When did a BackLog become a thing?

I've noticed over the years that I'm actually playing less and less of the games that came out that actual year, are more games coming out? Am I getting old? I don't remember any other time where my backlog of all media is multiple years back. Tell me about when a backlog became a thing for you.

Every time Steam has a sale my backlog gets bigger.

When steam started putting everything on sale for less that $10 all the time I presume.

This year will (hopefully) be Year of Clearing the Backlog for me. I keep buying new stuff and I can't rationalize it. Right now slowly going through ori and the blind forest but I will finish it dammit!

When I got a job and earned more disposable income. When I became older and games media became more accessible.

When it became quicker and easier to buy games than it is to play them.

When I got extra depressed and stopped playing my games, but still managed to be interested in new releases and the idea of playing them.

I totally played Rise of the Tomb Raider on each of the last three days, though. So maybe I'm turning this annoying "CBF" funk around.

I started to have a backlog when I went to college and got a part-time job. Less time plus more money equals more games but less opportunity to play them.

Way way back:

• Only ever learning about new games from a magazine when I was with my parents at the supermarket.
• Renting games from the video store on the weekends when my parents would rent a movie.
• Sometimes getting a game for Christmas or my birthday.

Way back:

• Knowing about all the new games, but not having any money to buy them myself.
• Renting games from the video store I could walk to.
• Probably get a game for Christmas or my birthday.

Now:

• Knowing about all the new games and having the money to buy them.
• Buy any game I'm interested in, especially if it's on sale, then download it immediately.

Something like that?

I remember when I first made my Steam account, I was really reluctant to use it. I basically registered it just to redeem whatever retail product keys would also work as Steam keys. I didn't buy anything for like 3 years.

For me having a backlog has always been a thing, at least going back to the mid 90's. It's certainly gotten worse since then, as I've gone from having a dozen unplayed games from previous years to having a thousand though.

Yeah, I got my Steam account in 2005 and I think I bought my first game on the Steam store in 2009.

When I spent $600 on 70 games when I switched to PC gaming last year.

For me it was when I starting working and then it got worse when I started going to college. Its a lack of time thing for me and also there are more and more games I wanna play coming out every year as well.

Well for me it actually first started becoming a problem when Electronics Boutiques/Gamestop started clearing out their PS1 and PS2 inventories. You could get a ton of discs for super cheap and still can around generation shifts (e.g. I just picked up infamous 2 for 4 dollars) and there was no worry about dead batteries etc that used to be a real concern for used games during the cartridge era.

Thanks to Steam and especially humble bundle it has gotten significantly worse for the same reason (low cost) and unlike physical you can't solve the problem by selling games you realize you'll never actually touch.

1. I have more money to buy games as my career advances.
2. Games are cheaper than ever.
3. I have less time to play games, which is a side effect of #1.

Mo money, mo time. Though I do wonder if I would've managed to just play tons of different games instead, had I not began to play WoW.

The first time I heard of the backlog concept was early on in the 1up radio days. Back in 2006 either EGM live or 1up Yours(I think it might have been Mark MacDonald specifically) had a feature called "pile of shame" that showed up once or twice. Since then I have seen this weave its way through gamer culture and its now more relevant than ever.

Everyone grew up into adults. And is now looking back at their childhoods going "Wait..didn't I use to have time to play all the games I had access too? What happen? Why don't I have that same time anymore!"

The answer, obviously being, A-your an adult, and have adult things to do (like Job, Kids, etc) and B-you have more money, and now do not have anyone who will ration out your allowed game library budget. If you wanna own 100 games you will never have time to play, you can! (maybe a terrible idea depending on who you are, but whatever).

Thus the 'backlog'. An idea that says "I used to be able to do a thing, I can't!" very much a 'your just getting older".

And if you happen to be a kid atm. It is likely that if you consider yourself to have such a thing, it is because you have adopted the general concept from the large gaming culture, given that the average age of said culture is only ever increasing.

That doesn't account for everyone. Obviously that is a general answer and your own specific situation might be different. But, that's what I see as the general explanation for why the term has come into widespread use.

