I'm not going talk about one single game, or the type of games that I come back to for years after I've finished them just to remind myself how much I loved them. Instead, I'm going to talk about what makes me continue playing games even after I've 'finished' them, searching out every last secret and unlockable – the games I play until I've truly finished them.

I completed GTA IV with 100%. I played every mini game, finished every race and jumped every stunt jump. I even shot every last goddamn pigeon.



Why? Why should I spend time hunting down pigeons when I could be throwing molotovs at civilians or blasting players online? It's inevitably a question that any player will ask themselves when attempting such a task and I'm sure everyone has their own reasons, but mine is simple.

It isn't for any unlockable (there isn't any), nor the challenge (this one necessitated sheer perseverance more than skill) and certainly not for the 'status' it would bring (to date I've told about three people). I did it because the game designers wanted me to.

As I'm sure most of you do, I have an immense respect for game developers – they've crafted some of the finest scenes I've ever experienced and ultimately changed the person I am today. When I play a game, I know that the developers wanted me to play it. I know that someone placed every single pigeon so the player would search every corner of Liberty City to hunt them down. Others meticulously set up stunt jumps to make the player search for long stretches of road with ramps at the end, just so they can hurl themselves hundreds of feet into the air.

When a game shows atmosphere and character, I know the designers worked to create that and wanted you to feel it. When a plot twist makes you drop the controller and gawp at the screen, that's what the developer wanted you to do, and when a team works for years to create a living, breathing world you can be damn sure they wanted you to explore every inch of it.



Needless to say, simply adding collectibles to a game is not enough to make me devote my time to finding them; as Orcist pointed out, inane collectibles added purely to extend the games 'length' do nothing to encourage me to spend more time with it. I chose GTA IV as my first example simply because it seemed clear to me that the countless collectibles serve to encourage you to explore the city.

Of course, it doesn't have to be collectibles that drive me on to play a game and Morrowind is a fantastic example of this with almost every dungeon having a back-story of its own, often told through Mise en Scene, which is no small task when hundreds or items must be manually placed to create the desired effect. One particular cave I stumbled upon while playing was inhabited by necromancers, but on closer inspection it had previously been a den of smugglers; the clutter lying around and placement of the bodies betrayed a struggle for control – there were even signs of the necromancers attempting to remove all traces of the previous inhabitants – all left up to the player to discover. During my brief foray into modding Morrowind, it took me some 15 hours to give a single room the impression of being 'lived in'; I can only imagine the effort required to do the same for thousands of unique rooms, cities and dungeons. I still play Morrowind to this day, searching out secrets and finishing quests with the knowledge of how much effort was poured into creating them.

I'm the kind of person that can never bring himself to throw away a game (or book) unless it is completely without merit – and even then it pains me to throw away something that people spent so much time on. I even find it hard to throw away in-game books from Morrowind or Oblivion.



So what type of game will I play to death? A game that people loved as they worked on it, a game where collectibles were placed so you would find them, not just to extend the game – in short, a game that the developers cared about and wanted people to experience. Some examples include:

The Elder Scrolls series : The games have hundreds of unique books, characters and locales with an intricately crafted lore all laid open for you to explore as you wish.

Tamriel Rebuilt : For those unfamiliar, this is a series of titanic mods that aims to 'complete' the world of the Elder Scrolls games by adding to the original game worlds. Currently their Morrowind project has more cells than the original game!

GTA : I've got 100% on Vice City, San Andreas and IV so far, with hidden packages, oysters and pigeons leading me to every corner of the games respective worlds.

Final Fantasy : I'm not a stat maxing crazy, but the uber monsters that make the final bosses look like pansies were made to be beaten, and I intend to.

MGS4 : A fantastically detailed game with vastly different ways to approach the same situation and emblems that encourage you to experience every possible play-style is a no-brainer for me.

I won't spend time bad mouthing the games I don't think are worth investing extra time in, but I'm sure everyone can think of a few; the games that are churned out virtually unchanged year on year, the movie-tie-ins released concurrently with the movie regardless of their quality, the quick cash ins and so on. The games that aren't cared about by the developers aren't worth my time.

While everyone has different preferences as to what genres they are willing to play, almost everyone can tell when a game has been a labor of love – a friend of mine has no patience for the cut-scenes or sneaking of Metal Gear but is the first to admit that the games were made by people who clearly cared about what they were making.

I play games because I enjoy them and by extension, I am grateful to the developers for providing me with them, as far as I'm concerned the absolute least I can do is take the time to experience everything they worked so hard on.