Clearing the Backlog or: How I learned to Accept Frugality

Clearing the Backlog or: How I learned to Accept Frugality

The word backlog has become a harbinger of anxiety, regret, and shame among many gamers these days. It's so easy! So easy to buy games, to amass a collection of unplayed and unfinished games; it grows in length, until it's shadow is so big it blocks out all vision needed to actually pick a game to play. Instead, causing you (or at least me) to choosing to re-watch Rick and Morty, over finishing and shrinking the backlog. I say no more!

I need to make a stand against buying more games than I can play. Because I'm seriously broke, and my spending habits are terrible. A big factor for this is feeling the need to, simultaneously, never pass up a sale for a great game (or a good game, or a potentially good game, or a controversial game that I want to experience so I can feel ok about myself when I way in on it, on the internet) and not wanting to miss the hot new games being released-the past couple years have been pretty hot too.

So I'm making a vow to you duders. I'm not going to buy any new video games until I clear my backlog...with a few possible exceptions.

What we are dealing with:

I was going to start this section with penis jokes comparing the size of my backlog to the size of others. But, since I'm showing better judgment these days, I decided to go against my better judgment and leave said jokes out. Instead, I'll just start with this: My backlog is definitely not as big as others. I'm 99% a console gamer (1% on macbook). And console's just don't have as consistent and low sales as the PC does. Steam makes it so easy to amass a backlog in the hundreds with it's annual sales, publisher bundles, and insanely low mark downs.

Still, I feel like I have a pretty decent build up of games. But a manageable one.

I'm going to stop dancing around here and just list out my backlog-god the formatting and linking sounds so exhausting. Here's a complete list of my backlog, with the systems I own it on, and a brief thing that pops into my mind when I see the game's title. It's going from the games I am "currently" playing to games I did not finish, and ends with games I haven't touched yet.

