Иιɢʜᴛᴍᴀᴢᴇ

Backlog Organisation - Advice and Experience Wanted

Hey there !

Only a few days here and I’m already spamming the Activities with questions and organisations topics.
I would like to know how you organise your own backlog to be able to go through it without feeling burnt after a few games. After all, I’m new at trying to find a strategy to reduce my backlog and I like to learn from other people’s experiences and creativity.
I tried to find the “revilheart approach” as it’s named in the “Getting Started” guide, but the strategy isn’t exactly explained in all the topics I could find. If I got it right, it consists in picking 5 games and making a giveaway once those 5 are done ?


My organisation attempt so far

For now I have several lists which are classed as focus needed and length :

  • Currently Playing : Explanatory.
  • Main Target : Mostly Playing Appreciated games and some specific I need to play through before a certain date.
  • Kill Me ! Game I already began and have absolutely no reason to not finish.
  • Side Dish : Games which don’t require a lot of focus and can be played on the side. Perfect when you’re roleplaying or when you need to unwind for 5mn.
  • Slow burn : Long games or games which need to be played in small sessions to be edible. Those games aren’t expected to be finished within a month.
  • Neverending Story : Everything that doesn’t have an end per se, including online, co-op, RTS, etc.
  • Shame on U : While I’ll give a try to most of my games, some will straight go into that pile as I know that I won’t enjoy them all. This list will reset each month and isn’t available on my profile. Nobody needs an Ophélie ear worm…. Except those games.

Beside this, I think I’ll try to Stream once in a while, I’m unsure if it’s a good idea to make a public post, maybe I’ll keep it on private if it’s possible to follow members ?


Now that’s your turn ! Tell me how you organise your backlog to be able to chew it ! Do you have a special technique ? What do you do to not get discouraged ?

I WANNA KNOW EVERYTHING !

Cece09

I don’t really have a special technique myself. I still struggle with certain games like for example my portal 2 right now. I’m still going through it but it’s been like a month and I am avoiding it like the plague right now. I just personally go for 1 story at a time with 1 game and if it’s part of a set to not play anything else or it turns into portal 2 where I just don’t end up playing it quick enough. That’s my biggest problem, I have plenty of games where I don’t play it for even a day and then bye bye, I can’t see you anymore.
So basically play everything in the set before anything else and only stick to 1 at a time or I will just ignore it. All of them should be completed quick enough too or I will just drop it.

Also you can follow members if you press the heart next to the people but I can’t say if it will tell anyone if you don’t let it show up in the activity feed since I don’t use the thing. You could also try posting in the group discussion, might get someone who will see

Иιɢʜᴛᴍᴀᴢᴇ

I do have similar problem as you have with Portal 2, games I actually like but can’t play for a long time before it’s too much. I placed those in the s”Slow Burn” list and decided to just play those once in a while in order to not feel like it’s just too much. I also added a certain number of those type of games in that list, so if I don’t feel like playing one, I can try another.. Maybe cycling between those games would help you as well ? After all, the goal is for it to be fun, if you can’t play more than one hour a specific game, then don’t force yourself.
I like your technique, I don’t think I can stick to one game at time unless it’s short enough as I have a lot of puzzle games I play on the side. How do you do for really long games such as Final Fantasy licence ? Do you manage to play that game and only that one ?

I also added you to my white list here and on Steamgifts (I meant to do that but constantly forgot), I’ll tell you if I have a notification and / or see your post in the activities.
For now I’m not part of the group as I only joined BLAEO a few days ago, but I’ll try to post there if I’m accepted to the group at some point.

PS: You have so many completed games, I’m impressed !

Cece09

I’m pretty good with the long games, since I don’t normally play with sound I can easily grind out games for hours. However its when I start listening to games I struggle, hence the trouble with portal 2. Since I’m listening to it, I’m struggling to spend ages on it but I also don’t want to decide near the end that I don’t want to listen anymore even though I am enjoying it a bunch. I also don’t mind playing 2 games at the same time depending on what they are but generally if possible I will stick to just 1 game at 1 time and since I do have my stories I don’t think it ends up to much of a problem since I’m still getting a variety there.

Oh and on activities if you press the heart it will show everyone you’ve given the heart to. Also I have completed a lot more however before I joined this site I decided to replay through a bunch of stories so my number should be a lot around 200 instead of 150

IcyGlare

I have a very small backlog right now, but here’s what I did when it was larger (before BLAEO):

  1. Went through all my games and deleted everything that I didn’t think I’d play.
  2. Made a “now playing” list containing 5 games.
  3. Installed and played only the games from the list. After finishing a game, I moved it to the “beaten/completed” list. If I didn’t feel like continuing after playing for around 30 minutes to 1 hour, I moved it to the “won’t play/abandoned” list.
  4. Replaced the game/s removed from the “now playing” list with something from the backlog.
  5. Repeated the previous steps until the backlog was gone.

