How obligated do you feel to play your games?

My backlog is quite huge, but i plan to play through every game atleast once. I bought most games for around 1-5$, so i have to play all those games for atleast 5-10 hours to be satisfied that i bought them :D

a bit because i have to study... :(

I have a huge backlog and I try to play the games "as well as I can". Let's see how my motivation holds up in two or three weeks time. So far I have completed: Spec Ops - the Line, Dishonored, Deus Ex and Max Payne 3 recently(ish). Maybe I'll see this through. :)

I don't feel obligated. I bought the game so I could play it whenever I wanted (within reason, such as the boundaries of life, etc.), not so I would be contractually obligated or some such nonsense, to play it. My wife gives me hell for spending $50-75 over the Steam winter sale and getting something like $400 worth of games, and then only playing Skyrim. Well, Skyrim is the one I want to play. I got the others because I knew I would want to play them at some point. (She does the same thing with her Xbox; she has over a dozen games and only ever plays Rockband 3.)

Quite a majority of games I bought for Steam were games I pirated a few years ago, and I finally decided to live up to my promise and buy the games to support the companies. So those games more or less would have 0-a few hours on them. Then there are those games that I buy because they were on sale, or a friend told me to get it(also 0-a few hours on them) :S

Lastly, the games I felt I NEEDED to get...mainly pre-orders for some reason. Don't ask why.

FYI, I currently have no more pirated games since I recently bought the last one on the list: Battlefield 2. :D So proud of myself. But so sad for my checking account at the same time. :S

VERY DAMN SCH I HATE SCH I WANNA PLAY MY GAMES ARGHHHHHHHHH

As long as the game doesn't suck I plan on playing it someday, but I don't really feel obligated to play most games within a certain time period of purchase/etc. My backlog has hundreds of games in it so it would take a lot of free time to catch up =p

Not obligated at all. In fact, I rarely play my games.

Interesting to see people's varying methods for completing their backlog or lack thereof. I just sat down for a few hours and beat The Darkness II. Phew it feels good to make some progress, and it was a very enjoyable game as well. Now on to Spec Ops!

I must play and finish all my games before I buy any new games!! <Goes out and buy new game>

I'm finding myself in the same boat you are, I've had to start cracking down on myself and resisting purchases because I know I've got a ton of games to get through, and don't need to keep adding to the backlog. Temptation is a harsh mistress.

WTF you PLAY games?! What's wrong with you guys? :P

I paid heaps of $$$'s for Hitman AB, not played it much yet1

I've never felt an obligation to a game. I play games for fun instead.

Playing games

yup. it's either that or i played at least 5mins of some then never touched again.

Started collecting achievements recently. Certainly gives a nice incentive to finish all the bleeding games.

I don't feel obligated myself, but every evening Gabe Newell comes to my house and stares at me menacingly untill I start playing something. It's very importunate of him.

Oh man. I haven't played (as in, haven't even booted up) the majority of the games I own. I spend 80% of my time playing 20% of my games.

I buy tons of games as they come out but I never feel obligated to play them. I don't play many video games anymore because my time is limited but I still dont devote my limited spare time to games. I play them when I want to. If you feel like you're wasting money, stop buying new games. Go to consoles and just Gamefly them. My advice is to stop being such a jew trying to maximize your earnings/fun potential because by doing that you're ruining your own fun making all those games you bought worthless.

It has happened where i won games often, which sometimes led me to stop playing something to play something else, but eventually i play all these games, specially SP story driven ones (The Witcher 2 was a prime example), for the time being though, i'm switching between Osu! and LoL/DotA2, i'm going to finish Bioshock once i get an assured rest, and then go for the heavy RTS games i have in the backlog (Reign, King Arthur if i can get it to work without lagging so hard, and Supreme Commander 2, which i'm waiting for a friend to get as well in order to do some MP).

When it comes to purchasing games, i have preordered 3 games so far: BF3 (still on the fence on whether or not that was a good call, considering the DLC invasion that came shortly after); Red Orchestra 2 (Definitely not happy with that one); and Auction House simulator (Diablo III). From these experiences, i try to really think through what i'm going to get, and have no problem waiting for the game to settle in or be bashed/optimized/critiqued, so i guess i cannot consider myself to be a game hoarder.

I usually feel driven to finish games if I've gotten halfway, but I don't always feel obligated to start them. My backlog is pretty sizable, but that just means that I have plenty of options when it comes time to play the next game. I can narrow it to specific genres or settings, and still be left with several options. Its a good problem to have.

So far all my games are games that I would play for fun without inducement.. except maybe one. But I'll probably beat that as well. I have a completionist problem ._.

I don't like to use the word obligated, but if I win something or someone gifts me something, I do really like to do my best to play the game, as I do very much appreciate gifts

If I won a game on here, then I feel a certain obligation to play the game, because if I don't play it, then I know someone else could of won it who would of played it. So I try hard to play every game I won, and give those games top priority.

I also only try to enter giveaways for games that I know I will want to play, if I do win that giveaway. There are certain types of games that I don't enjoy, and I don't enter those giveaways, even if those are popular games.