Are you even playing the game??
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00:00Trophies and achievements are about so much more than mere pats on the back.
00:03They also ultimately tell a story that says a lot about the modern gaming landscape.
00:08Now, trophy and achievement data is far from an exact science for a multitude of reasons,
00:13but it does nevertheless provide a pretty strong and often shocking indication of
00:17modern player trends, as this list will cement.
00:20As tough as it might be to believe some of these absolutely wild stats,
00:24the proof is very much in the dopamine-filled pudding.
00:27I'm Jess from WhatCulture and here are 10 Video Game Trophy Stats You Won't Believe.
00:3210. 58% Of Players Beat The Last Of Us Part 2
00:37It's worth pointing out from the outset that achievement data consistently indicates the
00:41vast majority of gamers don't actually complete that many of the games they buy.
00:45Look at the stats for just about any major AAA game and you'll find the number of players who
00:49beat the final boss and roll credits is staggeringly low. Even Insomniac's first
00:54Spider-Man game, which offered up a relatively short and not particularly
00:58difficult single-player campaign, has only seen 49.3% of players reach the end.
01:04And so, with that in mind, it's legitimately quite flabbergasting that The Last Of Us Part 2,
01:08an extremely polarizing sequel that's roughly 25 hours long and a brutal,
01:13miserable experience for the most part, rocks one of the highest completion rates
01:17of any AAA game this generation. At present, 58% of players have completed the story,
01:23placing it far above not only Spider-Man, but most other major first-party Sony titles,
01:29like 2018's God of War, Ghost of Tsushima, Horizon Zero Dawn, Days Gone,
01:34and plenty of other comparable AAA offerings.
01:37Even accepting that The Last Of Us Part 2 released during a particularly bleak period
01:42of the pandemic where players were encouraged to remain indoors and may have found a strange
01:46comfort in its like-minded narrative, that can't fully explain how such a disproportionate number
01:52of gamers did make it all the way to the end. Impressive isn't even the word.
01:569. 14% of players never beat God of War's opening fight
02:02On the total opposite end of the spectrum now, we have 2018's God of War quasi-reboot.
02:07Though a respectable 47% of players have reached the end of the game and popped the Last Wish
02:12trophy, what's more shocking is how many players haven't ever made it past the prologue.
02:17God of War opens with a thrilling onboarding section, where players are introduced to the
02:21game's combat and have an epic punch-up with a stranger, later revealed to be the
02:25god known as Baldur. Even accepting the prologue lasts around 40 minutes, it's simple and
02:30riveting enough that you'd expect most everyone to remain glued to the controller throughout.
02:35However, the trophy that pops for completing this encounter, The Journey Begins, hasn't
02:40been unlocked by 13.7% of those who started playing the game. A head-scratchingly high
02:45figure for a game that's both so brilliant right out the gate and has such a high overall
02:50completion percentage. It's of course important to remember that God of War has been available
02:55to try for free on PlayStation Plus for a long time now, lowering the barrier of entry
03:00enough that many with little to no interest in the game might have booted it up just to
03:04see what it was like, in turn inflating the trophy data. All the same, given that almost
03:09half of the players who started the game did reach the end credits, it seems unlikely that
03:13the PS Plus release is entirely to blame.
03:168. Almost 20% of Persona 5 Royal players got the Platinum
03:21Even if it shocks you how few players actually beat games in a bare-bones sense, nobody should
03:26be surprised how few dedicate the time and effort to scooping up Platinum trophies. When
03:31even games with relatively fun and easy Platinums like Until Dawn have only been mopped up by
03:362.7% of players, it's reasonable to assume that considerably beefier and more demanding
03:42Plats have been popped by a real fraction of this figure, right? Yet, believe it or
03:46not, Persona 5 Royal has been Platinumed by 20.2% of European players and 17.7% of North
03:54Americans, effectively almost 1 in 5 of people who started playing the game. It's an impressive
04:00figure given that the game takes well over 100 hours for most players to Platinum, seeming
04:05to suggest that the franchise's fans are an extremely die-hard bunch. More to the point,
04:09given that Royal is an enhanced version of the original Persona 5 release, the overwhelming
04:14majority of the people buying it were already all-in and may have beaten the base game already,
04:19so they knew exactly what they were getting themselves into. Even so, such a high Platinum
04:24rate for a game this huge and challenging is insane.
