Working through the backlog, advice and tips.

Links234

So, a lot of us PC gamers encounter a problem after Steam sales and various bundles, we tend to hoard games because we often buy more than we have time to play and don't realize this until later when we look and see a load of unplayed games that we've not even installed yet. Or sometimes a good deal gets the better of our common sense, and we think surely we'll play that later? Whatever it is, we end up with a backlog, so I decided to create a thread to help everyone work through that. I hope people find this helpful, and that some folks can add something to this, but here's my advice.

1. Hide the bundle trash.
Part of the reason a backlog looks so intimidating is that if we buy bundles, we'll often end up with a handful of games that we are probably never going to play. It might seem like an inconsequencial thing, but it's surprisingly helpful if you filter out those games, either create a separate category by right clicking on the game in your Steam library and click Set Category, then minimize it in your library so it's hidden from view, or just tick the "hide this game in my library" box. Don't worry if you hide them, you can still view them by clicking where it says 'Games' next to the search bar.

2. Create a queue for games to play next.
Choose a handful of games from your backlog that you'd like to play the most, about 5-10 at tops and either add them to your favourites, or create a new category for your queue. Then collapse the rest of your games. This is all about making your backlog look less indomitable, so instead of seeing the list of games in your folder and thinking crap, you've got 50 odd games yet to play, you look at it and see you've got these 5 games yet to play. It's a psychological thing mainly, but this will really help.

Make sure they're installed and ready to go as well! This is essential, because sometimes I've been wanting to play something from the backlog and then thought "nah, can't be arsed waiting for it to download" and just played something else instead.

3. Take a break from games you play heavily.
Racked up hundreds of hours in CS:GO or Payday 2? Give those games a break for a while. It can be very easy to just chill out and play something you're familiar with, especially when it's as easy to fire up a quick heist in PD2 and play for 20 minutes here, 15 minutes there. Giving it a rest from those games can free up a lot of time you could use for other games instead.

4. Look up the games you've queued on howlongtobeat.com
This really helps because it's a lot less daunting when you see how much of a time investment you need to make. Knowing that you could finish the main story of a game fairly casually over a week makes it a lot easier to start a new game.

5. Don't add to the backlog!
This could be a whole thread to itself, but I find what works for me is that I try to only buy a game if I'm sure I'll play it. It doesn't always work out, but it's helped me cut down on making purchases where I think "I'll surely play that at some point, into the cart with it!" to a huge degree. Ask yourselves, are you going to play this immediately? If you aren't, then it can wait until next sale.

Whatever you buy in the Steam sale install right away, and most importantly play it! Doesn't matter if you were intending to play something else for the evening, just play your new purchase even for 15 or 20 minutes, get a little bit of a feel for it. That way you haven't just added it to the backlog, you've actually started it and that makes it so much easier to come back to.

Enjoy playing those games folks!

Ant695

Great idea for a thread. My personal backlog is getting out of hand.

Dave_The_Sheep

I have a section in my Steam library for "Complete, won't play again" "Tried, won't play again" and "To play through". It's nice to eliminate some of the crap from the list.

There's still far too many in the "To play through" category, however.

Lu Tze

Links234 wrote: »

So, a lot of us PC gamers encounter a problem after Steam sales and various bundles, we tend to hoard games because we often buy more than we have time to play and don't realize this until later when we look and see a load of unplayed games that we've not even installed yet. Or sometimes a good deal gets the better of our common sense, and we think surely we'll play that later? Whatever it is, we end up with a backlog, so I decided to create a thread to help everyone work through that. I hope people find this helpful, and that some folks can add something to this, but here's my advice.

Being facetious are we!?

I have a big backlog log, but mainly from not having time, gone a good few steam sales now without splashing out, if i buy anything at all, but still hvae a massive backlog from when i would buy a fair amount of games, and the odd humble bundle, a lot untouched or with 20 minutes on them.

Bought 3 games this time, total €5.97. I might buy 1 or 2 games during the year. The only solution is to spend more time gaming!

chrislad

I'm doing this at the moment. Currently have 6 games in my Currently Playing pile, 59 in my backlog and about 220 in other piles. Yipes.

