Gaming as an adult and the backlog problem
When you’re a kid, you have all the time in the world to play games, just no money to buy them. As you become older, the opposite becomes true. There’s money to buy games, just no time to play them. So the games pile up.
About a year ago, I decided to replace the flooring in my office. While cleaning out my Closet of Curiosities (aka junk), it gave me the opportunity to go through my moderately sized collection of PS3 games. An embarrassingly large number of which I had never finished. So I resolved that I was going to take a crack at them again. So I pulled out Red Dead Redemption at the start of the summer and started playing. Then I went on vacation, and the game got put down again. When I came back, Yakuza 0 came out on PC, and that began to occupy my time.
You talk to a lot of adult gamers these days and we all have the same issue. We already have a stack of games, but then something else comes a long that tickles our fancy, or worse, it’s on sale. So we buy it, and play it for a bit. Then life gets in the way, leaving it to be put down and forgotten about. Heck, there are games in my Steam library that I bought during the big sales years ago, and never even fired up.
So why do we keep doing this to ourselves? We know we don’t have time, and that buying games we’ll never play is a waste of money. I suppose we’re all just chasing novelty though, and we want to play what everyone else is. That’s the root of the backlog problem in a nutshell. It’s something I definitely want to grab by the horns, and I bet you do as well.
Over on Reddit, groups of gamers have decided to take the 12-on-12 challenge to finally reduce their gaming clutter. There’s a few different variations of this challenge, but I personally like the one on r/patientgamers.
Make a list of 12 games that you’d like to get out of your backlog. Pick one game a month, and don’t play anything else until you’ve completed it. You can set whatever realistic goal you’d like to define as “completed”. Nobody’s expecting a completionist run, but just try to at least finish the main campaign. Once it’s done, move on to the next game in your list and repeat.
The most important part of this challenge is to try not to add to your backlog. If you have a lot of unfinished games, ideally you’d like to avoid picking up any more. Of course there’s going to be some new releases that come along, but at least try to finish three backlog games before buying anything else. And for an additional twist, if you come across a game in your backlog that you just don’t like, try gifting it to someone who might enjoy it.
So for my 12-in-12 list, I’ve compiled the following in no particular order.
- Yakuza Kiwami
- Yakuza 6: The Song of Life
- Yakuza 0
- Nier: Automata
- Assassin’s Creed Syndicate
- Red Dead Redemption
- The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
- Valkyria Chronicles 4
- A Hat in Time
- Kingdom Come: Deliverance
- Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice
- Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
- Shadow of the Tomb Raider
- God of War 4
Okay, there’s fourteen here, but it doesn’t really matter how many you pick as long as you have a plan. Some of these I’ve already started. A few I’m already well into. So those should, in theory, be quick to knock off.
The other benefit of this challenge, besides getting value out of our purchases, is it forces us to make time to game.
Gaming, quite bluntly, is low priority entertainment in our lives, as it should be. Though I think it’s important that we take the time to do what we love. With all the stresses we deal with on a daily basis, we all need to decompress. While we’re all busy, try to at least schedule some game time into your calendar. And if you don’t get your list done within a year, don’t sweat it. Just keep going. When you’re finally done, resolve to only buy new games you know you’ll play and finish. That’ll keep your collection, and your wallet, under control.
I’d love to hear what your 12-in-12 Challenge list is. Leave it down in the comments below.