04:287. 16% of Minecraft players have never opened the inventory
04:34There are few actions more basic and bog-standard in any video game than opening your inventory,
04:39it doesn't require any skill and can usually be done with the mere press of a single button at
04:44any time. And yet, 15.9% of Minecraft players on the PS4 version have never done it, and the
04:50number goes up even higher to a laughable 17.2% on the PS3 release. Now, as ludicrous as these
04:57stats seem on paper, there is at least something approaching a logical explanation here.
05:02Given that many Minecraft players stick to the creative mode where a conventional inventory
05:07doesn't exist, and in turn never play survival mode where the trophy can be popped. All the
05:12same, such a large slice of Minecraft players never having tried survival mode for a few
05:17minutes and taking a quick peek at their inventory is really staggering.
05:216. Slytherin is the most popular house in Hogwarts Legacy
05:26And now for some trophy data that provides insight into the mind of the average person
05:31playing recent mega-hit Hogwarts Legacy, and the results are pretty damn surprising.
05:36Ask even the most casual Harry Potter fan which of Hogwarts' four houses is the most popular,
05:41and the overwhelming majority will tell you Gryffindor,
05:44given it's the house into which Harry himself was sorted.
05:47Yet the trophy and achievement data for Hogwarts Legacy tells a shockingly different story.
05:52The game awards an achievement early on depending on which house the player selects,
05:57and across both PlayStation and Xbox, Gryffindor is actually edged out by Slytherin.
06:02It's a genuinely unexpected statistic given that players generally opt for the more virtuous and
06:08good options in most video games, and so why would so many players opt to join the house
06:12most commonly associated with evil misdeeds? While it's fair to say that Slytherin gets an
06:17incredible amount of focus in the books and films compared to both Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw,
06:22seeing them triumph over Harry Potter's own house is genuinely shocking.
06:26Does the game's own sorting hat perhaps have an accidental bias towards Slytherin,
06:30or are players just a little bit more mischievous than we've given them credit for?
06:34As a millennial who inevitably knows that their own house is indeed Slytherin,
06:38I'm all for people ignoring the sorting hat and picking their own house.
06:42Number 5. 35% of Elden Ring players reached the final boss
06:47Even if you subscribe to the belief among FromSoftware fans that Elden Ring is the
06:51studio's easiest game to date, it still represents a biblical level of challenge to the average
06:57player. And so it's extremely impressive that a monumental 35.3% of players actually defeated
07:03the final boss and reached the climax of the game, whereupon each of its three major endings
07:09unlocks a separate trophy. More than one third of players getting right to the final boss of
07:14a FromSoftware game sounds ludicrous on paper compared to the similar completion stats afforded
07:19to decidedly less difficult video games. But much like the Persona 5 Royal Platinum Trophy,
07:25it's also worth remembering that FromSoftware has a really loyal and dedicated player base,
07:30who are very aware of the challenges their games present. As such, there are likely not
07:34too many players who bought the game without any awareness of its high difficulty level,
07:38placing a ceiling on the number of people who would quickly bounce off it. Basically,
07:43if you play a FromSoftware game these days, you're almost certainly all in for the long haul,
07:47whether you reach the end or not. Number 4. Over 50% of players have never got past
07:53Sonic's Green Hill Zone Now we come to what might actually be the most
07:57inexplicable piece of trophy data on this entire list. Trophies and achievements obviously didn't
08:02exist when Sonic the Hedgehog was first released in 1991, but when it received a digital release
08:08for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, that all changed. While it's not remotely unexpected that just 6.5%
08:15of players have nabbed the trophy for beating the game, given its punishingly old-school nature,
08:20at least compared to more forgiving modern platformers, it's absurd just how few players
08:25have even pushed past the first zone. Sonic kicks off with Green Hill Zone, the franchise's most
08:31iconic setting by far, and one which even the most casual and unskilled of Sonic players should
08:36basically be able to cruise through. And yet, among the 100,000-plus players tracked for the
08:41game on PlayStation platforms, only 44.4% of them have cleared Green Hill Zone. This is a zone which,
08:48to be clear, can be comfortably beaten by most players in around five minutes,
08:53yet hasn't been finished by half of the people who started playing it. Could it be that players
08:57en masse bought the game for the nostalgia-fuelled fun of it, but never got back to it after quickly
09:02testing out Green Hill Zone's first level? Truly, truly baffling.