Ant695

chrislad wrote: »

I'm doing this at the moment. Currently have 6 games in my Currently Playing pile, 59 in my backlog and about 220 in other piles. Yipes.

Ok now I don't feel so bad about mine.

Links234

Lu Tze wrote: »

Being facetious are we!?

Not really, I know I've bought games in previous Steam sales that I was sure I'd have played shortly thereafter. I'm sure we don't buy games with the intention of not playing them.

pablomakaveli

It's important to ensure clearing your backlog doesn't become a chore as well. I always have two games that ill be trying to clear. If i feel like i need a break from one i play the other one and vice versa. I wont start a new game on my backlog until i finish one of them.

If i feel like i need a break from those two game i might play a multiplayer game or something like Rome 2 or Europa Universalis, basically games you cant complete the traditional way. Thats why i disagree with OP's advice about trying to avoid the likes of CSGO. A break from clearing your backlog isnt a bad thing.

Digital Solitude

Sorted my library into Beaten, Backlog, Crap and Endless

I just feel worse about the backlog now :pac:

Wossack

I have to sort it by 'recent', so I can remember what Im in the middle of playing first world problems..

Taylor365

I play a lot of games slow as i don't want them to finish so quick but end up getting bored and not finishing them at all. :pac:

Recently finished Shadow of Mordor. Worst final battle ever....

Working on L.A. Noire now. I'd say I'm about halfway. Play-through of this has lasted over 3 years......

I have a list to finish/play when i upgrade to a new GPU:
Watch Dogs
Skyrim (Rift)
Elite: Dangerous (Rift)
Alien: Isolation (Rift)
Euro Truck Sim 2 (Rift)

marko93

So my list at the moment is

• Metro 2033 ~ 9 hours
• Metro: Last Light ~ 10 hours
• Bioshock ~12 hours
• Bioshock 2 ~11 hours
• Bioshock Infinite ~11 hours

This will be fun

TheDoc

Thats a really good idea OP, I'd never have realised you could catergorise. Will do this tomorrow. I'm definitly one of those that feels overwhelmed with my steam library, I've 130 games in there and think I've only ever even downloaded about 10.

I try to keep installed the ones I'm playing and that has helped. But will defo setup categories.

My own list in my head is

Arkham Asylum
Wolfenstein New Order
Arkham City
La Noire
Arkham Origins
Mass Effect 2

If I can tip away during WoW downtime, I'd say I could get through it in a decent timeframe.

Links234

So folks, how have we gotten on with this?

Since starting this thread, I've been playing Bastion (finally!), Mark of the Ninja and Castlevania: Lords of Shadow. I've started playing all the games I've bought in the sale, bar The Vanishing of Ethan Carter, and I grabbed Gone Home when it was on Steam's daily deal the other day and finished it. It's a good start, and I've definitely shrunk the backlog a wee smidge

Digital Solitude

I've played 28 hours of XCom since like Sunday. So not too good Links

Links234

Well as long as you're enjoying it DS, that's the main thing. As someone else said, don't make playing games a chore, I'm playing things that have been languishing on the backlog for ages, but I'm enjoying it at the same time. I booted up Terraria for the first time too, and I forgot, I also gave Left 4 Dead 2 a go earlier in the week. So yeah, another wee bit off the backlog.

Vojera

Taylor365 wrote: »

Working on L.A. Noire now. I'd say I'm about halfway. Play-through of this has lasted over 3 years......

You're not doing too badly - it took me 14 years to finish FF VII :o:o


I had already categorised my games into "Unstarted", "Finished" and "Current" but I added another category and put games that came in bundles in there, so that games I never intended to buy but came on multi-game keys don't show up on my list. It shrank it a bit anyway.

I bought Never Alone during the sale and finished it, and I bought Tengami a few days ago and finished it, so I'm happy with that.

I'm currently playing a game on my "finished" pile, though. For shame! My Batman: Arkham Asylum save was on GFWL but now that it doesn't use the 3rd party DRM anymore my save is gone and I also really enjoyed that game, so I'm about half way through playing that for a second time.

