How to Tackle Your Videogame Backlog

Are you like me and have a massive selection of games that you have collected but, after years, still haven't touched? With crazy Steam sales or bundles available on sites like Fanatical, it is easy to grow your collection without spending too much money. I know that my library on Steam has a lot of games that I haven’t even touched yet, so I figure I should at least try them out and see what these titles are all about. You never know: there may be some hidden gems here to discover!

Now the hard part: where to start? Facing a massive collection is daunting; it is easy to be paralysed by choice. I know this is a big issue for me, so I’ve been trying to figure out a way to get past it. I could do it alphabetically, starting from the top of my Steam library and working my way down, but I think having it selected randomly would be more fun. I have found a free random selector online that allows you to enter all the different titles that you are trying to decide between. If you are trying to decide between titles you have on Steam, the Steam Library Randomizer will pick a game randomly from all the games you own, and you don’t even need to put the games in yourself, which saves a ton of work! Once it selects a game, it will also assign you a random achievement for that game to complete. If your backlog is on console, this random picker can support up to 10,000 options, and it also lets you select how many things you want to pick. I just did one because I didn’t have to choose between two games, as that kind of defeats the purpose of this. There are tonnes of other sites that can do this, so it will be easy to find one that works. For another option, my fellow writer, Artura Dawn, wrote about using PlayTracker to tackle your backlog, so be sure to check that out, too!

Once the game you will play has been selected for you, remember that you aren't required to beat it. I think this thinking is part of the problem: gamers think that if they start a game, they are forced to complete it. I figure as long as you try it out long enough to determine if you like it and want to continue, that’s all that is required at this stage. If you absolutely hate it, then don’t keep playing. If you don’t get any enjoyment from it, move on to a different title. If it feels like a chore to play, that’s not a good thing; at least you gave it a shot. Personally, I try the game for at least half an hour as we do in our So I Tried… article series; that amount of time is usually long enough to give you an idea of what to expect in that title.

There are so many games that I can’t remember what each of them is like, so I have also started a Google Sheet to mark the genre of each of the games and a bit of info about them so in the future, when I see the title again, I’ll have a bit of an idea of what it is like. So if I know that I’m not in the mood for something like a precision platformer, then I know that if one pops up, I should select a different random game. This also allows me to mark the ones that I have already tried and leave myself a reminder about whether I enjoyed them or not. If you have a lot of games, it's hard to remember what each game was like.

Using this technique, I am going to try to make a bit of a dent in my game library. It’s going to take a long time, but at least I am trying some of these titles out! There may be some games in here that you absolutely love, but you will never know if you never try them out. For me, Attack of the Mutant Penguins will be the first game that I’m going to play from my backlog as I try to get through the hundreds of titles in my library that have no playtime! Actually, since I can't figure out how the controls work for this game, I will jump to the next choice Legends of Kingdom Rush. Keep an eye out for the So I Tried articles I will be writing based on these randomly chosen games!

I hope this gives you an idea of how to tackle your backlog and get past the feeling of being paralysed by choice. If you have any other methods that you use, leave a message in the comments below!