Less Time - How do you prioritize your gaming backlog?

[MattEnth]

Well, I'm not an 18-year-old anymore, and as a result, my gaming backlog has massively ballooned. I still have all the Dark Souls games, God of War, a lot of high quality indies (Celeste, Cuphead), etc.

This has all prompted me to wonder... how do you all prioritize your gaming backlogs? Here are some of mine:

• Is the game part of gaming "pop culture"? (I put off playing Half Life 2 for years)
• How likely is it the game might be spoiled? (Moved Uncharted 4 up for this)
• Is the game "timeless"? Or was it a flash in the pan?
• Exceptional critic reviews? Or just pretty good?
• Time commitment: is this a 5 hour experience or 50 hour experience?
• Fast vs slow start

What about you guys?

 

[monmagman]

Whatever I'm in the mood for.

 

[Deleted member 9714]

Which games do I want to play more?
Which are in a genre I haven't played recently/wouldn't result in or be negatively affected by me needing a break from a specific genre?

 

[Kindekuma]

I manage it by realizing I'll never finish more than half the games I get lately, and cry. I'm finding myself picking up much shorter games now that I can finish in <10 sessions. Otherwise those games will take me ages to get through. Some of my online friends roast me because I still haven't gotten through God of War because I favored other (and often shorter games) to play instead.

 

[DriftingSpirit]

It is more based around what I feel like playing among a huge selection of games. I don't really look at a backlog as something I need to "complete" or "finish" because I know it is highly unlikely to happen now that I am older with more responsibilities.

 

[Strike]

Mostly chronologically. Some of them fall to the wayside if it's something like a remaster, annual release, or if it's just an average title. The must-plays are usually the ones that come first.

 

[Mathieran]

Whatever I'm in the mood for. I try to prioritize switching genres but if I just got done playing a Metroivania and I'm excited about a certain Metroidvania I'm gonna play it.

 

[cognizant]

I always cycle between genres. If I finish playing a war FPS for example, then the next game has to be something completely different like a fantasy strategy game. And now that I'm back into PC gaming, I also alternate between PC and PS4. I recently finished up a Europa Universalis IV campaign, and now I'm playing Dishonored 2 on PS4 Pro.

All the games on my backlog have been out for ages, so I don't have to worry about buggy broken day 1 releases. By the time I finish my PS4 backlog, the PS5 will probably be a year into its life cycle, so I'll be grabbing games cheap and patched up.

It just works!

 

[justiceiro]

Sadly, i priorize the ones i think i can finish in less than week. Not always the better, but the short ones. :/

 

[Deleted member 15538]

Asked my doc for backlog pills, everything is wonderful now.

 

[Deleted member 10611]

I've stopped worrying about completing / playing as many games as possible and just play what I want.

It's been great ever since.

 

[WillyFive]

Play whatever you want.

Backlogs are liberating, you literally get to play among a large number of options. If you are stressed for not finishing them, gaming may be more of a bad influence on you than a good one.

 

[Cliff Steele]

I play whatever I'm in the mood for. I have no order on my backlog. Though I try switching things up between games. So no 2 games of the same type of genre in a row.

 

[Gelf]

Whatever jumps out at me at the time. There's no process to it other than often I go for a complete genre shift from what I played previously.

 

[Ravelle]

I don't , not any more at least.

My steam library is humongous but I only play what I'm in the mood for and don't force anything.

 

[Deleted member 426]

I used how long to beat to put time's against everything. I played all the sub 10 hour games first. Then the mid length games. Then I was left with Long games. At that point it was slow progress but I felt good about what I'd achieved so that helped me power through.

I now have no backlog. Just the last game I bought.

 

[Yasuke]

1. What I want to play at this point in time.

That's mostly it. Every now and then, I might prioritize a newer game I really want to play just because I know it'll be the topic of conversation for a while and don't want to miss out, vs. whatever game I've been sitting on for a few months to a year that I've already missed the larger conversation on.

 

[Deleted member 7450]

If yes, then play whatever.
No high dreams of clearing the backlog, I'm resigned to the fact I will not have time to play everything I want.

 

[StrikeFirst117]

I honestly look at game list think of a type of game I want to play and then launch it at that point.
Though I do tend to put off much longer games until its weekend where I actually have more time available to play something.
I've been going back to backlog as of 2 weeks ago, went from Ori, to bits of Cuphead and now Transistor.

 

[KtotheRoc]

I play what I feel like playing when I have the time.

 

[leng jai]

I don't. Whenever I have spare time and don't have anything "new" to play I just end up starting a new run of TW3.