As the above,

Getting older means I have more money for hobbies so can buy more games but, because I'm working, I have less time to play them. So backlog as a result of age.

Also games are now far more easily available (Steam lists 7368 games right now, who knows how many hours to beat on average but your life isn't all that long and new games get added every day - just like a library, there's already more for you than you can possibly get through) and can be had for far less (due to games being easier to make fast/cheap while not being just completely busted trash, unlike 20 years ago when making a bad game was still really hard and took a lot of hours; also more people play games so it spreads the dev cost; oh, and digital distribution means less costs getting that game to your machine). So this era of cheap games everywhere makes the backlog even worse. Even for the youngsters.

Never had a backlog, doesn't seem like a good way to live.

@bladededge: It was honestly more about the backlog concept. I was just thinking about the days when i actually beat games I bought lol figured I'd talk to the duders here to get more timelines for people and get interesting stories. I recently started playing Galax-z and got kind of sad thinking that 1. this was the first time I've started it up even though I'd owned it for months and 2. I would only be able to play it for about 20 minutes and the next time would probably be this weekend.

I never really had a backlog but I always go back to my favorites every year even if I beaten them more times then I can count. I always can replay when there's nothing else to play.

I first noticed a backlog when I bought a copy of Banjo Tooie around release and never got around to playing it at all. I was about 25 years old. Greatest Hits versions of games started hitting around then too and I remember picking up a few PS1 titles that had caught my eye and they joined Tooie in the backlog. I had a more than full time job around then but I could play games at work at bit too. I want to say Diablo 2 came in and knocked out a HUGE swath of playing time over the next few years followed up by games like City of Heroes and WoW doing the same. My backlog definitely goes into remission when I can step away from a game like Destiny and resume more normal playing stints.

For me it's really a matter of having enough money but not enough time to play games. Pair that with the frequent sales and the amount of releases we have these days and my backlog is about 50% of all games I own on steam. That being said, though, there are quite a few games in my Steam list that I will never play or have only played once and will never play again.

Another factor with me is that I used to buy games as soon as they came out because I wanted to participate in the discussion. But when you buy several games in one month and only really have time to play one of them it quickly adds up. So now I try to pace myself a little and not buy a new game until I've finished one first. But that... hasn't been such a great success so far.

When I was younger, there were less games coming out and they were more costly. So I got a few games a year. As I've gotten older and have my own money, combined with the ability to download games via internet and steam sales or services like Playstation Plus games just keep coming.

It became a thing when I started to try out games based on recommendations by other people, websites, critics and so on. Then, there was the 'experimentation' phase, where you try out games from a different genre, just to see if it's for you. Then, there was the money surge you get when getting older, being able to afford pretty much every game you want. Coupled with less time to play, a backlog was born. It's true that there are more games than ever, but I think a backlog still comes from what I described.

Happened for me at about the point I got a full time job. Sometimes I'm just too exhausted to really get into a game for a long stretch, making it take longer to finish what's on my plate and forcing me to put some games off. Not only that, but by working a full time job, I have more disposable income that I can blow on games, so I'm buying more with less time to actually play. The next three months is going to be rough between Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen, Resident Evil 0 Remaster, Rise of the Tomb Raider, and XCOM 2, not to mention the fact that I still have Just Cause 3 to get through, while having been seriously sidetracked by Splatoon (which I only recently got.)

edit: Not to have this come off like it's a particularly negative thing, because it's definitely a positive that I have plenty to do when I'm bored or have the time.

When I got a job, I had an income that allowed me to get games that interested me regularly, but I also got a lot less time to complete them. I also became less tolerant to staying up until late, so that means even less time...

Yeah, everyone else here has already said it - cheaper games, platforms that make it easier to build a huge library and constantly see them, more disposable income as people get older, less time to play games as people get older, less "bad" games to ignore.

