VGCollect Forum
General and Gaming => General => Topic started by: dhaabi on January 19, 2026, 11:07:41 am
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For the majority of us here, we have gaming backlogs that seem like they never shorten but instead only increase in size. So, how long is your backlog, and how much time do you project it will realistically take you to complete it should no new titles were to be added to it?
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Never. And I'm 100% okay with that.
I constantly add games to the backlog and replay games I've already beat. Even if I live for another 40 years and am able to beat 60 games on average a year (40 x 60 = 2400 games beat), I'll still have games I've yet to play. However, I don't see this as some sort of failure or act of futility, but rather an opportunity to play as many games as I can in my relatively short time on this planet. Even if there are games I never get to, I'd rather think of all the ones I did play, good or bad. Obviously, I prioritize games that I think I'll like more or ones that are widely considered good games. I've also become more okay with dropping a game if I don't like it, especially if it's a longer game (10+ hours). If I do live to be 80, I hope i get to look back and smile at all the amazing gaming experiences I had throughout my life.
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While I have a bazillion games in libraries thanks to freebies, I actually don't have tons of actual, genuine, backlog lol I'd be surprised if I have more than like 20 games at most that I'd want to actually play that I haven't gotten to yet.
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I just look at my back log like my retirement reward. When we get to a certain age, we won't want to leave the house as much, and god damn those video games will be delightful :D
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I think it will. Historically speaking, the untouched games eventually get played or they get traded in because I lose interest and/or my taste changes.
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I just look at my back log like my retirement reward. When we get to a certain age, we won't want to leave the house as much, and god damn those video games will be delightful :D
With all due respect, why not start playing them now? Obviously everyone's situation is going to be different (work, kids, and other responsibilities obviously play a factor), but there is no guarantee of tomorrow or that you'll ever reach retirement, either due to death or other unforeseen life circumstances. Why not just jump into the backlog now? At least that's how I look at it. I definitely don't want to wait until I'm old and possible unable to play games for one reason or another to really tackle my backlog. I want to do it now while I'm still able to.
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I just look at my back log like my retirement reward. When we get to a certain age, we won't want to leave the house as much, and god damn those video games will be delightful :D
With all do respect, why not start playing them now? Obviously everyone's situation is going to be different (work, kids, and other responsibilities obviously play a factor), but there there is no guarantee of tomorrow or that you'll ever reach retirement, either due to death or other unforeseen life circumstances. Why not just jump into the backlog now? At least that's how I look at it. I definitely don't want to wait until I'm old and possible unable to play games for one reason or another to really tackle my backlog. I want to do it now while I'm still able to.
Yep. That's why I'm starting to delve in now, because I'm done collecting at this point which frees up a lot of mental-bandwidth and the games on my shelf are looking more appealing to me than ever before, now that I'm not preoccupied with thinking about getting more all of the time.... I spent a lot of time building this thing up, and like you said, tomorrow is not a guarantee. You have to take the opportunity that today gives you to enjoy your time on Earth. Always forget what the saying is... life is what happens, while we're busy making other plans?
It's time to bust those games out.
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For myself at this moment, I have logged exactly 400 games as part of my ongoing backlog. Of course, I'll play games not backlogged, the backlog will grow in size, and certain games will eventually retire from my backlog without ever having being played in the years to come. In practice, my backlog will almost certainly never be complete so long as my interest in the hobby remains. However, the question I proposed in the opening post—how long do you project for you to complete your current backlog at its current state with no new titles being added to it—is what I'm most curious about.
When thinking about that focused question, it's obviously difficult to come up with an idea since my personal backlog is so large. But were I to only play games from my backlog while maintaining the rate of play I've had these past few years, I imagine it to be around fifteen years at least. Based on numbers, that's nearly a halved rate of completion that I've been steadying, but a sizable part of my backlog includes games with lengthy completion times. Of course, I tend to play through games slowly while wanting to engage in as much of their content that I'm interested in should the effort and time to do so feels balanced, so it may take even longer.
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A year ago I would have said 50 years or something. Partly because I had found that a lot of the games I had I didn't actually care for enough to play. The 52 Games challenge helped with that. It helped me go through and actually play stuff I owned and many types of games I used to like I had outgrown. Entire genres became dead to me, such as platformers and especially 3D platformers.
Now I will say never but that is because life and lifestyle changes brought me to a point where I'm not interested in playing games. The interest isn't actually gone, but the priority for them is way down. I've only played 3 games in the past 6 months: MLM, Dropsum v2 and Diablo 3 (only in the past couple weeks sporatically). All of which are "endless" so they have no ability to progress through anything.
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Entire genres became dead to me
This has been a harsh realization for me as well. While I wouldn't say any genre is 100%, absolutely dead to me, there are a few that I enjoy significantly less compared to 15+ years ago. JRPGs specifically have really taking a downward slide when it comes to my enjoyment of them. It's a genre I want to love again just as much as I did in the 2000s and early 2010s, but I just can't bring myself to get into the vast majority of them. To a lessor extent, I've been finding I'm not as big on RTS games as I used to be. Every time I've gone back and tried replaying an old Westwood Studios RTS game and various others I just get bored or overly frustrated.