Oh, and before I did the above, I stopped adding games to my backlog, meaning that I stopped acquiring games that I didn’t think I’d play immediately.

Иιɢʜᴛᴍᴀᴢᴇ

Your lack of backlog is indeed impressive ! I don’t think I’ll stop adding games, as I’m part of Steamgifts and I’ll keep participating to giveaways.
Did you have experiences like Cece, as in games you would enjoy but struggle to play for a reason or another ? How did you do to eventually finish those ?

IcyGlare

Hmm… If I’m enjoying a game, I usually play it until completion. The only game I remember enjoying, but later on struggled to play was Pillars of Eternity. I liked the game itself, but those “loading screens of eternity” annoyed me enough to drop it. It’s still in my “won’t play/abandoned” list. I doubt it’s gonna be removed from that list any time soon… I think I’m suffering from “medieval fantasy setting fatigue syndrome” (yeah, I just made that up).

My method didn’t require me to completely stop adding games… only those that I didn’t think I’ll be able to play within a few months from acquisition. Clearing my backlog back in 2014-2015 actually made me more selective about the games that I acquire.

Иιɢʜᴛᴍᴀᴢᴇ

That’s great !

Trav

I’m on the casual/lenient side of backlog play. Mainly, I have three types of games that I play:

Monthly Picks I’ll choose something from BLAEO’s Monthly theme, something from my own Book+Game challenge list , and one of the VNs from tsupertsundere’s masterlist. These are (hopefully) completed by month’s end and usually skew towards 10 hours or less playtime each.

Co-op Games with Friends At any given time I usually have a long term co-op game(s) going with good gaming friends of mine. There’s no deadline to ‘complete’ these games since my playtime with them drags out for months. I do try to earn achievements along the way but not in the structured way I do my Monthly Picks.

Palate Cleansers This is pretty much any random game I play to kill some time between the big games, normally puzzles, point-n-clicks, free games, walking sims and so on.

Mostly I organize things in lists to keep track of what I want to do. I think balance is so important here – yes try to complete games on the backlog (that’s why we’re all here, right?) but also you should have fun with it too!

Иιɢʜᴛᴍᴀᴢᴇ

I agree with you, thanks for your insight, I admit I don’t know how to manage the co-op games as well, I think I’ll adopt your method :) .

Minamimoto

I do something similar as s17tabris. There are always five games on my “currently playing” list and I cycle through them, using the lucky dice to decide which one comes next for the day. This list also contains games you call “Slow Burn” but with dicing it probably won’t be picked all the time. But if I seriously can’t get myself to play those games I simply put them aside and wait for a BLAEO user to pick it for me in the monthly challenges. Those ones always give me some more motivation :)

Иιɢʜᴛᴍᴀᴢᴇ

I don’t think I’ll follow the monthly challenge for some time but it’s definitely something to consider to motivate yourself.

Traqie

I usually have one multiplayer game I play between everything else (right now it’s Apex Legends).
If you’re not part of Play or Pay (PoP) then you should try apply in SG forums, it’s a great way to at least beat one game from your backlog every month.
After that I either play what I feel like or go alphabetically from my library - one from top and one from bottom. I recently considered doing one from middle too.

Иιɢʜᴛᴍᴀᴢᴇ

Thanks for the advice, I’ll have a look at Play or Pay. I feel like it’s similar to Playing Appreciated and Play a Game you Won on Steamgifts which are two groups I’m part of.

uguleley

I also started out with batches (a.k.a. the revilheart approach), I usually picked 5 games as different from each other as possible. It was a good system, it helps you narrow down your choices for a while instead of being overwhelmed with your whole library. Over time as the backlog has reduced I’ve dropped batches since the pool of remaining games isn’t as huge anymore and I generally have an idea what game I want to try next. Monthly themes have always been a good opportunity to try something new, too.

I’ve began to get used to the idea that some games will end up in “won’t play” category if I’m not having fun with them. I’ll usually try to spend at least two decent play sessions (2-3 hours) before I’ll abandon a game. I also don’t consider the “won’t play” status permanent, some games deserve a second chance and might end up being fun another time.

On your question about not getting discouraged; I haven’t found an answer for that. D: I’ll lose my gaming mood from time to time and there’s not a good way to try to push through it. On those occasions I’ll usually play old favourites that are easy and familiar to pick up and wait until I’m more motivated to dig into new games.

Иιɢʜᴛᴍᴀᴢᴇ

Do you think that using that batches method helped you to know how to handle your backlog better ? By this I mean that you’re not using the method anymore, but do you pick the same sort of games still as if you were still using it ?

uguleley

I’d say it has changed a little bit, now that I pick games one by one I’ll more likely choose something that I’ve been itching to play. When I picked games in batches I did a little research to ensure variety so there was a bigger chance I picked up games outside of my usual go-to genres. These days it’s the monthly themes that encourage me to pick something different so I’m still satisfied with variety. :)

Иιɢʜᴛᴍᴀᴢᴇ

Thanks for this addition :)