The Backlog Challenge: A Wild Attempt to Regain Control

The goal of this entire blog is to defeat what many of us have built up over years, maybe even decades. To lash out at the impenetrable horde that has seemingly taken us by surprise. It waits for us, discourages us. Nay… It’s very existence shames us.

What is this terror you ask? What horror have we wrought?
The Backlog™

All dramatic prose aside, this dilemma plagues gamers everywhere. Though, it always seems to start off innocently enough…
"Oh, there are so many good games coming out all around the same time!"
So, what do you do? You buy several, intending to play them all. However, as time drags on, one or two of those games gets neglected or forgotten. You may have gotten consumed by one of your other games for too long, or maybe life got in the way as it always seems to do. Or maybe a Steam Sale just started, and you pick up some games you haven’t played yet. Maybe Christmas comes along, and you get a few more games that you wouldn’t have necessarily picked out yourself.

And what do you have by the end of the year? A stack of ten games? What about after 5 years? 100 games?
This has to end. Today is that day. Today marks the end of the ever growing Backlog™
This challenge, if you choose to attempt it, will hopefully help ween you off of the collection addiction. I’m obviously taking this challenge, as my backlog is probably about 150 games strong.
Of course, every challenge must have rules. These rules will hopefully keep us honest with ourselves, as well as others.

Remember: The purpose of this challenge is reduce your Backlog of games, not make playing games a chore. Take breaks from the challenge if it cause undue stress. Video games are supposed to be fun!

Rules/Guidelines

  1. In order to reduce the size of your backlog, you must play more games than you buy. The general rule is that you have to play 2 games to completion before you can buy another game. Exceptions may be made if you are gifted a game you did not expect, or if it is bundled with something unrelated as a promotional item.
  2. Game Completion, in the context of this challenge, can mean several different things. Not all games have a campaign, or an ending. Therefore, this section will serve as a guideline as to what can be considered a completion. Any game played under these conditions will net you a “completion.” Some of these guidelines are open ended for interpretation. Use your best judgement.
    Game completion can be attained the following ways:
    A. Beat the campaign on any difficulty.
    B. If the game does not have a defined campaign or story mode (i.e. Sid Meier’s Civilization games, etc) 20 hours of playtime is required.
    C. If the game has a worldwide ranked scoring system (i.e. Devil Daggers or similar) a top 5 score will count as a completion. Otherwise, 15 hours of playtime is required.
    D. If a game’s campaign or story mode is obscenely difficult to complete, for any reason, 30 hours of game-play is required.
  3. You will gain one “token” for every 2 games that you complete. These “tokens” can be used to buy games. You may not tally up games that were completed before the creation of the challenge in order to get more “tokens.” You are responsible of keeping track of these “tokens”. You may use this thread to help keep count.
  4. In the event that a game cannot be completed, you may omit it from your Backlog and they will not count towards your total amount of games. You are not allowed to count these games as “completed games.” Games that can be considered impossible can be one or more of the following:
    A. The game is multiplayer only, and there are no public servers that you can play on.
    B. The game is unplayable under the current patch due to game breaking glitches, or crashes.
    C. The media that contains the game is corrupted or damaged beyond reasonable play-ability. Scratched discs, broken cartridges, etc.
    D. There is no reasonable way to play back the game. (i.e. broken or missing playback hardware) You will not be required to buy hardware or consoles to play back any games you may have. You may omit these games. However, if you do acquire the means to play game, it will be re-added to the Backlog list.
  5. This challenge has no time limit, and will end when you have no more games left on the list.

I reserve the right to change these rules, and make edits.

That’s it. I’ll be using this thread to keep track of my progress, feel free to do the same if you are joining the challenge. If you have any questions, feel free to ask for clarification. And as always, relevant discussion is welcome!

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Very cool, do you plan on adding a list to mark games complete?

My back catalog extends to PS3 games lol.

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Yes, I will search for a way to link a custom list of games. Maybe just a Google Doc or something similar.
My list contains a few PS1 games and PS2 games that I can play via emulator on PC. Then I’ve got PS4 and Nintendo Switch games I need to play. And of course, the dreaded Steam backlog.

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im done. already beat all my backlog of games :smiley:

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@Dje4321 suuuuuure you did.

beat most of the games on my steam library. the ones i havent beat im not that into.

the benefits of being poor :smiley:

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To big of a challenge for me, 1483 games on steam alone and I’ve probably beaten 15-20 of them. Only way I will get close is to get a 6TB drive and install them all and get a hammer…

Then again a lot of the games don’t really have an ending to them…

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@sycpuppy At the end of the day, it’s still just for fun. I’m gonna try and see how far I get though.

Ever tried just picking a random game and playing it for an hour or two?

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I do that, When a game stops being a challenge for me I tend to get bored of it and move on.
Games like Don’t Starve Together, A.I. War and Tales of Maj’Eyal where I can make the game borderline impossible to beat I tend to over play and return to a lot.

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My PS3 backlog

Final Fantasy XIII (1-3)
Killer is Dead
MGS hd collection
Ico
Shadow of the Colossus
Zone of the Enders hd collection
The last of Us

PS Vita backlog

Peraona 4 Golden
Danganronpa: Ultra Despair Girls

I like the idea, but I would fail as soon as the email from steam pops up with a ridiculous discount for something on my wishlist :slight_smile:

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I never claimed it would be easy. The whole point of the challenge is to reduce the amount of wasted money on games that are never played.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with waiting for a sale to buy games. However, your money is still wasted if you never attempt to finish, or even play them in the first place.