• Fallout 4 (PS4)-this is the first Fallout game I've gotten into. I like it a lot, but it's so biiiiiiggggggg. Haven't touched it in about a month. It's going to be the main RPG I work on.
• Saints Row IV (PS4)-I like this game quite a bit. The traversal is so much fun-I don't get the complaint some of the guys had about not needing cars anymore. I spent a lot of my time with it so far doing side stuff. If I'm going to stick with it to the end I think I'll need to just focus on story.
• Uncharted 4 (PS4, duh)-I rented this game and had to return it when I got to the half way mark. I really need to get it again;it's the first Uncharted game I like (yup I'm one of them:a sane person).
• The Walking Dead (PS4)-If memory serves, I'm halfway througe episode 5. I'm going to try and complete 1 episode a week-cuz there are more to come.
• Geometry Wars 3: Dimensions (Vita)-I never played any of the others(XBLA was not something I was aware of when the first dropped). I've been enjoying this game at work and while watching GB stuff.
• Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (PS3)-Never played it when it first came out, but when the remastered got announced I decided to play this classic, without having to buy the new COD. I can see why it's revered, but at the same time I'm not really into. I'm going to plow through the rest some weekend.
• The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (PS4)-I really liked this game, but then MGS V came out and I fell off it hard. I tried to go back to searchng for Dandelion, but I couldn't remember controls or places. So now I plan on waiting long enough to forget most of it and go back to it as fresh I can. I'm also 3 books deep, so I may just wait until I'm done with the series. This will be my next big RPG after Fallout.
• Galak-Z: The Dimensional (PS4)-Man this game is cool.And really hard. I got 3 seasons in then got distracted. I'm going to have to restart it to get accustomed with the controls again.
• Super Meat Boy (PS4 & Vita)-downloaded when free. Really excited to be able to play it and hopefully finish it on vita.
• Wolfenstein: The New Order (PS4)-Started it and never finished it. I loved the feel of the combat, and am set on restarting and finishing it.
• The Last of Us (PS4)-I've never been much of a Naughty Dog fan (aside from Crash). This game was theturning point for me, despite getting stuck and giving up.
• Injustice: Gods Among Us (PS4)-I'm bad at fighting games. I want to learn but they are so complex to me. I'm going to go back to this and the few others you will see on here and give it a good try to learn more. Or just put that shit on easy and enjoy the spectacle.
• Axiom Verge (PS4 & Vita)-I got stuck. Like I do with almost every metroidvania. but now I have a vita and renewed enery to complete this.
• The Walking Dead: Season Two (PS4)-Despite my tiredness of zombies in our culture I bought this, on sale, due to the universal praise of the series
• The Wolf Among Us (PS4)-I told you I had more episodic stuff in here. Bought on a sale despite hearing mixed things.
• Tales from the Borderlands(PS$)-Another telltalegamethat was cheap as shit, at some point. I hear this is some of their best stuff. Man I hope their Batman game is good.
• Portal (Mac)-This is one of those games I'm slightly embarrassed to admit I never played. I'm bad at puzzle games but humor is a hard thing to find in video games, and apparently this has it in spades
• Portal 2 (Mac)-My feelings are the same for this, as it is for the first, but 2. I don't know if that means twice as much or half as much. I'll let you know once I beat them both.
• Gone Home (PS4)-This has been on my list of must plays for a while now. Then I got it free on PS+ and the urge to play it became more palpable.
• Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number (PS4 & Vita)-I loved the first game. So once I saw this on sale I had to jump on it. I hear there is a lot of shooting, which makes me want to just get it for Mac and use a mouse. But that would go against everything this list stands for, wouldn't it?
• Mortal Kombat X (PS4)-I've heard how great the reboot (or whatever you want to call it) of this series was, and this being on sale made it too good to pass up getting a piece of that. But ya, I'm bad at fighting games.
• Limbo (PS4 & Vita)-This was my first introduction to "indie" games, when a friend showed it to me.
• Fez (PS4 & Vita)-Bought this game because of 2 reasons:It was on sale and the Bombers really seemed to love it. I know my brain will hurt.
• The Evil Within (PS4)-I don't know why I bought this, other than it was black Friday and I felt like spending money?
• Broken Age (PS4 & Vita)-I wasn't planning on playing this, until I started watching the documentary behind it. Now I want to experience it first hand. Plus it was free through PS+
• Grim Fandango (PS4 & Vita)-Another Tim Schaffer joint that was free through +. I hear it's one of the greatest adventure games of all time. Hopefully it holds up.
• Wolfenstein: The Old Blood (PS4)-It was like $3. That's basically nothing-other than a perfect example of my problem.
• Modern Warfare 2 (PS3)-I hear this one is good too. The only COD campaign I've evrer completed was Advance War. So I figured I should see the series roots.
• Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 (PS3)-I guess I should see the roots of it the recycled, hate meme, it's now known as.
• Mass Effect Trilogy (PS3)-I bought all three together, so I'm listing them together. This series started at a time when I still hated RPG's due to my older brother hogging our Xbox to play KOTOR. It took me a while to not blindly hate anything with dialogue trees.
• Rayman Legends (PS4)-I like platformers and I don't have a Nintendo console right now. Also SALE.
• The Banner Saga (PS4)-I always wanted to try a turn based game. When this went on sale I struck at the opportunity.
• The Swapper (PS4 & Vita)-Another free + game that I've heard such great things about.
• Heavy Rain (PS3)-I've never played a David Cage game, but they look super interesting to me. So lets start at the one that put his name on the map.
• Furi (PS4)-The latest free + game. It's getting a lot of great buzz and I love the style of it.

Wow that took a while. But I feel like it's less daunting now that I wrote them all out.

But Wait, There's Stipulations

There are a few exceptions I want to add. You know, a few games that I might just needto buy. These are going to be my 3 exceptions:

• No Man's Sky-If this game lives up to the expectations that Ihave, then I'm going to pick it up and put my life on hold fora bit.
• Mortal Kombat-I may feel the need to play this before X, just because I'll be focusing on the story mode, and I'm a weirdo that likes to see things unfold in the fashion they were intended to be.
• Borderlands: The Handsome Collection-I may pick this up so me and a friend can play local co-op. We will see

The End of this Post, But the start of a Journey

The writing is done. The promises are made. All that's left is for me to not give in to my consumerist desires. Thanks for reading, or skimming. Like and subscribe for periodical updates on this and other musings-hopefully they will be better written in the future.