Cravez

I recently created categories for my games on Steam based on the following:

1. Games I know I will never play
2. Games I've completed
3. Games currently in progress
4. Games started but never finished
5. Games (steam default)

I went through the list and put the games and I sorted them into the relevant categories which are self explanatory. This reduced my potential steam list of games to play dramatically. The games I have in the Steam default category are online only games or games I like dipping in and out of but don't invest so much time into OR haven't started at all yet. It's now made my backlog a lot less intimidating and alot more manageable.

How it looks:

Vojera

Taylor365 wrote: »

Working on L.A. Noire now. I'd say I'm about halfway. Play-through of this has lasted over 3 years......

You've inspired me to get back into LA Noire. I didn't actually realise it had been so long since I played it - nearly two years! I like the game but I hate trying to guess if people are lying from their expressions.

nesf

Borrowing this idea for Categories off Reddit. Saves me having to worry about genre etc and just sort things quickly by how interested I am in them right now. Seosaph = my son's games, Unknown = I don't know what this is, I'll have a look later, ZZZ = games I just feel meh about right now or random bundle crap. Retired is good for games like Civ V or Skyrim where you've sunk 100+ hours in but don't feel finished but want to keep these games separate to games you haven't played much of and want to get around to playing. Vintage is where all my old games go if I'm not interested in playing them right now.



Favourites is not used and is left closed by default as well as all categories except Current and High Interest. Games is treated like a "To be sorted" Inbox.


Found Depressurizer useful for doing it quickly manually. Much nicer than trying to sort a few hundred games with Steam's UI.

Links234

So, how are we getting on with this now?

I have to admit, I've fallen off the wagon so to speak. I had been doing pretty well, before MGSV came out, I had been playing the first Witcher game a lot, and although I had been buying a few things (Remember Me, and Wolfenstein: The Old Blood in the GMG sale, Infested Planet and Besiege on Steam) I was playing them all, bar the Old Blood. But I kinda slipped off, because that damned Humble store sale came along and even though I knew I wan't gonna play them right away, that Telltale build your own bundle was such an insanely good deal I just couldn't resist it. It was a bit of a slippery slope, because since then I picked up Styx: Master of Shadows, X-Com complete (just for the DLC), and last night I grabbed The Red Solstice. They weren't any impulse buys there, this was all stuff I have wanted for ages, and in the case of Styx it was something that I missed during the Steam Sale. The problem being, I'm just playing MGSV all the time now and nothing else gets a look in. So, backlog has been added to.

Calhoun

One thing i would add to tips is change or alternate the genre, as an RPG player it always good to mix it up and not play the same type of genre/setting back to back.

I just finished Deus Ex and i have a few more cyberpunks in backlog but rather than jump on through them im going to play something in a fantasy setting to mix it up.

nesf

Similar to you Links except it was a new Diablo Season instead of MGS.

Links234

So, wee bump for this thread, but I thought it might be time to do an end of year check in.

While I had been doing pretty damn well in terms of not adding any more games to the backlog for most of the year, there were some bundles that were way too good to pass up even if I wasn't going to play them right away, namely the Capcom bundle and Telltale build your own bundle from Humble. But! I think I've generally done pretty well with not just playing the games that I've bought, but completing a lot of them too. This year I have completed:

Wolfenstein: The New Order
Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain (And Ground Zeroes)
Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance
Bastion
The Witcher
Stasis
DMC: Devil May Cry
Gone Home
The Stanley Parable
Infested Planet

There's loads more that I've played but not completed, such as Remember Me, Invisible Inc., The Red Solstice, and more. Or there's games like Vermintide that are multiplayer, so couldn't count as "finished". Yeah, I've added to the backlog quite a bit, but a whole load of stuff is getting played and not just sitting there any more. Hopefully I can play through more of the backlog in the new year.

Robert ninja

I read that story of the chap who tried to play every one of his steam games. Cost him his relationship with his GF and said it was absolutely not worth it. Since then I try my best to not think "I need to get around to that game" but rather "I haven't played that yet... And that's fine."

