Topic: How do you deal with your gaming backlog?

I've come to the point in my life where I have such a huge backlog of games that I can't justify buying anymore. I've got a 3DS, Vita, 360, Wii U (also acts as my Wii) & a PS4. With the games that I've bought and PS Plus giving me a bunch of game every month I can't see the point in getting the Switch (but boy do I want one).

To be fair I'm not helping myself when all I'm doing at the moment is looking for those smegging Korok seeds in Breath of the WIld.

So my question to you fine people is, how do you deal with your backlog?

I just stopped buying new consoles and new games. I still have to finish a lot of WiiU games

@taffy
Well...
I will play and finish some important games first.
Sometimes, i'm not in the mood to play any games.
But i still give equal treatments for my games.

For me...

• Write down the whole list
• Take out games I'm not interested in playing (especially if I got the games for free ones)
• Then just line them up from the games I want to play the most to not.
• Focus playing one or two games maximum.

Do you guys try to 100% the games you're going through?

@taffy i don't. If you have massive backlog better focus on finishing the story only i think xD

1. Play games
2. Finish games
3. Repeat

@taffy Justifying buying another game is easy:

Do I want the game?
Can I afford the game?

Done.

So far as I know there's no 11th Commandment that says "Thou shalt finish a game before buying or playing another one".

Cut yourself a little slack - your life; your rules.

I have hundreds of games in my backlog, and only finish (never 100%) about 5 a year, but that doesn't stop me increasing the size of it. What is there to feel guilty about?

I've come to the point in my life where I've become so much picky with games that I hardly find anything new that is interesting for me and I don't even know how having a backlog feels. I mostly replay over and over again gameplay loops (things like grinding) or enjoy random free roaming in games I like or replay old games that I like.
Now from may there will be many new titles and Wii U ports that I never really played a lot but I'm intewrested in them and want to play them and it is an incredible amount of... years (YEARS!!) I would say... since the last time I had so many new games to play so something will probably change in a few weeks but I don't think it will change so much to make me experience backlog anyway. I'll probably just spend a bit less time in Falkreath and I will be able to complete all those new games sooner or later

I'm not much a replay guy, so I finish them then move on to the next one. I actually like having the feeling that I'm never gonna run out of great games to play. I don't think about finishing the games as some sort of obligation, I just take my time and have fun.

Anyone daring to start and/or finish reading this, better have a sit down, because it's quite a bit of text, so don't say I didn't warn you people beforehand...

Between work and private life, I find that at my age, I don't really have that much gaming time left, where I somehow managed that much better in my twenties, or priorities were more likely a bit different, so during the N64 era, I could easily manage to finish the 2-3 games I bought every month or two.

But ever since that generation of consoles ended, I have amassed a HUGE backlog, ever since the end period of the GameCube, at which time I also bought a Dreamcast, and then things got from bad to worse: I never finished most of my Dreamcast games, only half of my GameCube games, and then came the HD era, and I bought myself an Xbox 360, along with a Wii.

On latest count, I have about 200 Xbox 360 games, and around 60 original Xbox games (never bought that console, because I didn't like it) that were still considered worth having/playing, and which are of course compatible to run on the Xbox 360. Never finished most of those games of either Xbox, simply because I got kind of settled in doing a lot of online multiplayer with my friends, both in shooters and racers, so other game types kind of fell by the wayside.

And after I soft-modded my Wii, also in an attempt to renew my interest in and focus on my GameCube collection (about 160 games, which I all installed on my soft-modded Wii's hard drive) I also got more interested in retro gaming, also because I never got any of the 8 or 16 bit consoles, because I was into home computing back then (first an MSX, then several models of the Amiga), and that retro gaming interest prompted me to install all of the emulators that worked on the Wii, and which I was interested in, resulting in the following list: Atari 2600, Colecovision, Turbografx16, MSX, Amiga, NES, SNES, Megadrive/Genesis, Game Boy/Game Boy Color, GBA, Neo Geo, PSX, N64 and of course the aforementioned GameCube. (and obviously my Wii games as well)

Besides that, also conversions of the original Doom, Quake 1 and 2 (which look absolutely gorgeous on the Wii, by the way), and as a final interesting addition (for people that are into side scrolling beat em ups) the so called BoR Engine, the game engine based upon Beats of Rage from the Sega Genesis, and a whole list of games to go with that as well.

