Only 25% finished HL2 Ep1

By Tom Bramwell Published 26 June, 2006

Bizarre. Valve releases stats.

Valve has released statistics demonstrating how much time's been spent playing Half-Life 2: Episode 1, the nature of the game-sessions and things like how many people used the option to listen to in-game commentary.

The anonymous data, harvested using Valve's Steam game service, spans the fortnight of June 10th to 25th, and says that there were nearly 900,000 game sessions in total - although only 25 per cent of people bothered to finish the latest Half-Life episode. Come on chaps!

The average total playtime was just under three hours, Valve's stats say, while the average completion time was just over five hours. Elsewhere, we're told that nearly 70 per cent of people played it with HDR enabled. I did, until my overheating PC started bawooogahing at me and I had to resort to playing it on my laptop in a resolution that called to mind Half-Life 1 more than it did the cutting edge of PC FPS games.

Valve's also provided a few graphs and pie charts for those of you who enjoy that sort of thing - and arguably provided plenty of fuel for the debate about data collection, so feel free to get stuck into that. Weather's miserable after all.

Picture of Tom.

About Tom Bramwell

Tom is Operations director of Eurogamer Network and Editor-at-Large of Eurogamer.net. He joined the company in February 2000.

Read more articles from Tom by visiting the Tom Bramwell archive page.

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Comments (36) Latest comment 6 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • Darren #1 6 years ago

    I'm about three levels into Half-Life 2 Episode 1 but that doesn't mean I can't be bothered to finish it, just that I'm taking my time doing so, especially as I have to wait nearly six months for the next part!!!

  • UncleLou #2 6 years ago

    I saw that, too, at the weekend. They certainly won't feel the need to make the other episodes longer if noone finishes this one! Although I'd say that the length was pretty much perfect.

  • sickpuppysoftware #3 6 years ago

    Leave me alone Valve, I've been very busy. I will finish it sometime before Ep2.

    Here's another stat for you valve

    World Cup > Half Life 2 Ep1

  • Bumbuliuz #4 6 years ago

    There is talk about errors in the stat system at Valve. So the finishing numbers may not be quite right. I have finished the game twice. Once normally and once with the commentary system.

  • monochrome_blue #5 6 years ago

    Bit unfair, just means 75% haven't finished yet.

    Also, people in the industry don't seem to realise that most people don't finish games, ever.

  • Arganoid #6 6 years ago

    I haven't finished it because it keeps crashing.

  • rudedudejude #7 6 years ago

    More people should play it on hard! It's a much better experience!

  • Shrimp #8 6 years ago

    I haven't finished it because the bugger crashes after the opening cutscene (lock up with looping sounds, crash-fans) and no amount of faffing around with drivers, removing the soundcard, etc. will fix it.

  • Krun #9 6 years ago

    I wonder, would it crash less if they didn't collect all this data?

  • Schiraman #10 6 years ago

    It crashes all the time on my machine as well :(

    I still completed it, but it took a whole lot of quick saving and loading to edge forwards through the game between crashes, which kinda spoiled the experience...

  • Stickman #11 6 years ago

    Big Brother! Big Brother! Get out of my head!

    /tin foil hat

  • lasermink #12 6 years ago

    STEAM IS WATCHING YOU.

  • Machiavel #13 6 years ago

    Crashes galore with me as well. Started getting better with Directsound turned off in the dark section, but that streaming scientist voice when you go above ground makes it freeze incessantly!

    /shakes ineffectual fist

  • smelly #14 6 years ago

    I dont know if i approve to being watched in this way.

    Next they'll be telling us 89% of episode 1 players have hard core grot on their pc's.

  • ilmaestro #15 6 years ago

    The weather's not too bad here.

  • septimus #16 6 years ago

    Can't even be bothered to finish Half-Life 2 let alone start Ep.1 Not sure why, but just got so bored with it.

  • Talha #17 6 years ago

    I haven't finished it, because I am at the train station and I know that one play session and it will all end. Maybe I am optimistic, but I guess that's the reason most people have held it up till now.


