I have TOO MANY video games! How you fight your backlog?

I've started using Playfire rewards as an incentive to try specific games. Although, conversely, it makes me want to wait to play specific games until I can get Playfire rewards for it.

I stopped buying games and have windows xp installed. In that way I cant play many new games so no need to buy them either

i feed 15 yo virgins to Backlog the Malicious (Bakhlock in the language of the ancients though human tongue cant speak its real name) every 11 year under full moon . you cant fight Backlog, you just try to make it happy. his silent slumber must not be interrupted...

i also noticed some of our friends here are interested in the forbidden art of necromancy. reanimating topics...dead should stay dead.

Playfire Rewards are a great motivation :p + impulse play.
Recently the best way I foud to fight the backlog from bundles is to install and play the games straight away.

Hah .... You are worrying about your backlog with that big library of games?

If you are anywhere near like me , irrespective of your catalogue size, you will always have backlog and as you clear them, you'll end up with new games to create new backlogs :D

Cheers mate!

My backlog has exploded over the last year or so. :(

I went from about 100 games to almost 500 in less than 2 years! o_O

Sadly, I keep going back to Don't Starve and FTL: Faster Than Light when ever I feel like gaming. It's hard to try new things, because lately when I do try something new I've usually been disappointed... >_<

who say you need to fight the backlog?

EMBRACE THE BACKlog xD

i only have 77 games and i feel the same way i usually play tf2 for an item drop each day and killing floor for a suicidal achivment then im lost on what to do the rest of the day.

I've reached almost 300 games and I still can't stop buying. I never payed full retail price for a game, but any sale I see of a game I'm interested in is an insta-buy for me... Do I play them all? Hell no. Will I ever? I like to think I will. I have the same dilemma as you. Just yesterday I payed 20 euro for the entire Unreal series. Worth it, I think, but that after buying 2 bundles this month, AC 1 and 2 from Nuuvem, and 6 games from the Activison - Lucas Arts Steam sale last week and another 5 from the Origin spring sale. Gotta stop the spending...SERIOUSLY. Well, at east I installed Jedi Outcast and I'm on the verge of finishing it. Will probably play KOTOR next. Still, I spent way too much.

most of my not played games come from co-op like games i need people to play with but nobody i have has it or wants too.

give me a game =)

Very late to the party here, but I want to chime in anyway.

My backlog isn't even as big as some, and I've ignored my backlog for the longest time, not even really knowing what was on it (aside from Steam, I've also got a collection on GOG and some DRM-free stuff, so the 187 games Steam says I own aren't even everything). After all, it's only games, they're supposed to be for my entertainment, so I'm under no obligation to play them if I don't want to. At the same time, it feels disheartening to know you've got all this stuff that you're never going to use -- it seems like a complete waste of money. What good is owning something just because it was cheap to buy? Is the very small thrill you originally got from having picked up a bargain worth it?

Maybe that's enough for some people, and more power to you if you get your kicks from the sheer amount of games you own, but I've decided that no, it isn't for me. I looked for a solution, and I happened on this Reddit post from a guy with the same problem who decided to do something about it. It's a long read, but the TL;DR summary goes like this: he made an overview of everything and then dedicated himself to playing all of them for at least one hour, to see if he liked them, and if not, accept that and move on. It's not about completing every game on the backlog, but just about clearing it.

I've adopted his tactic, with some changes. First, I made a list of every single game I owned on Steam and GOG and the one game I've only got on disc -- the GOG games I added to my Steam catalog as non-Steam games and just linked them to the GOG downloader if I hadn't installed them already (which was the majority). I went through the entire list of 286 games, placing them in these categories:

• Casual (games for 5 minute breaks)
• Completed (games with a story component or that otherwise have a clear end, which you'd only replay on special occasions)
• Keep Going! (games I've started, liked and want to keep playing)
• Multiplayer
• Neverending (games that are too involved for casual play, but that cannot be "completed" either, like Civilization 5)
• Not Interested (games I've tried and didn't like, betas, versions for other platforms and other things I'm never going to run again)
• Unplayed (the big one).

As an added bonus, categorizing every game like this means that any games added during a free weekend will stick out because they are the only ones that will appear in the now empty "My Games" category. The categorizing was a bit tedious, since you have to click through every game one by one, but I managed. For those of you with really insane backlogs, you have my sympathies.

Next, I used a bit of scripting magic to extract from this list everything I'd placed in the "Unplayed" category -- all 210 games. What I'm now doing is playing one random game from this list every day, for at least half an hour, to evaluate what other category it should go in. If I get a sequel, the original game substitutes instead. If I haven't downloaded the game yet, I start downloading it and reroll. Every game gets the full half hour, even if I already hate it after 10 minutes. If I'm actually enjoying myself, of course, the game might get more time.

At one game every day, assuming no breaks, at the current list I will have played every game on my backlog by December 5th of this year, which is not as bad as I thought. And I've realized something else: given that my backlog will occupy me for the next 7 months, and given that I've got plenty of games I've already found out I've liked which are awaiting completion, I don't need more games. Whatever I see and would want, it can wait for at least 7 months. At that time it'll be cheaper anyway. I'll make an exception for bundles because not every game will be that cheap again, but only if the bundle actually has a game that I'm sure I would play, or that I want others to play. I've stopped seeing bundles as "what a great value, just X games for a few bucks" and instead I'm seeing them as "that's X more games to add to the backlog if you buy it for yourself, make sure you want this". No matter how small the amount of money, there's always better ways to spend it.

I've stopped entering giveaways for that reason too. They cost nothing except time, but a win just means I'm extending the backlog, so no. Also, the next Steam sale is going to be the first one where I will buy nothing for myself, to remain motivated to clear the backlog before the next holiday sales. If I buy anything, it's going to be for gifting. And since I'm not buying anything for me, the budget for others is bigger, so everybody wins. :-)

What will I do after I've cleared the backlog and know what games I want to keep playing? I don't know yet. I think I'll be sufficiently guilt-free that I will ust play what I want and not feel any obligation to complete anything. Or maybe I'll be calm enough to sit down and play games to completion before moving on. Regardless, I really want to make sure I'm no longer sitting on a pile of unidentified stuff before I move on, because that was just getting depressing.