It’s become a popular trend on YouTube right now for gamers to attack their gaming backlogs to earn more Platinum trophies for their PlayStation profiles. It’s a novel idea and a great way to encourage playing games you’ve left unfinished, and it got me thinking about my average game completion percentage. Just how much of a game am I typically playing before it gets condemned to the digital graveyard?

Well, I found the number, and it’s abysmal. According to PSN Profiles, my average game completion percentage is just 23.21%. This suggests that I play less than a quarter of the games I start. This number actually left me speechless.

While I’ve never been much of a trophy hunter, I do understand the appeal and the thrill of the chase; however, right now, trophies aren’t my motivation for this challenge.

Having worked in the games media industry for the better part of 6 years at all levels, it’s occurred to me that I haven’t taken nearly enough time to appreciate the games I play in my spare time and truly give each one the chance to have an impact. I could easily be missing out on hugely enjoyable experiences, all because I’m not giving games a chance, and this is what I want to change.

So, how do I do this? It’s simple, actually. I won’t buy a single new game until I reach at least 50% average game completion on my PlayStation profile. This will force me to revisit games I’ve started but didn’t finish, or games I booted but barely played.

I’ll cop to the fact that trophies probably aren’t the ideal way of tracking this, especially when I look at games like The Last of Us, where you can realistically play and complete that game and only have like 10-15% of the trophies collected. However, I want to spend more time enjoying each game I play, and if that means stopping to smell the roses and achieve more trophies as a result, I’m all up for it.

Where To Start?

Where do you even start a journey like this? Well, I’ve taken a look at how many digital games I own, since I only have a digital PS5 right now.

I apparently own 494 digital games across PS5 and PS4, but because the library repeats games with versions for both consoles, the actual number is likely closer to an even 350.

I also have an active PS+ Premium subscription, so I will have access to games via that service. However, I will not play any games I have not already started, to prevent me from somehow reducing my completion percentage at any point.

The bottom line is that the 23.21% should only ever grow from this point forward, unless new trophies are released for a game I own. Even then, realistically, it would need to be a substantial number for it to be affected.

My big decision now is where to start. Thankfully, the moment this idea struck was inspiring in itself. I was pondering the store and considering a purchase of Ghost of Yotei before checking back to see where I left my progress in Ghost of Tsushima.

It turns out, despite finishing the story and proclaiming to others that I “finished the game,” I had actually come nowhere near. My trophy % was sitting at just 50% for the main game, and 33% when factoring in additional content.

I loved Ghost of Tsushima, but in all honesty, I really didn’t experience much of the game beyond the story, so this feels like the best place to start this journey. I’m going to return to Tsushima and experience more of the game than I did the first time around, even venturing into the story expansion and perhaps even the Legends multiplayer mode.

With that decided, I’ll venture off and return when I have a worthy update. Ideally, within a week, I should have Ghost of Tsushima tidied up and looking much more complete, and perhaps that overall percentage might even have moved a little, too.