To be honest, most of my interest in the whole modding and emulation stuff to me is getting it to work and tweaking it until it's working perfectly, or at least as close to perfect as possible, and over the years, I've managed to achieve that. But after that, and after having play-tested a heck of a lot of games in those emulators, my interest in actually playing more of them, slowly faded, and I moved on to buying newer games again, and increasing the size of my backlog.

I had a small change in my usual behavior when I finally got my Wii U almost 1,5 years ago, also because I only have a generous handful of games to go with that, so far (14 retail games, and 6 digital games), and most of those I've finished already. But then came the Xbox One S, as of last Christmas, and thanks to the Games with Gold program, I've already been collecting free games for both the Xbox 360 and the Xbox One for multiple years, so as soon as the One was installed and online, I had added yet another largely untouched collection of games to my already immense backlog.

I'll skip the handheld story, because besides the fact that I don't have too many original games for those (GBC, GBA, GBA SP, DS, DS Lite, DSi XL and a 3DS XL), it's more or less the same story as the Wii where it concerns the GBC and the non-3D DS models, because I have smart cards for those, so again a LOT of games, and also emulators again...

But I still continue to buy new games, and I will do so for as long as it pleases me, even if I don't manage to play them all, or at least not right now. The thing is, there are a LOT of games that are worth having for every console, even if you can't play them all at the same time. For me, the hobby is both playing and collecting everything that is worth having or to be more exact: to at least own those games that make or signify that specific console or handheld.

And if you don't buy them during or slightly after that system's life cycle, prices can become totally ridiculous for some of the more sought after games, or games that were made in smaller quantities, and I'm not about to pay hundred or more euros/dollars for a single game, which will most likely also be a second-hand copy.

So, I buy them now, store them and whenever I get the chance, I'll play some of them. Probably not all, and I'll most definitely never finish all of them, so that hope/wish has already been let go of, but I'll still keep building my collection, so I'll have something nice to display and look back upon. And who knows, maybe it can even bring some joy to my future family or friends, or if times get hard, and I am too old to enjoy all of it anymore, I could also sell it off.

That's not something I think I'll ever do, because I still enjoy it WAY too much, but who knows how I feel about it in 10-20 years? But for now, I'll continue expanding the collection...

For me once I get to the point in a game where I feel like I've completed the story and/or done all the major objectives I just shelve them until I'm ready to do any post-game or collect-a-thon type of stuff. Mario Odyssey is a perfect example of this as I have nowhere near all the moons but I've completed the main story and dabbled in some of the extra stuff but for now I'm finished with it. So my backlog are games I've essentially done a light play through of but can go back to for stuff I didn't do later on down the road.

i don't deal with it at all right now. i have a bunch of unfinished games and even more games i haven't even started yet. so yeah i am also not buying anything new right now. currently i am playing a free2play mmofps and i'm kinda hooked on it. weird thing is i feel no need to start a new game anytime soon. nothing really interests me right now

Having just brought myself a SNES Mini, I have a similar dilemma - with classic 21 games added to my collection, it's a struggle to find the time to fit everything in! ..in addition, I'm yet to finish off the likes of Breath of the Wild on Switch - and I have several games across all platforms that I'm planning to return to at some point - swamped!

The way I'm rationalising it, I have at least one option in each (main) genre that I enjoy - sports games, adventure games, RPG's, platformers, shooters, racing games, strategy games, management sims etc - something for practically any mood...so I think I'm just going to stick with what I have for a while and chip away at each game in turn If boredom strikes, I'll move on - and if a genre gap opens up, I'll fill it with something new (eg. replace an RPG that I've grown tired of with another RPG from my wishlist) ..but right now, I can't justify buying anything else - there's just no need for me to buy the latest RPG if I'm perfectly happy with the one I'm currently playing - so I've made a conscious decision to resist making any more purchases until my enthusiasm for my current crop of titles begins to fade!

With so many great games on the horizon though - by the time I get my backlog cleared, my wishlist will have grown to epic proportions! ..then I guess I'll just have to start the process all over again! #FirstWorldProblems!

Something to avoid: forcing yourself to finish games.

If you're only playing stuff for entertainment, there's no point in playing something if it isn't clicking with you after a while. Just drop it, or even sell it if you want to ditch it for good. It's a hard habit to break (I know it was for me), but you'll feel better about your backlog (and your finances) once you do.

