How do you organize your digital games?

While looking through my 200+ list of games in Steam I realized that no matter what I try to come up with I can never seem to find a way to keep them organized in a system that makes sense for me. I have the few games I'm always playing, like TF2, in my favorites so they are always at the top and easy to get to, but then that leaves a good 99% of the rest of the games just in alphabetical order. The only grouping I can come up with is to put all those little games I hate and have no idea why I bought, bought them only to find out they run like crap, or are just all around terrible games in a little special trash folder that I keep hidden away.

So how do you keep your digital games organized?

Which ones I need to beat, and which ones I have already beaten. (I'd do "installed vs. not installed", but I can't run all the games I need to beat.)

I group the games I don't like (indie bundles, etc.) in one category and the rest into their own categories by genre and GFWL games go into their own category, cause, achievements. Also, I only show the installed games and uninstall the games I don't play/like so that I don't even have to see the tab for the category they are in.

I dont know which way to arrange them in.

Games I'm playing at the moment are favorited. Games I want to play are in a category called !Backlog (the exclamation point is to put it before everything else). Everything else is alphabetically categorized. This is for Steam. On Origin I favorite the games I'm playing at the moment, which is BF3; the only other game I have on there is BF2142. And if I'm playing any other games at the moment that aren't on Steam/Origin, like, say, WoW, there's a link to the game pinned to the Windows 7 start menu.

Alphabetically. Why mess with what works.

@Ubersmake:I think I'm going to adopt a similar system to that one myself. Keep the ones I want to play at some point in a backlog at the top, keep the favourites for currently playing, and the rest just keep where they are unless it's a truly atrocious POS which gets it's own trash folder section.

Alphabetical, I guess.

I organize my digital games by not buying too many that I would ever have to consider some kind of organization system.

By series or developer.

@Video_Game_King said:

Which ones I need to beat, and which ones I have already beaten. (I'd do "installed vs. not installed", but I can't run all the games I need to beat.)

This is basically my way of cataloguing my digital games: I keep the games I plan on finishing installed and the leave the games I can't play or have finished un-installed.

Alphabetical is totally fine for me.

My steam list has over 200 games so i have them organized by the kind of game they are.

• Not Started: Games I haven't touched yet, or games that I have tested on my hardware, but nothing beyond that. Ex: The Witcher 2, Alpha Protocol, Breath of Death VII, Eets.
• Playing: What I'm actively playing at the moment. I usually keep this category with two or three games at most. Ex: Saints Row: The Third,The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Nelson Tethers: Puzzle Agent 2.
• Unfinished: Games that I have started, but haven't finished and I'm not playing at the moment. For example, if I know a DLC is coming, but I have already beaten the game, or games I'm too lazy to finish all the Achievements they have. Ex: Beat Hazard, Civilization V, Mount & Blade: Warband.
• Beaten: Games I have beaten, gotten all of the Achievements, %100ed them or all of the previous conditions. In other words, games I'm done with and won't be playing anymore any time soon. Ex: Darksiders, Borderlands GOTY, Eversion, Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light.
• Multiplayer: Games that, due to their multiplayer nature, can't be classified according to their completion status. Ex: Team Fortress 2, Dino D-Day, Global Agenda.

This works for me and helps me keep an organized (though obscenely huge) backlog.

Alphabetically.

I organize by genre. Favorites, Indie, and Strategy, are by far my largest groups.

@Atramentous said:

I organize my digital games by not buying too many that I would ever have to consider some kind of organization system.

but it was 2 dollars!! Yea, I am weak.

@Ubersmake said:

Games I'm playing at the moment are favorited. Games I want to play are in a category called !Backlog (the exclamation point is to put it before everything else). Everything else is alphabetically categorized. This is for Steam. On Origin I favorite the games I'm playing at the moment, which is BF3; the only other game I have on there is BF2142. And if I'm playing any other games at the moment that aren't on Steam/Origin, like, say, WoW, there's a link to the game pinned to the Windows 7 start menu.

You could always launch your non-Steam/Origin games from Steam, then you also get the Steam overlay in most if that matters to you. I launch the Sims and WoW when I'm playing them out of Steam, although if you had a lot of non-Steam games that might be a problem.

On my PS3 I have folders for Worth Playing, Unplayed, Minis, PSOne and Garbage. Those last 4 sure do fill up with a PS+ subscription. I have 58 titles in all.

I have about 550 games on Steam, and I've played about 40 of them. Alphabetical works fine.

• New games that came out after 2005 go in one category
• Old games that came out before 2005 go in one category
• Small games that would be XBLA games on Xbox or indie games go in one category
• FTP games and demos go in one category
• Favorites.

Alphabetical, with the games I'm playing a lot or want quick access to in Favourites.

On Steam I filtered by "installed"

@BionicRadd said:

@Atramentous said:

I organize my digital games by not buying too many that I would ever have to consider some kind of organization system.

but it was 2 dollars!! Yea, I am weak.

Preach on brother. Weakness has resulted in pure Valve bucks. Hell, Steam is recognized nowadays as basically THE PC console for games. I don't stand a chance.

you can sort games on steam?

maybe I should start doing that :D

I'd either do it by file size or by metacritic score :D

I got 559 titles on Steam so I organize by genre while favoriting the games I'm currently playing. I sometimes split a genre between indie and non-indie distinctions.

ive got them organized in a couple general categories

- FPS

- RPG

- Puzzle

- Action/adventure

- strategy

it also helps to put the icons in front of the names

I sort them by my preferred control option for the games in question, or by the control options a game has available, keyboard only, mouse, gamepad, and a ? for games I haven't played so don't know, plus one category for the big games I have that I most want to finish.

-Action Adventure

-Adventure

-FPS

-Indie

-Multiplayer (FPS/RPG games that are more multiplayer oriented go here instead of in the FPS section)

-Racing

-RPG

-Strategy

That's how I organize mines

I've got a few hundred on Steam, so I have categories:

Action - (FPS such as CoD, 3rd person e.g. Dead Space)

Adventure - (Anything like the Telltale games to Penumbra series)

Arcade & Indie - (Audosurf, Bit Trip Beat)

Driving - (Burnout, Trackmania, but also my Flight Sims)

iD - (anything they've done, the iD pack is a lot of games to scroll through)

Strategy - (Tropico 3, SupCom 2)

Valve - (again too much bother scrolling though their list)

Games - (anything I've just bought and haven't had a proper go at yet)

thanks guys, I just stole a bunch of your ideas ... I had no idea what "set category" meant before today :D

alphabetical order. it's just something that i keep my games in.

@AlisterCat said:

Alphabetical is totally fine for me.

Installing only a handful of games and showing only those works for me.

I sort by genre with games I'm playing at the moment in the favourites and games I'm done with in their own category, 'Finished'.

I think the best way to do it for me is I have it sorta alphabetical by games that are installed because they have games on there that are not really games and I don't like it clogging my list. An example of that is "Lost coast" that isn't really a game so I don't bother having it on my list. I'm not that lazy that if I played TF2 everyday that I couldn't scroll down to the "T" section in seconds.