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I hope to have mine finished in the next 4-6 years. Finally setting a hard limit on my 8th-gen wish list and the steadily dwindling number of new games I actually want to play will be a big help in getting caught up. The bulk of my backlog is in 8th-gen games, with the PS4 (my largest collection with over 200 games once I complete it) making up the largest percentage. On some consoles like the Switch, my backlog is nearly nonexistent due to buying so few games for the platform and generally playing them through as soon as I get them. I don't even consider myself as collecting for the PS5, for which I'll probably never have more than 40 games. There just aren't very many new games that actually appeal to me. As far as 7th-gen and earlier, my collections are basically finished so I'm more focused on digitizing them so those games will outlive their original hardware and be more convenient to play.
I've deliberately kept my collection small over the years because I didn't want a massive backlog or to waste time playing games I didn't really care about. I remember about 6-7 years ago looking at my TV setup with 6 consoles, realizing that it wasn't even half of the consoles I owned, and concluding that I needed to curb my "plastic addiction." I actually got out of the hobby for about 3 years where I hardly bought anything, but eventually recovered from burnout because there was still stuff I wanted to play that I didn't own.
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For games that I already own based on HowLongToBeat Main+Extras median time, my backlog is a little over 3841 hours. At my peak of the hobby, I've played about 500 hours a year. Nowdays, it's around 100. If I don't buy anything new I still have enough games to play for the rest of my life.
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My backlog grows faster than I can play. It's like a Hydra. Finish one, three more appear. If I stopped buying games today, maybe 3-4 years?
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My backlog is currently 1,010 games. Id say short games are 5 hours and long ones are 40 hours. Id give that a 20 hour liberal average because I tend to savor games and play slow and I have a ton of story driven rpg games in that backlog. So that is
20,200 hours
Or roughly 846.2 entire days or 2.3 entire years without break or sleep.
Now in all seriously I doubt ill ever be able to allocate over 6 hours per day max to games and that is heavy side. Id say closer to 3.5 average. So that is about 1,277 hours per year. I'll give it 2000 to be generous and make the math easier.
Thatd be 10 or so whole years to finish the backlog with no breaks, no other media, and no missing days.
Then I add games all the time.
So id say the general answer to the question is
NEVER lol.
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Never…
I have a lot of games. I keep buying games.
I play the same games over and over.
I never get to the new games.
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For me it's entirely up to how you define "backlog" I guess.
If it's just games I've bought and haven't played, I could realistically do it in a couple years. It's somewhere between 100-200 games and I generally play between 30-50 games a year (depending on the games I play. If it's lots of RPG's that number is closer to 30). My collection is actually not as massive as it once was cause I purged a good 50% of it like 7 or 8 years ago. I went from just collecting everything that looked interesting and putting it on my shelf to creating a highly curated collection featuring only my top 50 games on each system. So I've actually beaten a good 90% of the games in my collection, with most of the unfinished ones being games I picked up in bundles on Steam.
But if you broaden the definition to just "any game I want to play but haven't", it will take much, much longer. I am constantly looking for new games to add to my collection. It's really fun for me to find a game that makes me rethink my collection. Like "if I add this to my collection, what will I take out". On top of that there are systems I haven't really collected at all yet like the Famicom and Super Famicom, So I'll probably have to play through 100+ games before I can settle on my top 50 I actually add to my collection.
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For me it's entirely up to how you define "backlog" I guess.
If it's just games I've bought and haven't played, I could realistically do it in a couple years. It's somewhere between 100-200 games and I generally play between 30-50 games a year (depending on the games I play. If it's lots of RPG's that number is closer to 30). My collection is actually not as massive as it once was cause I purged a good 50% of it like 7 or 8 years ago. I went from just collecting everything that looked interesting and putting it on my shelf to creating a highly curated collection featuring only my top 50 games on each system. So I've actually beaten a good 90% of the games in my collection, with most of the unfinished ones being games I picked up in bundles on Steam.
But if you broaden the definition to just "any game I want to play but haven't", it will take much, much longer. I am constantly looking for new games to add to my collection. It's really fun for me to find a game that makes me rethink my collection. Like "if I add this to my collection, what will I take out". On top of that there are systems I haven't really collected at all yet like the Famicom and Super Famicom, So I'll probably have to play through 100+ games before I can settle on my top 50 I actually add to my collection.
I definitely subscribe the the more broad definition of a backlog. I also did a huge downsize several years back and am continuing to downsize still, albeit at a much less aggressive pace. Any game that's in my collection currently will be played at some point. If I ever come to the realization that I won't play that game ever, to eBay it goes. Also, if I play a game, don't like it or I can't see myself ever wanting to play it again, it also gets sold off. Still, there are a ton of games I don't own that I plan on playing eventually too. Essentially my backlog is never ending and I'll never truly complete it, even if I live to be 100.