@taffy A few things.

• Don't force yourself to complete games you don't like.
• Focus on a handful of games, at most, at a time (this one is really difficult for me)
• Ignore sales. Seriously. I have a few exceptions to this rule for games I really want, but, in general, when I buy something in a sale, it's not something I was planning on picking up any time soon before I saw the sale price, which means I'm being motivated by more of an irrational consumerist impulse than anything. it's best to get that side of yourself under control.
• Cut down on purchases overall. Prioritize which releases you're most excited for, and just give everything else a pass. They'll still be available for purchase when you want to play them again, and (if they're not first-party Nintendo games) usually at a significantly cheaper price as well.
• Distinguish between games you actually paid good money for, and free games you got as part of a subscription service, humble bundles games, Steam bundle games, etc. In other words, know your important backlogged games from the ones you just happen to have access to for whatever reason.
• If you have a lot of short games in your backlog, you'll see it shrink faster if you play a lot of those as opposed to juggling five different 100+ hour RPGs.
• If all else fails, simply make a rule that you have to complete two backlogged games for every new game you buy. If you actually follow through on this, your backlog will only shrink.

Also, I tend to have a lot of time available for gaming in the day, but not necessarily a lot of time where I can just sit in front of a TV at home. So I'm deliberately avoiding purchases of home console games because I know it'll take me a lot longer to get through them than handheld/hybrid games.

Simple answer is that I don't.

I'm long past the point of being able to finish each and every game that I own (or even most of them, for that matter) and I'm starting to accept that. In the mean time I just play what I want (regardless of what I've already started, and am due to finish) and try not to make too many meaningless game purchases.

I made a new system because my backlog was growing to big. I own three consoles a PS4, Nintendo 3ds and a Nintendo Switch. For each console I have a list of three games that i'm playing. When i finish a game I decide based on my enjoyment if I want to revisit it for side content. If the answer is no, i delete it or resell it. If the answer is yes, i add it to the games that i still need to play list. The list if games that i still need to play can't be longer then 10 otherwise I will not buy another game until the list grows smaller. Due this system i became much more productive and i manged to already finish the main story of 6 games this year.

I gave up on completing my backlog of games once I started buying humble bundles. Done are the days of plowing through a relatively meh game just to say I beat it. I now focus on playing games for fun rather than trying to complete every one I have. (Hence me playing BotW almost exclusively now for over a year and ignoring all other games.)

There's lots of good advice in this thread, but it's also evident that everyone manages their backlog (or doesn't XD) in a different way. @Ralizah's list touches on most of the points that I would have made. I'll go by each of the points listed in their post:

1. This is very important and is something that I still struggle with occasionally. There's nothing wrong with putting a game down if you aren't enjoying it. Your free time belongs to you, not the game.

2. I tend to focus on 2 (sometimes 3) games at a time. I make sure they're at least slightly different genres in case I need a break from one. For example, I'm currently playing the Conquest side of Fire Emblem Fates (a Strategy RPG) and Super Mario 64 (platformer).

3. I ignore sales unless something I truly want to buy/try is on sale. Since I include gaming as part of my budget each month, that helps regulate what I buy.

4. As mentioned above, budgeting had helped me cut down on game purchases. I tend to limit myself to one retail game a month unless there's a really good sale. Many games also become cheaper over time, and the used market is a good option as well if you don't mind someone's secondhand game.

5. I can't really comment much on this one. I tend to avoid things like Humble Bundle so that I don't have to deal with this problem. I typically screen games I'm interested in (unless it's from a franchise I truly enjoy) instead of just picking them up at random.

6. This is also correct. I actually try to severely limit how many long RPGs I pick up. I've seen where some people mostly just stick with short games since they don't have the time or patience for the longer ones.

7. I also agree with this. Earlier on, I refused to pick up a new game until I had knocked out a certain number of games (this was somewhat dependent on their length).

A final point I'd like to add, and one that I struggle with the most....Don't feel obligated to just game in your free time in fear of your backlog. That'll just stress you out. Attend to one of your other hobbies if you feel like it. Hang out with friends and family or take a weekend off somewhere on occasion. If you're not having any fun, then you'll eventually burn yourself out.