I've been trying hard to tackle my backlog, so good on you for actually doing it. I have so many JRPGs that I could probably stop buying games for a decade and still not be completely through my backlog.

As somebody who learnt a long time ago that I will never have enough time to finish everything until I retire, I've embraced my backlog for...oh, lets say, the next 50 years or so. The reality is that there are some games which are so far down on my list of priorities that if I tried to force myself, I probably just wouldn't enjoy them.

And then there's games like The Witcher that I honestly thought were just dogshit and I don't understand why anybody else liked. If you decided you simply don't like a game and don't want to finish it, is there a caveat to just walk away and say "'Nope' on grounds of opinion."?

@trulyalive:I wanted to try and tackle my backlog before it got too out of hand. I plan on building a PC sometime next year, so that won't help it.

And yes, I'm not going to force myself to play a game I don't like. But I want to give all these games an honest go, instead of just forgetting about them. I'm not a big adventure game fan, so I can see myself not finishing the Double Fine stuff. And like I said in the post, I suck at fighting games. So who knows how far I'll get in MK before I feel defeated.

I have a hard time turning down the difficulty of games when I get stuck (part of the reason I fell off The Last of Us); hopefully I can learn to remove my ego and enjoy a game by doing that, instead of just abandoning it.

@jimmysmiths:I feel somewhat the same way. Just having Witcher, Fallout, and the Mass Effect trilogy on here makes it feel impossible. I forgot to add to the exceptions Persona 4 Golden. I want to play it very badly, but I know how long it would take. The fact that it's on Vita which means I could play it at work, is pulling me towards picking it up.

All I can do is firefight. Or make arbritary rules about what I include in my backlog and just ignore as "Well, that was free so whatever..."

I also decided to was time to deal with backlog rather than new games this year. I wrote a spreadsheet up - I think quantifying the task in front of me, and structuring it, made it far easier to stick to and understand what I really want to play. I find its way easier to just watch GB and other shows instead of gaming without this focus. With too many unfinished games it's too hard to commit and enjoy a single one. I found without the structure it lead to me feeling rushed - Which lead to: Skipping dialogue, not caring about the lore or characters, not playing well... and not having fun - so, I jump to another game.

So far I have finished 11 games this year, which is a number I haven't matched since the PS1 days. I recommend everyone does it - It feels so good to put away a game that's been niggling you for years.

However... the Witcher 3 was both the best and worst decision to try and finish (with all DLC). 160 hours later, I felt like I enjoyed the game more than any other game I could remember. Blood and Wine is simply better in every way than the main game, and it even made the question marks fun (the biggest problem with the main game)... but it also took the time to finish as 10-15 other games. A great time, but bad for clearing the volume of backlog. It also satisfied me so much that I didn't feel like gaming for a week afterward, which is rare for me. So, know what your getting yourself in to when you add the Witcher 3 to your list.

I'm currently working through FF XIII from scratch, which has been an ape on my shoulders since I bought it on launch.

Good on you, Sloppy. All the best on your quest!

@yabbering_yeti: Witcher is going to be a tough one for me. I already put in a good 20 hours into it (last year) before I fell off. I don't want to pick up where I left off-I tried that once already. I'm thinking of playing it on easy for a while, just to blow through the story. This would also help me with one of my RPG pet peeves: using the best armor instead of the one I like. In easy mode I can make Geralt look like the badass in my mind-instead of forcing him to wear pantaloons (that I hate) just because they have higher defense. And if I get to a point where I feel like I want to ratchet up the difficulty I can. I also want to get the DLC for it, as I've heard both are excellent.

I'm a backlogger too, currently playing Styx: Master of Shadows.
Together we can chip away at every game ever made :P.

@shindig:Totally. I have games in my digital library that were free that I didn't include on this list because I don't want to play them enough to make the time.

@cikame:I'm in. Meet back here in 100 years to talk about how we are almost half way there.

@sloppydetectiveI'd take every game you have already played but didn't finish off that list.

if you get back to them that's great (if you are like me there's maybe only 10-20% chance you actually will pick those back up), but no reason to make your list larger than it needs to be and burden your psyche further. Plus you already got your money's worth out of a lot of those. Whether you finish them or not doesn't change that.

