I love our blogging community. I learned about this initiative over at Time To Loot and decided it was worth looking at from an interest and time perspective. He, of course, got them from another blogger (who I have never read) and this is why blogging communities are fun – discovery! Bhagpuss also chimed in, humorously, somewhat forced to by the sounds of it.
I am assuming most of this backlog talk is Steam based, but now things are a bit of a mess. I have Steam but haven’t bought much off of it recently. I am a Premium Subscriber to Origins which has a TON of vault gaming, much of which interests me greatly. So does it count as a backlog if I only have time limited access to it? I think so. So looking at the challenge made me look at Steam, and well, the horror.
I am not doing the challenge or the post the way I should. I am instead looking at different sort Matrixes and how they look. Completely embarrassing, mostly.
Sorting by “Played”, shows two recent games. Slay the Spire (119 hours played), and Torchlight III (alpha), at 8 hours. The time isn’t “recent”, but “all time”. StS was an oldie and a goodie that launched a new characters so I have been there. Torchlight 3 is ex-Torchlight Frontiers, in alpha, and under NDA so I can’t even speak about it anyway. Ready for the next game after those two?
I have to go back to 2018. Yes, seems as though I didn’t play a single game via steam in 2019. Does my gamer card get pulled? Do I get to be some sort of pariah? Or the opposite, perhaps I am the enlightened! Follow me a la Jordan Peterson. Wait, let me think about that reference.
Of the 2018 games, there were 23. Frist on that list is MONSTER HUNTER:WORLD. I used all caps because it is in all caps. It’s the only one on that list in all Caps. Total play time? 47 minutes.
Next up is Path of Exile. 31 minutes. Really gave that one the old college try…
Battletech. Wait, sorry BATTLETECH. Seems I was wrong about MHW. Still, 3 hours!
Metro 2033 at 65 minutes
Warframe 112 hours
Squad 39 minutes
Is that a top 10? (nope, 6). Dungeons and Dragons Online (2 hours), Everquest (88 minutes – I just tried it via steam, but also have the desktop, which has way more than 88 minutes. Good thing Project 1999 isn’t on it…). Lord of the Rings Online (6 hours), Everquest 2 (24 hours), There is 10. 10 always seems like a reasonable number to list.
Hot of the heels of this revelation, what else do I have sorted? By time? All the way back to 2010. Call of Duty Black Ops, Left For Dead 2 (that game needs a remake!) and Fallout: New Vegas are there.
But wait, even further back are “no recorded activity” games – but I know that to not be true as I had played many / several of them.. but maybe not through steam? The last game on that list is Paladins – Public test (and I played a lot of Paladins, would have to dig on my site to find when..)
Scrolling through, games I would play again… March of The Living was fantastic.. not much else. And there are “weird” categorizations on my library. I have 20 games under “current”. Assuming at the time, those were games I was keeping current to play. None of them I am, of course, anymore. Should rename that.
Another Category is 40 under “Completed”. Games I finished or considered finished, I suppose. That makes sense with Baldur’s Gate in there, Batman AAGOTY, etc.
What doesn’t make sense is UNCATEGORIZED 31/142 (111 not listed due to your view filter). I see the 31. What / where are the rest? So that is kind of confusing. But I think it has to do with sub-titles to some games, in that 31/142 are TOOLS or something. Clicking on the filters is confusing
It’s weird to see a game backlog that is over a decade old. I don’ t know if I like the perspective that implies. What I do know, and like, that I am clearly no slave to Steam or the platform – especially when I didn’t touch a single game there in 2019.
My backlog largely consists of something like 50 or 100 console games, some dating back the the PS1 era. I am still enough of a console game collector that I watch the scene and wait for bargains on games that look especially good. I am quite happy to buy something five years after it comes out in a pawn shop for $5, I don’t buy new any more. However, these days I almost exclusively play PC MMOs so all those games are just collecting dust.
Around this time last year we moved and had no internet for almost two weeks (the horror!). That was the first time in ages I have ever made actual progress in that backlog. I have to say, Diablo III was a lot of fun (the PS3 version). I also made it far enough in Phantasy Star Universe on the PS2 to see what the game is really about. I was just about to get going in Vampire the Masquerade on PC, when our internet finally got sorted. I promptly went back to whatever MMO I had been playing and have barely turned a console on (or fired up an offline PC game) since.
I was a launch day Vampire the Masquerade player, so really excited for v2 – although I don’t recall much from v1 (at all), except I enjoyed it. I gave up on consoles when they gave up on backwards compatibility!