Biting The Backlog! #1

Hello!

A few months ago I came to a sad realization: I will never play all the games that I have.

Chances are you already had that realization yourself when you saw your library on Steam, or your download list on PSN/Xbox, it’s quite a common issue for a lot of gamers, and it is often referred to as “Backlog” or “Pile of Shame”.

So what is new? Well, I decided I am fighting against my pile of shame until nothing remains, or at the very least, I’m gonna make it smaller and smaller as time goes by, and I decided to share how I’m going to do this. It’s mostly obvious and straightforward, but some things are easier said (or thought) than done, and since a lot of gamers “suffer” with this issue I thought it might be something people might be interested in.

Also, I wanted an excuse to practice my writing skills, english is not my native language, as you may have suspected by now, and this is an incentive for me to write. Critics are always welcome =)

First of all, how are backlogs born?

Easy answer for most cases: Steam Sales.

Of course it would be unfair to blame it all on Gabe Newell, the only ones to blame really are ourselves: why do we like so many different games and want to play them all? I was fine for a long time not interested at all in Metal Gear, but as years went by and I started to hear a lot of amazing stuff from passionate fans my interest grew and the next thing I know I bought the Legacy collection and my backlog became eight games longer.

But in the end it all comes down to Time. Usually what happens is that it comes a time in our lives when we have more money than time to play games, we get busy with other things such as… life.

For me college was one of the main reasons. For about five years I did not play many games, not because I was busy studying, but because I was hanging out with friends, going to classes or watching Lost. I did not play more than a handful of games every year back then (we’re talking 2006-2011, and most games were old friend’s favorites like Diablo 2, Heroes of Might and Magic IV or an MMO like Silkroad, WoW or Priston Tale). I did not care for gaming news or anything that was going on, so I missed a lot of great games.

I also did not have a console, only my PC, that I needed because I was studying Computer Science.

Then three things happened between 2011 and 2012 that changed my gaming habits a lot:

1. College was almost done, so I had more free time

2. I got a Job as a Flash Games programmer

3. I got a new PC and created a Steam account (and a PS3 soon after)

I remember exactly when my backlog started to grow, I had just created my steam account and bought a Humble Bundle with 8 games or so. And then came the Steam Sales, so many good games that I never played for cheap! Within one year I had more than 100 games on my library, and had played probably less than 20% of them.

Soon after that I also bought a PS3 and a bunch of games there, not to mention PS+.

So you can see how it piles up over a few years, specially if you like all kinds of games.

But enough about the problem, what about the solution? Well, as I said before, it’s pretty obvious, there is only one solution to the problem: Play more games than you buy. But how?

Stop buying so many games

Steam sales ( and more recently PSN sales as well) are very dangerous, you often end up buying a lot of games you’ll probably never play, just because they are cheap.

What happened after a few big sales is that I started seeing pretty good sales on games that I had already bought one year before, and still have had no time to play. More than one time I tried to buy a game only to find out I already had it from a previous sale. So I created a rule for myself: I will only buy a game if I want to play it immediately. Why? Because sales happen quite often, and it’s not like I will run out of things to play.

Last year’s Steam Summer Sale I had one goal: “to buy only the witcher 2” and no other game. So I waited until the very last day, and there it was 75% off, just waiting for me to buy it. When I clicked to buy it I saw I already had it in my library! Turns out I had bought it on the previous summer sale, one year before, and never played it.

Another thing that helped me create this mindset was PS+, more than once I bought a game that just sit on my backlog for a few months when it finally became free on PS+. Sure, I did help the developer, and I do care about that, but it really started to bug me that I was spending all this money and playing only a few games.

I’ll stop here because it’s getting long, on the next post I’ll go into the details of my method and how I’ve been keeping track of it!

Thank you for reading!

TL, DR: Only buy games if you want to play it right away, even if it’s a sale, you’ll be surprised how often they repeat if you pay enough attention. More next time!

Edit: changed the name from "Fighting the Backlog" to "Biting the Backlog", suggested by @kenori =)

These days instead of playing games I just buy and collect games, often because I want to support the developer in their endeavours.

That being said I still have plenty of games I have not played might never play even though I want to. This is not limited to games either, it extends to films, TV series and books as well.

My backlog is where dreams go to die.

@hassun oh man, my series/movies/books backlog has been getting bigger since I started devoting most of my time to games.
Reading all the Game of Thrones book has also contributed to the pile of book getting taller.

@grtkbrandon

This has been a problem for me too. I have over 200 games I haven't played yet.

As a method to combat this, I joined a group on gamespot where people would come together to play a specific game and discuss it every week until we all finished it (kind of like a book club). Needless to say, it started well, then it all backfired because...well..different people, different schedules, different taste in games.

I then decided that for every new game I buy I'm going to upload a video review of the game....which will force me to dedicate all my free time to completing the game. I haven't been 100% successful thus far, I can tell you that much. but I'm buying less games than I used to...so its kind of working. I'll try it a bit longer and see how it goes.