On a side note, you should participate in the 52 games challenge we do on here. Pretty much it's users trying to beat at least 52 games in their backlog a year. It's a fun thread and I always enjoy seeing what others are currently playing. Would love to see someone else participate in it. The more, the merrier lol.
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I went from just collecting everything that looked interesting and putting it on my shelf to creating a highly curated collection featuring only my top 50 games on each system.
I am constantly looking for new games to add to my collection. It's really fun for me to find a game that makes me rethink my collection. Like "if I add this to my collection, what will I take out".
I don't know if you catalog your collection anywhere, but I'm curious what comprises it. Actually, what would be even more interesting is to see just how it's changed since you've begun downsizing in this manner to see how tastes have refined.
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Even if I lived 100 lifetimes there is no way I could ever finish all the games I wanted too. I'm always adding a new game. But I enjoy collecting just the same and throwing in a random game every now and then to check out is fun too.
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I definitely subscribe the the more broad definition of a backlog. I also did a huge downsize several years back and am continuing to downsize still, albeit at a much less aggressive pace. Any game that's in my collection currently will be played at some point. If I ever come to the realization that I won't play that game ever, to eBay it goes. Also, if I play a game, don't like it or I can't see myself ever wanting to play it again, it also gets sold off. Still, there are a ton of games I don't own that I plan on playing eventually too. Essentially my backlog is never ending and I'll never truly complete it, even if I live to be 100.
On a side note, you should participate in the 52 games challenge we do on here. Pretty much it's users trying to beat at least 52 games in their backlog a year. It's a fun thread and I always enjoy seeing what others are currently playing. Would love to see someone else participate in it. The more, the merrier lol.
Yeah if we use the broader definition, I definitely am not finishing it lol There are hundreds of Indie games alone on my Steam wishlist I someday want to try..... Let alone the consoles I haven't started collecting yet as I mentioned.
I'll give the thread you mentioned a look in a bit. I got some down time at work later, sounds fun to hop in.
I don't know if you catalog your collection anywhere, but I'm curious what comprises it. Actually, what would be even more interesting is to see just how it's changed since you've begun downsizing in this manner to see how tastes have refined.
Unfortunately a good 80-90% of my collection is in Canada while I live in Japan. The only real collection manager I have right now is Game-eye, which is only tracking GBA and GBC. I started collecting them when I moved here because I like collecting CIB, but those systems are just too expensive to collect back home. Here though a CIB Pokemon Leaf Green is like $50 lol
My biggest change was probably Xbox 360 and Wii. When shops like EBGames (our Gamestop) were getting rid of their 360 inventory I was right in the middle of my "I want a massive gameroom" phase. They had sales like "Buy 1 get 3 free" and my 360 collection doubled overnight basically.
As to how my taste changed / developed, I definitely was not as critical back when I was just collecting a massive collection cause I just played the games and if they were fun, they were fun. I didn't really "score" my games, I just had a general sense of what games I had fun with (which were most of them).
But I realized when I was forced to reach a specific number and had to cut games, a lot of the games I enjoyed playing at the time actually were not that good (imo) when directly compared with other games. For example, the Medal of Honor reboot on 360. Is it a fun campaign to playthrough? Sure. But it is totally forgettable, doesn't do anything that interesting or unique and is kind of just a cookie cutter FPS campaign. So it got cut from the collection. If I ever want to play a 360 era FPS game again I still have the Call of Duty Modern Warfare Trilogy. The first game imo does so many cool things, and you actually get some really cool characters to follow like Captain Price. I would much rather play through that Trilogy again than 3 other kinda mid FPS games (even if they are fun for what they are worth).
I'm actually moving back later this year so maybe I can do a little post about my 360 collection, what games are in it and why (and maybe explain why some notable games are not in it lol) and get a bit of a discussion going. Might be interesting to get people's thoughts on if they built a similar collection for a system what would they add / remove. Might even get some suggestions on games I should try that might end up going into my collection lol (and if it sparks a good discussion, I could try doing it for the other systems I collect too).
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Never. I have stopped buying new games, but even if I complete a game a week (I generally only play on weekends) I'd be well over 100 before I was close to done.
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Never, I have made peace that I will probably pass away before playing everything, and I am completely fine with it.
Sometimes life goes in the way and you are too busy to do something else, but to be honest with you even when I have time to invest it into playing some of these games I have never played before the truth is that I am sometimes just not in the mood to play it, I just want to instead play Contra again, or any of my Contra games, play a level of Contra Operation Galuga again or just keep farming Contra Returns, and that's enough for me.
Sometimes it just feel good to do what you actually want to instead of forcing you into something and that's is how I feel about a bunch of games that I bought for some reason I can't even remember.
That being said when I am in the mood, I do play some of these games and I end enjoying them and if it's not too annoying I even get all trophies/achievements, I think just play your favorite games is okay, and sometimes convince you to try new experiences is also good.
I will never ever complete my backlog and I think that's completely fine.
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is this thread an april fools joke or what. good one.
(https://media.tenor.com/PG7TQGmTPoMAAAAM/are-you-serious-spiderman.gif)