    @septimus: Yeah we know how bored you are and how the whole HL thingy sucks. Thanks for the constructive information. ;-)

  • smelly #18 6 years ago

    But it doesn't suck as much as F.E.A.R. does.

  • stonedben #19 6 years ago

    @smelly: <em>Only</em> 89%??

  • BrokenSymmetry #20 6 years ago

    I finish about 25% of all games that I buy, so for me the figure would be accurate. I think the games industry should pay much more attention on how to let people finish more games, by adjusting difficulty levels dyamically, letting people skip boring parts, etc.

  • tiddles #21 6 years ago

    But how many players had fun while playing it, and HOW MUCH FUN did they have?

  • nickthegun #22 6 years ago

    When I was a penniless child/teenager/student I would buy a game and absolutely hammer the shit out of it. I would squeeze every last drop of gameplay out of it, find new ways through levels, time myself how quickly I could complete it, try and finish it without losing a life and so on (On SFII on the SNES, If couldnt finish it on the hardest difficulty with at least the first 3 people perfected in less than a certain amount of time, I turned it off and started again).

    But now, ive got more disposable income. If a game comes out I like the look of, I will buy it, mor eoften than not, to the detriment of my other games (finished or not). As a result less games get finished and I think im crapper at games now than I was when I was 12.

    Anyway, HL ep 1 was ok. Not brilliant by any mean and I found myself easily distracted when playing it. I found myself having a quick blast and then going to back to the dark brotherhood missions on oblivion........

  • Lee #23 6 years ago

    For all those finding it crashes all the time, try adding -dxlevel 81 to the startup options. This fixed it for me, although it means you can't take advantage of the HDR, even if your hardware permits.

  • rinoaMW #24 6 years ago

    what about those that had to resort to patching over a 56kb and playing it offline thereafter? Like me.

    And I've played it through 4 times already since then.

  • prettyboytim #25 6 years ago

    I haven't finished it because those fucking zombine cunts kept killing me while I waited for the lift to arrive.

    Now I don't feel like playing it again because I know the first thing I'll have to do it get through that bloody section...

    Have I missed much? was the episode almost over?

  • Freek #26 6 years ago

    That's just about getting to the half way point and yes you'll be missing allot.

  • dk_rare #27 6 years ago

    A good sign for episodic paid downloadable content?

  • Ryuken #28 6 years ago

    More a sign that they need to boost the next episode. This one was fine (if you don't mention the first hour or so) but there should be more (new stuff) to play with, not less.

  • Stu #29 6 years ago

    Interesting stuff.

    Hopefully developers will all get on board with this sort of Big Brothery and make use of it to sort out their games - the difficulty spikes graph is particularly useful I think.

  • ttursas #30 6 years ago

    Make the next game more interesting (less linear, new ideas, interesting story, deeper (that is not the same as cliche) characters, you know), and perhaps more people will complete it.

  • Drakron #31 6 years ago

    So if I play this it means I am allowing data gathering from Valve part ... am I the only one that have a issue with that.

    And no, that kind of technology is not to make "games better", its about "making more money from advertisement" ... and likely it will not stop there and move to full system data collection and you cannot complain, you acepted the EULA.

  • Grumpycrab #32 6 years ago

    I finished it but was playing in offline mode since day 1. Sorry Valve.
    --
    Grumps

  • Tiger_Walts #33 6 years ago

    Well, since a recent update it now hangs on loading for me. Maybe that's why people aren't finishing it?

  • spiny #34 6 years ago

    Pfff, I'm still playing it and will finish it, just got other stuff to do in my life too valve-dude!

  • smelly #35 6 years ago

    I completed it in about 3 and a half hrs. Wondering what all these people who are saying they have "other things to do" are actually doing?

    :-)

  • HyperShadow #36 6 years ago

    I'm 15% through this game so far.

    Well, 15% through downloading it through Steam.

    The savings in money is good, it just takes forever to actually get it on the damn machine.