Between PlayStation Plus, Microsoft Game Pass, and the hole in your heart where the ability to love used to sit, it’s easy to build a huge backlog. Games often take hundreds of hours to beat – even “shorter” games usually last the full length of a television season. So it’s only natural to buy 20 JRPGs during a Steam sale that move at the speed of frozen molasses.
Being behind on games can feel like a blessing and a curse. On the one hand you have all those games! Remember when you were a kid, “Someday I’ll spend my money on as many games as I want”? Well, good news: that day is today! You are already doing it!
On the other hand, by now you have learned that life is meaningless and kindness is just a transaction. Having thousands of games over decades of console generations isn’t always the key to good times you want to believe when buying entertainment in bulk.
Instead, game backlogs can often feel like homework: Do you play the triple-A adventure game everyone is talking about right now or the indie game about depressed plants visiting a burn ward? The fighting game with beloved pop culture characters or a game called Sex With Hitler? That last game literally exists, folks. And no, I haven’t played it, so if it’s subversive in a cool way or something, hurrah hurrah.
But what if there was a way to get rid of your backlog? What if you could play as Garfield in a fighting game and have sex with Hitler? You would feel great! Short. Until you realize all you had in front of you was complaining about being behind. Without that backlog, you have no excuse not to play remakes of The Last of Us that seem to be coming out on the same annual schedule as Madden.
That’s why I’ve put together this handy list of tips on how to never get rid of your game lag.
5. Buy game bundles whether you want those games or not
Bundles are arguably the most efficient way to spend money on games to add to your backlog. For the price of one or two games you will never play, you can get many games you will never play!
Maybe you’re not a fan of Europa Universalis – maybe you don’t like big strategy games at all! – but there’s no reason you can’t spend $30 to own all the games and downloadable content in the series. Watch in wonder as you enter each of the twenty Steam codes, download the game, then delete it in four months when you need the space.
On the plus side, many bundles go to important causes and charities, so at least you’re helping others while destroying yourself.
4. Count literally every game you have by hand
Yes, most consoles and game stores can tell you how many games you have in your collection. But one game is a tragedy; a million games is a statistic. Seeing the sheer number of games you have, you won’t succeed until you count each one individually by hand.
That’s right, open your bin of Super Nintendo games that you can eventually play, despite having the entire SNES library on an emulator that fits in your pocket. Count each of those games. Even the jokes. Count them all. Write down their names.
Browse your Steam library. Count one by one. Each reissue and remake counts as its own game, because you’re not out yet either.
Do you want to feel even worse? Count each game in a collection. If you’ve never beaten any of the games in Sonic Origins, you’ve got four games left on the list.
Every time you fall behind, remember that you once really thought there was a chance that you would play Gran Turismo 7. Think how that game, which can take hundreds of hours to complete, is just one item in your archive of pain.
Look at the number. See how long it took you to find out how many games you have. Then look in the mirror and see what you really are.
3. Find out the average length of each game in your backlog
Now that you have a list of all the games in your backlog, head over to a website like How Long To Beat and find out how long it would take to complete them all. Not even 100 percent. Just to beat. You’re not going to 100 percent Final Fantasy 15. Quit it.
Of course, many smaller indie games won’t be in some databases. Let’s be generous and say that each of them has about five hours of content. Some are shorter, some are longer, but if you can’t find the average length of a game, that’s a nice placeholder.
If it’s an MMO, that’s harder to define, so let’s say 80 hours. You’ll probably need more to get the full experience, but that’s a conservative estimate. After 80 hours you know if you want to stop or not. That’s about 80 episodes of Law & Order: SVU, but who’s counting.
Excellent.
You know how long – on average – each of your games lasts. Now add everything up. Everything. Any length of any game.
Look at that number.
That’s not how long you’ve been playing your games. That’s how long you have until you’re done playing your games.
2. Think about whether it’s even worth trying
Do you have a family? A task? Maybe looking for a family and a job? Those take time. Have you ever eaten food? It takes time. Walked out on a clear day to feel the sun on your back and the joy of just being? Huge time sucking.
If you want to get rid of this backlog, you need to focus. Even if you only have dozens of games in your backlog as a meek kid, that’s still hundreds or hundreds of hours of work ahead of you.
And make no mistake: it will be work. Each side quest will feel like doing chores on a never-ending to-do list. The good news is that the ten games on your list that focus on physical labor should feel like chores. So that’s good.
Each RPG takes weeks of your time – and you own a lot. Every strategy game has a tutorial that is longer than you want to be on this earth. When the world map appears on a platformer, you will recognize that there is no escape.
Is it worth it? Is it worth playing these games? You’ve been putting off Deus Ex: Mankind Divided for six years now. Is today the day you finally jump in? Probably not. You probably won’t even think about it until you get past the gray entry on your Steam list.
Why did you buy all these games? To recover from the horrors of the world?
1. Buy more games to take a rest from the horrors of the world
Life is hard, but the Steam Fall sale is probably just around the corner. You should definitely not start any big games on your list until you see if you want to start another big game that you don’t already have.
0 Comments