I own exactly 200 games. My backlog is 28 (according to backloggery that is 14.1% of my collection but I'm pretty sure that's not right).

At the start of the year my backlog was over 50. It makes me happy when I can see I am chipping away at it. I reckon I can get it under 20 (probably around 10.2%) in the next few months. I would love it to be under 10 games by the Christmas sales.

My only source of games is gog.com and humble bundles (and physical games I owned in my youth). I have found lately that more and more I am hoping that a bundle will be something I don't want or already own, the Wednesday sale will be on a game I am not interested in and that releases will be games that I want, but not so much that I can't wait for them to go on sale.

Am I the only one who has these feelings? Do you also have these thoughts? Is something wrong with me? Is there a name for this kind of condition?

My gaming backlog is at least a few hundred titles, if not even more.

And I don't care, I consider it as my library. There are also quite a few movies I might want to see before I die. Maybe I will see them all, maybe not. Maybe they will all go fast-forward in front of my eyes the few seconds before I die by a hungry chimera.

Sure there must be a name for it. I felt different. One year ago I realized I'm buying games because they are cheap and on sale and I only vaguely thought about playing them. I realized it was a waste of money and time and now I only really buy games during christmas sales anymore and in between I play them - which should anyway be the more important thing. Only if my backlog would go considerably below 10 or 5 I would consider buying new games more frequently.

Feel the same way as the OP, EXACTLY the same way, which I can only imagine must totally scare the shit out of him.

FYI I've never bought a bundle. Don't know why.

I dunno, every time I buy a bundle, I play every single game out of it (that I'm actually interested in or that I find interesting) and then stick to those I enjoy. I never complete games for the sake of completing games.

And that's good attitude. Games are hobby, not work. You should finish a game when you feel like it, and when you find that entertaining.

If you don't feel the game is worth being completed, so be it.

No, I don't have that problem.

I have backlog mostly filled with titles I'm not so enthusiastic to play for one reason or other. Right now I have 4 titles in my GOG wishlist I haven't played yet and I'm mildly interested in. Two have missing Linux versions, so any steep sale wouldn't persuade me to buy. The rest is "I want a backup copy one day" type of games.

Other stores either don't allow purchasing from Czech Republic or use DRM. If there is a discounted new game with DRM, I knew long before the sale I wanted it and what price I was willing to pay. These I play immediately after buying and they become a part of my backlog only in the case they weren't fun to play yet I foolishly believe there is a chance I'll finish them :).

A lack of solid interface of Humble Store effectively prevents me from knowing about an interesting sale. A majority of humble bundles contains games I'm not interested in playing, thus I don't feel an urge to buy them.

I feel the same. And my backlog is even bigger. I created a topic about it a while ago, about how big my backlog had become: http://www.gog.com/forum/general/how_many_games_of_your_collection_did_you_actually_play

It's a huge backlog, yet I can't stop myself from buying games from sales so it's grown even bigger since then. The pecentage of 9% finished has dropped even further, as I've bought another 10-15 games since May on GOG, Gamersgate and Steam (and now the Humble Bumble Origin Bundle), yet haven't completed even 1 game since, even though it was summer.

Out of lack of mental energy, I even spent more time gazing over sales than actually playing (it's not only my mental illness that plays it part in lack of energy, it was the stifling heat this summer).

I used to have that problem but GOG and friends ran out of games. ;)


*Carefully reads EULA to see if it's permissible to bring DRM-free games with you into the afterlife.*

Do you think it's legal to play 18+ games in Paradise?

I hope that new releases won't interest me, when I run low of money. ^^

You know you want the latest Groupee's :P
Im sure they will be playing Football Manager 2013 ;)

I agree, but the "problems" start when you find that you enjoy a lot of the games you try, so much that you can't decide anymore which one to play and complete first. If you play them in a row, the row can get pretty long, especially if you keep adding to it with new (bundle) purchases (that would be what most call backlog then). If instead you jump from one to the next and possibly back again eventually, and only ever play whatever you feel like at the moment, your experience might suffer, as some games are hard to pick up again midway through after taking longer breaks from them (unfortunately these tend to be the longer ones).

I know it's all kind of silly and not seldom connected to OCDs, but I think an excess supply of entertainment can make a hobby feel like work sometimes, when it becomes overwhelming. So I can understand why the OP would try to avoid new purchases when still entertained by the games already owned.

I've been suffering from for a while now. How I semi-solved it is taking larger breaks for actual gaming as I've been gaming a lot the last couple of months. That way, when I finally sit down and play something I actually enjoy it more and I'm more likely to finish it (assuming it has some kind of end game but most of my games do). The problem then occurs is that I should buy less games as I finish them too slowly to catch up on due to sales.

The inherent problem to this in my opinion is that it's hard to perceive the most interesting game you want right now and possibly for a while if you're in a mood for a game you want to sink time into. If one could use intuition that X game is going to be really fun and last a while then just dive in and buy it regardless of backlog or sales or other games. This actually not too hard and can be learned but then I've a problem with turning down projects that I enjoy if I see myself wanting to continue in the future, a flexibility I just can't learn.

I've almost had the same feeling -- a feeling that I don't care about a spectacular sale. I said on a post ages ago about the 1penny Divine Divinity thing that it was worth 1 penny to me. Because I'll probably never play it. I didn't get the sequels, because I probably won't ever play them. And it's nothing against Larian. Their games look spectacular. It's just that my library is jammed packed with spectacular games that I haven't played -- and I want to play them.

Also, I don't mind having a big library if I can get the games really cheap. I'm giving a developer that last little bit of sale that they can use to fund more projects for a game I wouldn't normally buy. The benefit to me is that it's in my library and if I have company staying over for a few nights and they want to play a game, I can boot one up. We might play it for just a few hours and never again, but they can be fun like that.