Nickolaidas
Member
Backlog.
Such a hated word for any true affectionado of video gaming. A word that any gamer can give a different meaning to.
For some, it means that they have way too many unfinished games. For others, it means they have way too many games, period. And for other others, it means they can't play the games they want to play, because they have other games they need to finish first (especially true for sequels).
I love video games. I love adventure games, I love fighting games, I love strategy games, I love role-playing games, I love side-scrolling shooters, survival horror games, RTS games, turn-based games … you name it, I love it.
Except soccer manager games. Fuck that shit.
But it's easy to get lost in that lovely hobby. It's easy to buy/rent/freebie more and more games, until beating all of them isn't realistically feasible anymore. But you still think you'll be able to play them at some point. You still believe you'll play that awesome game ... at some point.
Until you do some math.
I saw my Steam library, my collection of ROMs from consoles I never bought, my PSN library, my X-box library … and I saw about 1.245 games - not counting the ones I gave or thrown away. And I realized that the more games I had, the more I wanted to beat the older games before playing the sequels and the new ones, the more I would fall behind. To add stupidity to injury, I'm a 'savor-the-flavor' kind of guy. It's really hard for me to game 8 hours in one sitting. I need to take long breaks, which makes my gaming hours all the more fewer. In the end, I don't have a lot of time to spend on video games - and to be perfectly honest, I shouldn't have. Life and all.
And that made me 'stressed', in a way. Stressed that I had to finish game X in order to proceed to game Y. I became more obsessed with finishing a game in order to reduce my backlog rather than enjoying the damn thing. And playing it for a second time? Not even for a joke.
And then it hit me. Gaming had become more of a job for me, rather than a hobby. I found myself shaking my head at my own stupidity - not playing Horizon Dawn because I wanted to play Super Mario Bros on the NES first. Or not playing MK11 because I wanted to play MK4 as well.
So I decided to change my way of thinking. I was through being a backlog whore. I was through buying more and more games just because they were on sale and were games I could see myself playing down the line. I decided to de-tox myself out of this annoying consumerism-addictive line of thinking and made the following changes:
01) Any game that I wasn't 100% drooling over would be removed from my gaming library.
02) I stopped gaming on every system, and would instead only pick two brands to follow from now on (I chose PlayStation and X-Box)
03) I would only play the current game of an IP, despite not beating previous entries (so I said fuck-all to Gears 1-4 and Halo 1-4 and dived straight to Gears 5 and Halo Guardians)
04) I would play all game simultaneously, not waiting to beat one in order to go to the other (which makes me less anxious to beat open-world games, which are great games, but great time sinkers as well).
05) I would refrain from having more than 4 games of a specific genre (i.e. fighting games), in order to have only the best of the best in my library.
Right now I have a collection of about 25 games which I adore and play them little by little. Yeah, I missed a bit on story and lore, but I don't really care. Playing the first mission of Halo 5 was more exciting than Halo 1 and 2 combined, as well as Gears. And I can't believe I wasted my time on Final Fantasy II (mobile) and wanting to play through III-XIII before playing XV. XV is amazing and I love it the more I play it, haters be damned.
So, my advice to you, in case you're like me and have a backlog of at least 100 games, I urge you to say fuck all, uninstall those games, ignore the fiendish little voice in the back of your head that whispers something about diminishing returns and play the best of the best games in your collection, adding few games (about 5-10 each year), in order to replay those you really loved.
I'm a backlog whore no more … and I love it.
Such a hated word for any true affectionado of video gaming. A word that any gamer can give a different meaning to.
For some, it means that they have way too many unfinished games. For others, it means they have way too many games, period. And for other others, it means they can't play the games they want to play, because they have other games they need to finish first (especially true for sequels).
I love video games. I love adventure games, I love fighting games, I love strategy games, I love role-playing games, I love side-scrolling shooters, survival horror games, RTS games, turn-based games … you name it, I love it.
Except soccer manager games. Fuck that shit.
But it's easy to get lost in that lovely hobby. It's easy to buy/rent/freebie more and more games, until beating all of them isn't realistically feasible anymore. But you still think you'll be able to play them at some point. You still believe you'll play that awesome game ... at some point.
Until you do some math.
I saw my Steam library, my collection of ROMs from consoles I never bought, my PSN library, my X-box library … and I saw about 1.245 games - not counting the ones I gave or thrown away. And I realized that the more games I had, the more I wanted to beat the older games before playing the sequels and the new ones, the more I would fall behind. To add stupidity to injury, I'm a 'savor-the-flavor' kind of guy. It's really hard for me to game 8 hours in one sitting. I need to take long breaks, which makes my gaming hours all the more fewer. In the end, I don't have a lot of time to spend on video games - and to be perfectly honest, I shouldn't have. Life and all.
And that made me 'stressed', in a way. Stressed that I had to finish game X in order to proceed to game Y. I became more obsessed with finishing a game in order to reduce my backlog rather than enjoying the damn thing. And playing it for a second time? Not even for a joke.
And then it hit me. Gaming had become more of a job for me, rather than a hobby. I found myself shaking my head at my own stupidity - not playing Horizon Dawn because I wanted to play Super Mario Bros on the NES first. Or not playing MK11 because I wanted to play MK4 as well.
So I decided to change my way of thinking. I was through being a backlog whore. I was through buying more and more games just because they were on sale and were games I could see myself playing down the line. I decided to de-tox myself out of this annoying consumerism-addictive line of thinking and made the following changes:
01) Any game that I wasn't 100% drooling over would be removed from my gaming library.
02) I stopped gaming on every system, and would instead only pick two brands to follow from now on (I chose PlayStation and X-Box)
03) I would only play the current game of an IP, despite not beating previous entries (so I said fuck-all to Gears 1-4 and Halo 1-4 and dived straight to Gears 5 and Halo Guardians)
04) I would play all game simultaneously, not waiting to beat one in order to go to the other (which makes me less anxious to beat open-world games, which are great games, but great time sinkers as well).
05) I would refrain from having more than 4 games of a specific genre (i.e. fighting games), in order to have only the best of the best in my library.
Right now I have a collection of about 25 games which I adore and play them little by little. Yeah, I missed a bit on story and lore, but I don't really care. Playing the first mission of Halo 5 was more exciting than Halo 1 and 2 combined, as well as Gears. And I can't believe I wasted my time on Final Fantasy II (mobile) and wanting to play through III-XIII before playing XV. XV is amazing and I love it the more I play it, haters be damned.
So, my advice to you, in case you're like me and have a backlog of at least 100 games, I urge you to say fuck all, uninstall those games, ignore the fiendish little voice in the back of your head that whispers something about diminishing returns and play the best of the best games in your collection, adding few games (about 5-10 each year), in order to replay those you really loved.
I'm a backlog whore no more … and I love it.