09:063. Most FIFA Players Haven't Played A Single Women's Match
09:11There's no two ways about it, this one kinda stinks. The FIFA franchise finally introduced
09:16the ability to play as female football teams back in FIFA 16, and ever since has included
09:21a trophy for playing even a single women's football match. Sadly, the resulting data is
09:26pretty damn depressing, with just 20% of players playing even one women's match in FIFA 16,
09:32and that number has basically fallen further off a cliff with each new release. By FIFA 22,
09:37just 6% of players had popped the passion achievement for playing a women's international
09:42football match, and the recent EA Sports FC24 saw this figure drop to a catastrophic 0.8%.
09:49It doesn't help at all that EA's implementation of female football in the franchise remains
09:54relatively piecemeal compared to the male side, but at the same time, the fact that their inclusion
09:59has moved the needle so little with the playerbase is still pretty disappointing.
10:042. 12% Of Fallout 4 Players Have Never Left The Vault
10:08If you're sticking to the critical path, it'll take you about half an hour to get
10:12through Fallout 4's prologue, leave Vault 111 and head above ground into the wasteland.
10:17It's here where Fallout 4 really begins, as the game opens up and players are free to explore
10:23the irradiated post-apocalyptic expanse. And yet, a decent sliver of players are still holed up in
10:29that original vault, and seemingly not terribly eager to come out. At present, 11.9% of the game's
10:36750,000-plus tracked PS4 players, almost 90,000 people for those keeping score,
10:43haven't yet wandered out of the vault and dug into the meat of what Fallout 4 has to offer.
10:48And given that the game shipped 12 million units to retailers within its first 24 hours alone,
10:53the real-world number of vault-camping players across all platforms is going to be many orders
10:58of magnitude higher. On one hand, it's great that players found so much value in the game's glorified
11:03tutorial area, but that's also a huge swath of the playerbase that's barely dipped their toe
11:09into the wider experience. Number one, almost 40% of players never killed somebody else in Hunt
11:15Showdown. Trophies and achievements can give developers extremely useful, fascinating and
11:20perhaps perplexing data about how players are experiencing their games, and that's certainly
11:25true in the case of Hunt Showdown. The game is a PvPvE first-person shooter where players are
11:31tasked with taking down other players, and as such, one of the game's most basic trophies,
11:36Debut, is awarded for killing your first enemy hunter, that is, another human player. But almost
11:42four years since the game's PS4 release, and only 62.7% of players have popped the Debut trophy.
11:49That leaves 37.3% who've not killed a single human player during a game where that's the
11:55operating objective. This was even recently commented upon by the game's general manager,
12:00David Fifield, who noted the difficulty of creating a competitive experience that's also
12:05inclusive for newcomers. Reading between the lines, it seems clear that many new players
12:09quickly took their leave of Hunt Showdown after getting mowed down by fellow players a few rounds
12:14in a row. Fifield insists they're continuing to work on the issue, and hopefully the percentage
12:19of players without a single kill to their name will drop in the near future. Well, he's hoping.
12:24That's the end of our list, but let me know down in the comments if you know about any
12:28other interesting trophy stats. As always, I've been Jess from WhatCulture, thanks so much for
12:33hanging out with me. As always, you can find me on my Twitter account at JessMcDonald, or on my
12:38Twitch where I'm temperedtress, and make sure you stay tuned to us here for plenty more great gaming
12:43lists.