, TG and MQ in one game and that's only because my GF harassed me to do it (she wanted to see the ending). I started a new character, a mage, and so far I have done few quest and not touched the factions. I'm only wandering about, learning spell and gaining power. No interest in anything else. I would immagine a lot of people play this same way.

There are to many variables to consider in this and it becomes to far fetched to draw conclusions from it.

[Mashystar]

I've play 180 hours....never even got halfway into the MQ......I prefer to explore without NPCs ordering me around.

[Guinevere Wood]

I only have done 3 of the 5. All of these are measures based on a preconcieved notion of "play". It's like poling kids to find out if they've made a sphinx yet in the sand box. Most would say no, and think nothing of it.

[Rebekah Rebekah Nicole]

I am level 61 and Steam did not count all my achievements. I would not give too much thought about Steam...

[Lew.p]

If Just Cause 2 is any indication of... well... anything...
10% of the userbase never plays the game.

(I haven't completed the Main Quest because while Bethesda was undoing the 1.2 patch debacle, I was getting games I like much better)

[maya papps]

Is there a statistic that says just how many players on Steam there are? Just curious. Last I checked, Xbox users had the most purchases.. somewhere over 5 million. So to answer one of your concerns, Bethesda should be alarmed maybe.. but not "sky is falling" alarmed... depending on how many of these PC gamers there are. I mean, if it's 70 percent of 5 million gamers who aren't playing much of the game, then that is bad. But I doubt the numbers are that high.

[Dean Ashcroft]

As far as I'm concerned, the main reason not to play the main quest is roleplaying.

[Brentleah Jeffs]

I am over 100 hours into the game, level 26, and I have only completed 4 quests in the main quest line, 3 guild quest (in 3 different guilds) 2 side quests, and over 50 misc objectives. I spent a lot of time smithing, and it leveld me up a lot Even though I'm a pure mage, and probably won't use it much. I do this with all big rpg's, and don't hit the big quests until I've done most of the little things. It may be that others play it like this as well. I would also like to say that the eliminations of the need to jump everywhere to keep acrobatics up, is a plus, and the separation of character leveling from skill leveling was a great decission.

[Hot]

The MQ is only a small % of the game content. I have invested over 1000 hrs in 7 characters. I have taken them to an average level of 55. I have yet to advance the MQ past the initial Greybeard encounter. Some characters have never turned in the Dragonstone.

[meghan lock]

I have no idea how many hours I played Morrowind, but I've still never completed it.

EDIT: Sometimes when I'm getting close to the end of a game my willingness to complete it goes down because I have a feeling I won't pick it up again. Like the Uncharted games, which are brilliant, but they don't have much replay value other than how awesome the set pieces are.

[Clea Jamerson]

I'd guess these stats are probably a bit misleading due to the number of people that simply used Steam for activation and then play offline.

[Etta Hargrave]

I played daggerfall for YEARS and never even finished the main quest.

I never even knew what the main quest in arena was;/

I never came even close to finishing the main quest in morrowind.

Ob... again never ever came close to finishing main quest.

And again as always im no where near finishing the main quest yet again... 160 hours in with several chars and I dont think I will finish it this year.


Es games arnt realy about the main quest.

[Genevieve]

But it is interesting to think about. I have met people that had Skyrim and just kind of wandered around in the game because they were in the "casual gamer" category. Some people don't have the time or desire to play games like this.

I don't think it is "worrying" because even games are targeted to market segments and are not meant for "everyone".

My wife thinks that playing games is "silly" yet she reads fictional books. In my mind, playing a game like Skyrim is infinitely more enjoyable than reading a book because it is "active" fiction as opposed to just reading a story. She will never understand...

R

[sophie]

With regards to PC players:

• Only 28% have completed the main quest.

• Only 41% have maxed a skill to 100.

• Only 14% have reached level 50.

• Only 22% have gotten married.

• Only 7% have completed the Thieves Guild questline.

Wow. This is fascinating indeed. I have completed two of these: skill to 100 and getting married (just to see what it looks like in this game - and didn't like it).
I haven't completed ANY questline yet; and kept changing characters, so none of them reached level 50.

Interestingly enough, the only time I ever did the MQ in a TES game was in Morrowind. In Oblivion I ignored the MQ entirely; I'm not far enough in Daggerfall to know, but I probably won't finish MQ either.

Now that CK is out I'll spend more time modding than playing, so once again no MQ for me.

But it is interesting to think about. I have met people that had Skyrim and just kind of wandered around in the game because they were in the "casual gamer" category. Some people don't have the time or desire to play games like this.

Huh. I'm certainly not a casual gamer, but I spend most of my time in TES games "wandering around". That's where all the fun is!
And I'm not a great fan of dragons, so the main marketing appeal of Skyrim didn't move me at all