And then for actually attacking it, I recommend a few things

• Start with a short game first (Broken Age is a good candidate for this), so you get an early easy win to build momentum.
• Rotate game genres and lengths to help stave off burnout/disinterest. I.e. don't try to pipe down multiple 60 hr Open World games in a ow.
• And lastly only keep track of what you beat, not what you have left to do. Doesn't sound like much of a difference but psychologically it's easier to keep going that way and makes it feel like less of a chore.

Good luck man!

It was easier for me to set time during the calendar year and make that time a priority not to buy any games for myself to play, new or used. For example, I tried Jan-June this year, and I got to around the 20 something of May. So that worked for me. Good luck on your backlog!

Also, it helps if you have an accountability partner, someone who does the same thing as you. Can you find other here on GB doing the same thing? If so, make a group about it and stay connected.

Good luck! I seem to have a lot of overlap with you on backlog as well! This would probably be a good time for me to do the same...

I'd say do it, but I put a ludicrous amount of time into that game (4 playthroughs coming to around 300 hours total, despite having watched the Endurance Run countless times before that) and even now I keep getting the urge to replay it. It's (deservedly) a huge time sink (first playthrough was nearly 80 hours, and according to the trophy times I did it in little over five days. That game is something of an obsession for me; it's very rare that something'll hold my attention so easily).

I've come to the realization that I will never have enough time to play all the games I want to play. But! I am glad that they exist, and want them to continue to be made and be available for me to probably not play. So I've decided that if a game comes out I want to play, I have to ask myself how excited I am to play it. If I'm very excited, I buy it day one and play it. If I'm merely excited, I wait till it's on sale and hopefully play it. If I'm only interested, I wait till it's significantly on sale and perhaps one day find myself both with the time and motivation to play it. If I'm no more than glad someone made the game, I will wait till the game is deeply discounted so I can show my support for their efforts and most likely never play it. I love the industry too much. I need to pump money into it to show my support, even though, realistically, I probably only play about one tenth of the videogames I buy. But I love having the option... and The Hope... that some day I will play them.

I just recently finished, finally, the Witcher 3 vanilla content. All side quests. Look forward to playing the DLC from the Season Pass I purchased day one. 202 hours played. Epic! Can't wait for the rest. But, oh wait! Tomb Raider, Batman: Arkham Knight, Dragon Age: Inquisition, Halo 5, Assassin's Creed: Syndicate, Rise of the Tomb Raider, Doom, MGS 5, and countless indy titles sit untouched. It's kinda glorious. I'm really looking forward to playing those games. Though it may never happen!

It doesn't help that I have something like 400 hours clocked on Destiny. I just can't get what that game gives anywhere else!

And nearly 100 hours on Darkest Dungeon. I have a soft spot for Lovecraft.

I strongly suspect I may find myself lost in No Man's Sky for a while, only furthering my dilemma. But no regrets. All my money's going to an industry I love. And I like to think there's a parallel universe where a bizzaro me gets to play all the games I buy.

@sloppydetective: I would crack into the Witcher 3 since all of the downloadable content has been released.

As far as backlogs go, I usually just play something til I finish it or lose interest. In the end, I own the games so its up to me if I play them or not.

we're a bunch of spoiled fucks aren't we

Good luck man! I have a backlog list I'm starting to prioritize, but I am struggling to get myself to plow through it when amazing games like DOOM, XCOM 2, Dark Souls 3, and Uncharted 4 all come out this year (and we're only halfway through)!

I have 2 games completed out of about 200...so daunting :(

Man, there are some seriously good games there waiting to be played. And yes, Tales from the Borderlands is the best thing Telltale have put out.

As to myself, my own backlog has been seriously halted this year thanks to games like Overwatch, FF14 and Xenoblade Chronicls x.

I gave up tackling my entire backlog. I just simply don't have time, especially with a 9-5 job and a very active social life.

I essentially just try to tackle the games I have the strongest desire to play first, while writing off a lot of the other ones. I had a problem where I would buy games but never play them but I've essentially stopped that, limiting myself to only buying a couple of games per year now and waiting until they're extremely cheap.

But man good luck to you, there's a lot of great games on that list. Try playing what you want to play most first or what you're in the mood to play, just don't play any of them to the point where it feels like a chore.

