GRcade

So today is a momentous day for me. I have managed to get my backog down to 10 games and that's probably going to go down to 9 in the next few days as well.

Having monitored my backlog in an Excel spreadsheet for a while, using How Long to Beat's times as guide, I've also finally got my total play time down to sub-400 hours. I set out what to play each month to clear it and if all goes to plan, I'll only have three games left to play around April-time.

Admittedly these will be fairly substantial games - Fallout 4, FFXV and Dark Dungeon. And out of my backlog I've only got those last two completely unplayed. I've not got that much on my plate in terms of future purchases in the first half of the year, so I shouldn't get distracted.

So I'm wondering, for all the talk of our backlogs and masses of titles, has anyone ever managed this? If so, how? Did you have a big clear-out and get rid of games that way? Did you outright refuse to buy any new games until it was finished? Did you lesser your criteria for "finished" or just give up on titles you didn't want to play anymore?

However, I do have a confession.

If I do finish my backlog, it will be because of quite generous terms a to what my backlog "is". It's only my catalogue of games and systems here in Japan. If I go back to the UK, I'll have to either stick to "current gen" backlogged titles, or include games from the GBA, Xbox 360, GC, DS, Wii, Wii U, PS3 etc. I am quite tempted to sell a lot of them on as I'll be moving house, but if not, Backloggery has my total backlog at about 60 games.

But even that is small fry compared to some people and their Steam libraries.

So has anyone actually turned round the crashing tides of a mahoosive backlog?

A combination of getting rid of lots of games I don't want to play anymore/ever, hiding games in digital libraries (or in Steam's case outright removing them from my account). I've definitely stopped playing the vast majority of games so the list of things I have that I also want to play has shrunk greatly as part of that process.

are you having a laugh?

I bought 3 games while reading this.

Never, problem is these I only get about 8-10 hours a week where I can sit and play a game. With some games lasting 50 hours+ they can take me a month or more to beat. At the moment I’m going through lots of the indie games on my Switch and playing through them as they tend to be a tad shorter.

That being said, I’m trying not to think of these games as a backlog. It makes it feel like I need to clear out as many as I can and move on to the next one ASAP. This limits my enjoyment of a game, now I tend to just play and enjoy it at my own pace, much better that way.


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I couldn't even manage to clear my backlog in the days before we had free digital titles foisted on us every month.

Yes because I only get a new video game once I've finished with what I'm playing.

Yes because I'm not a child and play new video games when I want and I don't really care if I've finished with what I'm playing.

I don't have a backlog

From buying my first games in the mid-80s through until now, I have had a backlog. I don't often complete 'em due to a combination of (a) finding most games to be too difficult and (b) not putting enough time into them.

Long since accepted this, though, and I try to regard my collection as a library rather than a burden.

Depends how far back in time I go. Wii U, 3DS and Switch I’m doing really well on. The only two games I have yet to complete are The Witcher 3, Pokémon Sword and a the King of Cards expansion for Shovel Knight (gave up on Plague Knight’s campaign). Sold a lot of the stuff I was never going to get around to finishing on the Wii, if you class each title as their own on Rare Replay I’ve still got a lot of it to play, only played Banjo Kazooie/Tooie and Conker’s Bad Fur Day with a little bit of Perfect Dark thrown in.

PS4 and Xbox are mainly used for racing games which are much harder to gauge if they’re in a backlog or not, tend to play them till I get bored of them before moving onto a newer title.

I’ve tried really hard to not have much of a backlog over the past few years though, trying make sure I see the end credits before the next game comes out I’m desperate to play. I always seem to have one title that I need to go back to which is technically a backlog but I don’t see it as one?

Impossible.

Well over half of the games in my Steam catalogue (which is a few hundred games I think) are entirely untouched, likewise with the Epic Game store where I've grabbed pretty much every free game since they started - all but 2 of those are unplayed. Twitch Prime gives me about 4 games every month - I've played 4 of these and only completed one, leaving a good 100 odd games that have not been played. I picked up Game Pass for PC back in October as well which is another batch of games which technically could be included in my backlog.

On console even just from this generation I've got about 10 games on my Switch that are unfinished and of the 6 months of PS+ games that I've collected since getting my PS4 last summer I've finished 1 of them! Going back further there are games from every generation from the 8-bit times that I could include in my backlog as well.

I could quit my job and spend all of my time playing games and would still struggle to make a dent in my ever growing backlog!

I will never complete every game I own and life is much better that way

This best describes my backlog,

Getting my backlog down to four figures would be a start. And that’s not going to happen.

EDIT: And I don’t care.

Never going to happen.

I have games from 15 years ago I still haven't played.

I've just deleted about 200 games from my steam account and, apart from a couple, can't remember what any of them were. Feels good, man.

Now I have Game Pass, I've basically got a permanent backlog.

No, but I don't concern myself with it. I just play whatever takes my fancy.

Not yet, still beavering away at my ps3 backlog & I aim to have it done late this year / early next year.

Determined to get it done

rinks wrote:Getting my backlog down to four figures would be a start. And that’s not going to happen.

EDIT: And I don’t care.

I...four figures?