I've been thinking about this a bit more, and I guess my perspective is shaped by the fact that when I was young, I played and organized a lot of tournament chess, and that's one game that, past the beginner stage, is not often played to the end. If it was, there would be some painful games. In some other games resigning is almost a foreign concept. Take a couple of the most popular games on this site - you're not eliminated until the final move in Ludo, and Dice Poker and Backgammon aren't usually decided with THAT many moves remaining. Battleboats, Logik, and numerous others - basically no resigning. There are lots of other games like that. If one is used to games where resignation isn't standard, perhaps it doesn't occur to one to ever resign.

I had thought of taking away the "glory" of the victory, and that maybe some people don't like that. It's why I often don't bother in games like the different "line" games (Pente, Connect6, Line4, etc) - you usually don't know you've lost until you're a couple of moves away from losing (or you'd do something about it!), so I figure my opponent is more likely to want to go to the end than be done slightly sooner. 

Achievements are definitely something I didn't think of. I'll try to be mindful of possible achievements when considering resigning in the future. 

The kind of games I think could use a little more resignations would be ones like Mancala. It plays quickly enough so it's not a big deal, but there's no game where it's easier to see when you've lost. Thankfully I've never been stuck in a dragged out game of Frog Legs, which is already one of the most painfully long games as-is. :) The one that brought on the mini-rant was a game of Halma where I had moved all my pieces to the opponent's home, and they still had one piece left there and lots to move to my home. I had to move back and forth for several moves while they move their other pieces home, and then they finally moved that last which enabled me to win. Seemed kind of silly.

But really, even though I decided to share my little rant with everyone, it isn't that big of a deal to me. Just something to think about, and some of you gave me more to think about. :)

/rant