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no way i could ever finish my backlog
this post was submitted on 11 Mar 2025
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sigh Have to give up and finish your work instead.
oh look, what an interesting article.
Time to check Humble Bundle.
Sometimes I'll buy games on sale I have no intention to ever play. Y'know, because of the lingering guilt from the last time I played them but didn't buy them
No
No, fuck you.
I am proud to say that I haven't bought a new game without finishing a game from the backlog. Maybe I am lucky ~~unlucky~~ enough at an early age to be forced to be frugal and thus develop delayed gratification. The consumerist tactics rarely work on me. I would rather be thought of as a peasant but secretly more financially secure, than a broke person flaunting a €1,200 jacket which cost them an entire month's salary.
Nothing touches my library that wasn't discounted 60% or more. I'll see you on the Christmas of 2030 Ghosts of Tsushima!
That is easier and easier after every sale.
Counterpoint: Wanderstop just released and I'm going to enjoy it immensely. Stanley Parable/Beginner's Guide + C418 music is tailor made for me.
can't wait to sink my teeth into that game... right after I finally get around to getting better PC parts
tried the demo and the framerate was noticeably bad even after messing about with the settings
I mainly blame myself for putting up with Intel integrated graphics until now, but then again, putting "texture quality" below "very high" removes the characters' pupils, so maybe the game's just poorly optimised 🤷
Wanderstop
Ooh, I'll have to check that out. I loved The Stanley Parable and Beginner's Guide
There's literally no reason to buy a game until the minute before you're going to play it. It's not like digital copies sell out or takes time to ship. Add games you want to play to our wishlist and buy them when you're actually ready to play them.
Income is the reason I will (typically) wait for the big sales to purchase games. I don't have as much disposable income, so its much easier to justify spending $60 on three $20 games if they've been on my wishlist (or seem very appealing to me) for example than it is on one $60 game.
I adopted this philosophy a few years ago and have bought maybe 2 games since. I played them immediately and had fun. Meanwhile I have no interest in playing my backlog games anymore. I don't have time for them.
I've always maintained that it's a library, not a backlog. A backlog is a chore, a task I have to finish.
A library is a catalogue of new, exciting experiences waiting for me to have them!
I also happen to live in a rural area with radio Internet so when I decide I want to play a game it's many, many hours for it to install and be playable. Heck, sometimes I can order a physical game and it'll arrive by delivery faster than I can install it.
Also some console games are still physically on the cartridge/disc and it's becoming more and more of a rarity. As long as the media and systems hold up you can still actually own these games. It's sometimes worth not sleeping on these because, as I'm sure we can all see, they're a drying breed. Same thing with (most) GOG games: if you download and save the backup installers you can have actual ownership over titles purchased there.
https://www.doesitplay.org/ is a wonderful resource to find out if a physical game you buy is actually on the media it comes on.
And, unfortunately, some digital games are going somewhere. Delisted games have become a real problem for preservationists. You can find a whole list of them here: https://delistedgames.com/
All that said I support the notion of less consumption and more meaningful consumption when it occurs. Don't let FOMO get the better of you, be aware that these corpos are not your friend, and take measures to secure the things you wish to have available to you! Host servers, seed torrents, and have backups.
Nope. I'm gaming to have fun, not to work off some backlog. And if I buy a game, barely touch it and never play it again, that's fine. Keep the fun in games and don't treat it as an obligation.
Yes, but it is more about the cost. Games are pricey enough as they are. Why keep the games perpetually unplayed but then buy new ones and put them aside as well?
i think they mean sometimes people leave fun on the table because of fomo
To be fair, FoMO can be justified. That multiplayer game isn't going to be worth playing in five years time. That game that has cool new tech isn't going to dazzle once things move on, etc..
Also, with big single player games like Elden ring, it was fun seeing community discover new things as days went by.
I buy games to have a library to pull from when the mood takes me. If I finished them all then I would no longer have that, which seems bad.
The reward for finishing a "backlog" of games is having nothing more to play. That's like trying to finish a meal in a restaurant quickly to get to the after dinner mint.
I despise treating gaming as an obligation like this. I have a collection of games, not a "backlog".
That's a very interesting outlook.
I don't buy anything I don't want to play right now (or after the current game, and it's on sale right now), so don't have the backlog issue, but I need closure. I can't leave my games unfinished. I can drop a game if I want, but I need to mentally "finish" it. Either by completing it or by dropping it.
Personally, I don't really go out socially. Like ever.
So once a week or so when my friends go out to the bars and spend $50 on food and beers, I might spend a $20 on a game that's on sale and get the same or better return on my time and money for it. If I buy a game for $20 and spend five hours on it and never touch it again, that's about equivalent to a night out with the boys, both in dollars spent and in hours enjoyed.
I've built up a collection of indie games on this mindset and I don't see any of it as wasted. If I get a lower return than $5 per hour enjoyed then I'll refund the game or not recommend it for others. But I have a ton of games that have kept me well entertained for 3-6 days for the price of a beer and a kebab. I consider that good value.
Oh man I jump around games all the time. I just finished God of War like a month ago after about a year because I'm always trying something new haha
I have something in the region of a thousand games collected over about twenty years. If the price is good and it looks like I might like it (and I can afford to fritter the money away) then I buy it.
That's a thousand (ish) opportunities for entertainment, not a thousand (ish) obligations.
I bought all the rainbow six games in a bundle just to play Vegas, got to Vegas 2 maybe a year ago. I might get through the other 5 over the next 20 years.
Eh, spend that money on indie games and you’re doing good in the world regardless.
Based
But my favorite macrotransaction casual game is Buying Games Despite Your Backlog.
I’m working on it!
Started playing all the games I missed growing up that I really wanted to play, in chronological order.
Just beat the psp version of Final Fantasy. Next up I’m trying to decide if I should play the pixel remaster for part II, or just the psp version of that one, too.
I think the PSP versions have more content than the Pixel Remasters
I am similar (with some exceptions), currently I am in 2015. It's nice to get a fully patched version with all DLCs and such a low price.
But I bet it's loads of fun! Gotta resist… the urge…