Just try to play what I like. That said, it is worth pushing myself to get around to something new because there's still some that really capture me. Usually older games or something from my gog library.

Links234

Well, I'm not doing anything like that, thankfully. There's a load of stuff in my library that I know I'll never get around to, and that's fine. I'm happy that I'm getting around to playing stuff, but it's definitely true that playing games shouldn't become a chore. If you're not enjoying yourself, don't force yourself to play stuff.

degrassinoel

i just dont play stuff i dont like, thought everyone did that tbh

Kiith

Yeah, i pretty much consider a game completed if i try it and don't like it. There's far to many good games out there to be spending your time on stuff you don't enjoy.

Links234

No idea why you guys think this is about playing anything you don't enjoy, that's not the idea behind this at all. The point is that sometimes we can end up buying more games than we we play due to steam sales, bundles etc, games that we have every intent of playing but just end up on the backlog.

degrassinoel

Yeah, i've been buying pc games for donkeys years though so there isnt really any surprises in steamsales for me anymore and hasn't been for a long while - it's only the odd port from console or indie game that manages that these days and when i do buy more than i can play - which is almost never, my backlog is probably only a week or so with how much time i spend ingame

However, when there is a backlog i love that i have the option to play something new - the first 5 minutes of a game are crucial, if you can manage to get past that without saying to yourself, 'this is a pile of shyte' or 'not for me' or 'i should get a refund before the two hours is up', then you'll probably sink a good few hours into it - at least that's how it goes with me.

i cant just buy a game and not play it for ages.. it defeats the purpose for me, plus money's tight, money's always tight

Edit; Actually, that's probably why i get so much time out of games i like :P

pablomakaveli

I've quit a couple of games that i didnt enjoy over the last few months. I played about 25 hours of Valkyria Chronicles and just stopped as i'd gotten sick of it. Same with Wasteland 2 after about 15-16 hours. Thing is i enjoyed both games initially but its not worth carrying on sometimes when you start getting sick of it. Better off to play something more enjoyable instead.

Links234

pablomakaveli wrote: »

I've quit a couple of games that i didnt enjoy over the last few months. I played about 25 hours of Valkyria Chronicles and just stopped as i'd gotten sick of it. Same with Wasteland 2 after about 15-16 hours. Thing is i enjoyed both games initially but its not worth carrying on sometimes when you start getting sick of it. Better off to play something more enjoyable instead.

You played both games, got a good deal of playtime out of both, that's good. That's not what this thread is about though, it's about the games that have ended up on the backlog unplayed.

Vojera

Making a "Bundled" category for games I never intended to own has made me feel much better about my backlog. I normally give away games from bundles that I don't want but when you have multi-game keys you end up with stuff you know you'll never play.

I've put a lot of time into Sunless Sea lately so I've deliberately set it aside and now I'm playing Dust: An Elysian Tale for something different and as it's two years since I bought it. It feels good playing something that's been sitting there.

Digital Solitude

An update on Digi getting through his 250 game strong catalogue

I have sorted all of my games into 4 categories,
-The Backlog - Games I'm actually 100% planning on playing and enjoying
-Beaten - Games I've cleared, obviously enough
-Endless - The likes of Chivalry, Civ V, XCOM, Fallout etc, games you don't beat, just get bored of playing
-Untested - This is the true backlog, a list of about 100 games I've never even played, but sit in my account.

The methodology is to uninstall most Beaten and Endless games, and then install as many games from the Untested pile as you can. Give a game a run, you keep playing until you decide you want to add it to the Backlog category, or hide it from the library.

In the last three days I've knocked the backlog from about 200 to 18, with 108 games in the Untested pile, and 82 hidden in the library.

A lot of the Untested pile is sequels and spin offs, so they're in the backlog without actually adding to the backlog list, and it means I'm left with a backlog of games I know that I want to play, instead of a bunch of probable crap and sequels to games I haven't beaten yet.

CastorTroy

I decided to start rotating through my consoles and PC so played Arkham Knight on PS4, Resident Evil on PC and now playing Bayonetta on Wii U. Figured it's one method to get through the backlog. Though I haven't really played anything in a while, so need to get back to it