Mine's around 60. Its bolstered by Playstation Plus and the reviewing gigs so there's a total backlog and a backlog of titles I actually want to play. When I was a kid I just bought games, played them on easy and was done with them. I was a smart kid.

So many games I still have to finish.. Problem is I keep buying new releases :P

I don't mind having a backlog of about 10-20 games of varying kinds that was bought dirt cheap. I don't see a reason to play through them just to check them off the list. I'll come around to them sooner or later. They wont go anywhere (or will they?)

I just played through Mark of the Ninja and Alan Wake: American Nightmare for some reason. Don't know how many years I had those laying around. Fun times though.

But I can see the problem if the backlog grows bigger and bigger for every year.

@vindictivepotato A book club sort of thing sure is neat, but very hard to manage as you've said. Commiting to showing or doing something that is "public" sure helps, I've seen dome indie devs that do it to keep the projects moving forward, something like "I have to post a blog entry about something new I made every 3 days" or something. I've been doing something similar with my backlog in a social network dedicated to games, I'll probably talk about it on the next post. Good luck on your video reviews, it sounds like a lot of work, hope you work it out =)

@shindig Smart AND lucky kid. I only got a few games every year, do had to borrow from friends and play the same ones over and over again.

@bikerpanda If you manage to play all the new releases that's ok, or do you leave some unfinished and never manage to go back to them?

@christoffer Yeah, having a backlog is ok, almost impossible not to, the problem is a ever growing backlog. Both games you mentioned are also sitting on my backlog for a long time, but I have so many games that I want to play in the next months that I can't see getting to them in the near future >.<

I have a backlog of 100 + games with no hours recorded but most of them are games have I have played before and since gotten on steam, gog origin etc. All of the Hitmans, the Fear series all the old Thieves, and Deus Exs I own them but I haven't touched them since I bought them digitally.

That said I have some conventional backlog games:

Woody Two-Legs: Attack of the Zombie Pirates. I had it 4 years don't know what it is.

Rocketbirds: Hardboiled Chicken had it 2 years. An angry bird clone?

Joe Danger 2: The Movie / Papo & Yo. Gotten the same day probably with a bundle.

I've stopped looking at my Steam library but I've also slowed down on buying games. I rarely buy games are release, avoiding the Zeitgeist and hype trains. I avoid Steam sales now unless a game is on my wishlist and even then I think long and hard about it before buying any more.

Dude, you missed an opportunity, you should totally call this Biting the Backlog!

Steam is more or less a backlog-building-machine at this point.
One thing that helped me a lot actually is the website Backloggery. I try my best to add any game I have, update it as I beat things etc. Been lax with it for some time, so should do a sweep of updating.
What I did to really help with the backlog was to set a goal. My goal now is to keep my finished games to 75%, then never fall below that. Then try to reach 80% and stay there. That way I should eventually end up with a small backlog. Of course, I can still have that goal met while having a large number of games to finish...
Anyway, it is a good tool for these kinds of things. At the very least it is a good place to keep track of what you own. My profile on there if anyone want people on their friendslist. Don't really use that feature, but maybe that is an incentive to some, trying to beat more games than other people?

@t_wester: Actually, Rocketbirds is more of a poor man's Contra that has gun-toting chickens and jetpacks. It's not the best but considering I paid like $2 and they play the for it the game was alright.

On-topic: Ever since I got a PS3 shortly before it became a "last-gen" system, I've been buying several PS2 games and collections through PSN. The double-edged sword is that there are so many older JRPGs in my pile of shame that I can now play for less than $10 but I'm stuck trying to finish the second Raidou Kuzunoha game, only really finding time to play on the weekends. Don't know when I'll get around to the Wild ARMs games or my Front Mission 3 save or Persona 3 FES.

@dochaus: Aha thanks, I was judging it on the name alone. Now can I recategorise it as sidescrolling shooter and promptly forget about it again.

@dochaus: Man, I have fallen in the PS2 hole myself, and some PS1 as well. Right now I'm playing Bully and Persona 3, but I have a lot more like FF tactics, Wild Arms and Chrono Trigger >.<

@jaqen_hghar: I've been meaning to use Backloggery for a while now, but it seems like it would take a loooong time to catalog all my stuff.
Steam is so cheat that is really hard not to build a backlog, it's even cheaper here in Brazil because they are using local currency. But lately PS+ has been the main culprid of my backlog, thank god that at least half the games are small indie games that last 4 hours or less.

For Steam it reached a saturation point where I already had all the cheap games I was interested in. What's getting me now is Games with Gold because I can't say no to free.

@kenori Sorry, I don't get the reference/joke ^^'

There isnt one @totsboy I literally meant that I thought that would be an awesome name.

@kenori: haha silly me. It does sound better, I changed it! Thanks for the suggestion!
Also added an image that @rorie would probably appreciate.

OMG thats the cutest picture in the world!