I still struggle with the idea that I can't play every game I want to. I have no issues thinking about not being able to listen to every album released, because I can find the time to listen to the ones I hear about and want to listen to. I have no issues about books I can't read, because I just don't enjoy reading as much as I wish I did... I don't care about not seeing every film I may like - even though there was a time when that did bother me, when I was studying film in college. Games, though, are still something I hate to let go of. I want to experience all of the ones in my backlog, but I know there is no way I can...unless I got enough money to quit my job... Which isn't going to happen. :/ ;)

When you were young you had one game you could buy a month sometimes even longer, you saved for that game you really wanted to play. The moment you get a job and have money to spare the impulse purchases manifest and you buy more games then you can handle.

At the moment i'm putting off new graphics intensive games until i get a new computer, so my list of new games to play is slowly getting larger, but it's not as large as the list of older games i want to play which will still run fine on this PC. I like a variety of games new and old so different genres don't really stop me from obtaining games, i'm in the middle of playing through all the original Tomb Raider games for instance, i'm in between 2 and 3 taking a break by playing Kerbal, Brothers, Dragons Dogma again when that comes out on PC this week, just messed with Squad a little, downloading Yakuza 5, doing a chapter in Fire Emblem: Awakening when convenient.
My Backlog is never ending and new games are being pushed away more than ever before, i keep a list of games i play each year, in 2015 i played 64 games, 9 of them came out in 2015.

A backlog became a thing for me when I became an adult and could afford tons of video games. The problem with buying a ton of games is you have to actually quit sometimes to play them. I'm cutting back big time this year until I finish up at least 80% of these PS4 games I have.

My backlog became a thing when I got rid of my 360. I used to buy MAYBE a game a month. I would play that game until it was finished and then maybe get a new one. So, I really never had any unplayed games on my shelf. Now that I'm 100% PC, and with steam sales/bundles, I quickly collected a ton of games I didn't have time to play.

Now, my focus is to play the backlog first before buying any new games (unless the hype gets to me and I really need to play MGS5). New games can wait, I'll play the games that I know are good and I never had time to play first.

I've technically had a backlog since I was a kid since I have games on the NES that I never beat. My backlog exploded in size though when I switched from a laptop to an actual desktop PC. I could finally play a bunch of games I had bought on Steam (Steam sales + the explosion of indie bundles) but my laptop wasn't able to run them. However, I still only played League of Legends (Going on 2 years uninstalled now) so the backlog was basically left untouched for those LoL years.

I feel like I've been doing a much better job lately though of focusing on one game at a time.

I think everyone has already summed it up. I don't consider a backlog a bad thing necessarily as some do. I feel like when my son is napping on a weekend I can sit down at my computer and if I'm unsure on what to play I can dive into any random game in my backlog that I feel like playing at that moment and get sucked in! I'm currently playing Xenoblade Chronicles X but when I didn't have the TV as someone else was using it I recently dove into Dark Souls:Prepare to Die edition and am absolutely hooked! As long as you're spending money you actually can spend on recreational things like video games I don't see an issue!

There were a lot of good games released in 2015, which just made most people's backlogs worse. Also, I think GOG hit some critical mass where they had enough interesting that I could spend several months going through their sale catalog.

I'd like to pick up and play The Witcher 3 after all those awards, like I've been telling myself for months but I'm not losing any sleep over not having time or feel for it. I'd like to do the final dungeon in Sorcery Saga and finish it, learn the story, but I don't feel like it and not a curry given. I'd like to play Yakuza 5 since it's finally out in English but I feel more interested in other games. I'd like to get started in Dragons Dogma Dark Arisen but I'd rather begin with spring cleaning early on. I haven't finished the 2008 Valkyria Chronicles but I'm on the last batch of missions, some day I guess!

I don't have a backlog. I don't have an increasingly pressing sense of anxiety slowly turning into a mental disorder about games going unfinished or unplayed.

What I have is a batch of old games to pick up and play when I decide the time is right, and so do you.

@hiono: It's the conundrum of every gamer as they get older. When you're young you have more time than money, when you're older you have more money than time.

Looking at your backlog is the gaming equivalent of the post-Christmas diet.