In fact, the attrition (or bounce rate) of video games is pretty pathetic. "What I've been told as a blanket expectation is that 90% of players who start your game will never see the end of it unless they watch a clip on YouTube," says Keith Fuller, a longtime production contractor for Activision

That's a lot of unfinished games.

And it doesn't get much better when isolated to just avid gamers. "Just 10 years ago, I recall some standard that only 20% of gamers ever finish a game," says John Lee, VP of marketing at Raptr and former executive at Capcom, THQ and Sega.

And it's not just dull games that go unfinished. Critically acclaimed ones do, too. Take last year's "Red Dead Redemption." You might think Rockstar's gritty Western would be played more than others, given the praise it enjoyed, but you'd be wrong.

Only 10% of avid gamers completed the final mission, according to Raptr, which tracks more than 23 million gaming sessions.

Let that sink in for a minute: Of every 10 people who started playing the consensus "Game of the Year," only one of them finished it.

How is that? Shouldn't such a high-rated game keep people engaged? Or have player attention spans reached a breaking point?

Who's to blame: The developer or the player? Or maybe it's our culture? The correct answer is, in fact, all of the above