I as well wanted to start doing this a while back, and it's surprising how much of a challenge it can be to play the games you own... which makes me feel a bit stupid, but anyhoo...

What help me was using sites like HowLongtoBeat to help organize my backlog into basically effort lists. So basically i broke my backlog into:

long games (rpgs, 30+ hour games)

medium games (story focused, so tomb raider or uncharted types, 10-20 hours)

short games (indies mostly, Transistor, Gone Home, etc. 5 hours or less)

Then from those lists I would basically pick one to be an active game to play, so as I cycled among them, I didn't get too burnt playing one game, and completed some smaller ones as I went.

Of course to complicate things, then I sort of organize into:

Games I meant to finish but stopped short (Bloodborne, which is hard to get back to)

Games I finished and want to Platinum (Shadow of Mordor)

Games I dont care about but want to give them a chance (PS Plus games, which I try to play for at least an hour or 2 before I cross them off)

Of course now I'm playing Witcher, and only playing an hour a night, so I'll be playing the Witcher for like the next year...

Persona 4 Golden is actually a way easier game to get through than you might think, at least once you get past the slow opening. The day-to-day structure means that you can spend fifteen minutes playing it and feel like you've made some kind of progress, even if it's just going through one more in-game day and raising a social link or something, or just making it to the next floor of a dungeon. That's part of how I got through Persona 3 and 4 while working and going to college, I didn't feel like I had to devote an hour plus to it to make any real progress.

Learning how to break down long games into easily digestible chunks has helped me finish pretty much every long game I've finished since.

As for myself, I'm going to get Deus Ex Mankind Divided later this month. No Man's Sky is still a maybe, which means I probably shouldn't, and I kinda want to play Abzu now that I've seen the Quick Look of it. Other than that, over the next three months I'm not going to play anything I don't already own. I'm not necessarily "going through the backlog", but there are some games I want to play more of that I haven't had the chance to play due to "distractions" (Pillars of Eternity, Divinity Original Sin) and I want to replay some things that I haven't played in a long time (Chrono Trigger, Mass Effect 3) and there are some classic games I own but haven't properly dived into (Chrono Cross, Baldur's Gate 2).

I've come up with a plan of sorts. I'm currently playing XCom: Enemy Unknown. As failure is canon, I'll stick with my choices and, once I wipe, I'll cross it off my list. Then I'm finally committing to the classic Resident Evils (1-3, then Zero).

I have played (and finished) most of the games on your list. That is a great list of games. You have excellent taste. I still have a backlog of 100 games or so I need to work through. I try to be disciplined, now, with finishing a game that I start if I like it so I can cross it off and move on. I bought Bioshock when it came out and only finished it for the first time about 2 months ago. I remember starting it on at least 3 different occasions and never made it more than a 3rd of the way through. I got busy or distracted by something else and then the next shiny thing came along to draw away my attention. I now use my huge backlog as a way (psychologically) to keep myself off the hype train of the latest new thing. And it is good because the best content is often found at or near the end of a game and when you have the controls really down unconsciously.

Your backlog seems pretty manageable man, I don't want to be that guy but I probably have like 600 games in mine that I honestly want to play; even though I know this is not very realistic.

I was sort of a poor kid growing up and since things started looking up I have, for the past 5 years, amassed a big collection between PC and consoles. Looks like I'm bragging right, but just getting it out there 'cause I always get a little anxious/happy when I look at my shelves nowadays...

Good luck with yours duder

Edit - I also started buying comic books now, so yeah I'm fucked.

Ah the first world problem of a video game backlog. Mine stands at 577 strong - an impossible number unless I turn into HAL 9000.

I wish you the best of luck. Have you checked out The Backloggery as a way of keeping track of your backlog?

I'm with you! No Mans Sky will be my last purchase for awhile. I intend to save some serious cash and whittle away at my personal backlog.

Stellaris

Starbound

Darkest Dungeon

FarCry 4

Witcher 3

Tomb Raider

Ratchet and Clank

Dishonered Remastered

Rebel Galaxy

Pillars of Eternity

Hmmmm this looks like an intriguing option. I generally use HowLongToBeat but this looks neat.