 

[iceblade]

Like others, I've been focusing on what I want to play most, and playing that. I've also become a lot quicker at dropping games that aren't interesting instead of sticking with them because of some sense of "I have to get through this". If it's not fun, or too difficult, I'll drop it in favor of something else I'm also [and potentially more] interested in.

 

[LegendofLex]

I don't necessarily have a strategy, but once I catch up on my "current" slate of games, I'll usually think about which games from my backlog I can probably complete in the most reasonable amount of time.

Recently, I restarted Undertale and finally played through it, since I knew it would only take a few hours. I also picked up where I left off in Octopath Traveler and beat the final boss. Next, I'm going to go back to Dead Cells and try to get past the second boss.

 

[Kill3r7]

What backlog? I play what I want. Gaming is a hobby, not a job.

 

[Orb]

I've just become way more selective about what I give my time to. I don't have a "backlog" because I'm totally okay playing something for 15 minutes, deciding it's not worth my time, and moving on.

 

[atomsk eater]

Whatever I'm in the mood for. I own a lot of games I'm never going to play (from around when I got my first job and had more money than sense), and it doesn't bother me.

I also don't try to force myself to stick it out with games when I stop having fun or am no longer interested. There's a good amount of games where I stopped playing halfway through or even right in the last dungeon or level because I just wasn't feeling it anymore.

 

[Rosebud]

Whatever I want. Now I'm playing my 3DS backlog a lot

 

[Aters]

I play whatever I want. Now I'm in the mood for 90s PC98 eroge. I think these games have stronger "90s timestamp" to them than other games from the same era. They really feel like they are from a long gone age.

I drop game super fast though. If a game can't hold my attention in the first twenty minutes, that's the end of it for me.

 

[Vert1]

Simple. The game doesn't leave the console till I beat it.

 

[weemadarthur]

Whatever I feel like, gosh.

 

[Benzychenz]

I just play whatever I want to play the most.

The length of games is irrelevant, one 100 hour game or ten 10 hour games is still 100 hours taken off the backlog.

 

[bahorel]

I use howlongtobeat to determine what I want to tackle. I'll usually do long short short long short short to kind of give myself some variety even though the games I want to play most are usually the long ones. I'll take some shorter ones from my backlog to go in between to break up the long hauls.

 

[Mr Delabee]

I don't impulse buy anymore, I only buy what I fancy playing, bought Gris today and will grab Below tomorrow and I'll put time into those over the weekend. Too many sales can give you a hoarding mentality, you amass games on sale but you never play immediately because you bought it on an impulse.

I thank Steam for having 6 sales a year in giving me this opinion whilst I sat with over 500 games in a library, mostly untouched because I bought them on the cheap and possibly not because I wanted them.

 

[BringBackSonics]

I don't prioritize my backlog. I'll play paradox games when the kids are asleep, I'll occasionally play co-op games with my kid on the switch or xboxone.

If a new exclusive comes out, I'll play that for a bit, until I switch back to the PC.

Basically I go back and forth

 

[ghibli99]

First post is pretty much it. I don't concern myself with how long things take anymore either. Kind of a double-edged sword, since that means a game like P5 or Xenoblade 2 can take me a year+ to finish. I've also learned when to say enough is enough instead of suffering through games just to say I finished them. That, more than anything, helps keep the enjoyment level high.

 

[FireCloud]

Don't really have any formalized plan for wading through the backlog. The question is, why do I allow it to keep growing?

I've got games still in the shrink wrap...from the PS3. I should probably change my approach and play the games I have before getting any others...but that isn't going to happen.

Starting 16 days of vacation soon...I plan on making a (microscopic) dent in the backlog.

 

[Pyro]

Over the last couple years I've just started caring less, especially since I like playing older games (replaying/first time).

Plus I no longer feel the need to play or try every single new game because at this point I know my tastes.

 

[werezompire]

I've got a spreadsheet divided into a few sections.

Games I'm currently playing (with an estimated percent of how far I think I am).
Series I'd like to play from start to finish along with my progress.

Games I own already that I'd like to play sometime.
Games I don't own that I'd like to play sometime.

From doing this, I've learned a few things.

1 - By putting games on a to-buy list instead of buying them right away unless I plan on playing the game immediately, I save a lot of money because I get them later in sales or decide that I don't really want to buy them in the end. I also feel like I avoid a lot of the gaming hype culture of "This is the big new thing that everyone needs to play" and play more games that are actually in-line with my tastes. Also, I generally get a better experience thanks to all the patches.

2 - When I see a game stay on the currently playing list for a long time with no progress, I re-evaluate it and frequently decide that I'm no longer having much fun with the game and remove it from the list. It's okay to not finish games. Also, sometimes the opposite happens & I see a game I was playing, think "Yeah, that was fun, I should finish that" and go back to it and finish it.