Do you find yourself having too many games, as in having a long list of games you have yet to play?
I have such a list of unplayed or barely touched games, approaching about 1500 games give or take 1-200.

How do you deal with it? Hmm, thinking about it, if you have the same issue you obviously do not deal with it either lol.

Do you have a plan?

Same story everywhere.

Every morning I turn on my TV: 500 channels and nothins on. :P

Yep,same thing. Deal with it? I don't worry about it.

I mostly separated my library in what I consider my "real backlog" and everything else... I got about 300 games of which I have finished about 140 now. I basically consider 150 games the real backlog and once I'm done with that at batches of 10s from the everything category. The basic problem for me is to avoid thinking about gaming in quantitative terms (playing 1/300 of my backlog) and hence create the category of "real backlog".

Otherwise I also continuously ask myself how many similar games I have in my library when something comes up where I'm like: "this looks great", but than I go like: "but you have X similar games unplayed (RPGs for example), so it is unlikely that this one will be significantly different".

However... for 1500, got no good tactic there... might hit you up sometime for an interview since I consider writing an article about the backlog thing. :D

I have pretty much the same amount of games I still need to play. My advantage is that I don't play games with DRM (so nothing on Steam) as well as not paying more than 15€ for a bunch of 0s and 1s. Looking at physical games these days...they are all infested with Steam DRM, so I'm good in that regard. That's the reason why the ratio of games played per year/games bought per year is in my favor and I will eventually whittle the pile down in the coming decades.

Nope. I don't have too many games. I just have too little time!

You made me laugh.
Sure thing, feel free to contact me.
BTW, 1500 of digital only unplayed games. Not counting physical releases or other systems.
So yeah, it's worse. I like the way you think.

There's no way to approach it. I'm in the same area with over 1500 games, a couple hundred unplayed and i never even get around to them, i go "let's try this game out, is in my library since 2013, never played" but then i usually end up starting some game i already played a lot like gta online because....i don't even know why.

All those sales aren't just positive, they have their negative sides. I see it with some of my friends on steam who really collect everything. They buy 50 cheap games at once to throw them on their massive (talking about 3000-5000 games they own) and they never even play them, they just collect.

My way:
- I only buy 1 game if I played 2 games at least (it does not matter the discount I can get... I will still wait).
- I only put games in my backlog if:
• I bought them with my own money (giveaways and things like that are not in my backlog, just something I will or will not play).
- Everything I buy now I should play now. FIFO (First In First Out).

Right now I don't have many games in my backlog but they are all really long RPGs (my problem is I just love long RPGs and I don't have lot's of time). Also I made a mistake in the beginning with lots of bundle... Also I was not able to stick to my rules always... in christmas of 2017 I just bought fallout 3-new vegas-oblivion-doom 3-wolfenstein 1-cuphead in a day... I already played cuphead-doom 3-wolfenstein and fallout 3 (and I finished system shock 2 that I was playing from my backlog)... But I still need to play new vegas and oblivion from last year (and I almost bought dragon's dogma this month), and it was one year with the same backlog (if I was smart 2019 I would be able to be almost backlog-free, at least with a smaller backlog).
It's easy to lose focus but you should think: "even if I buy this game right now at a small price, if I don't play it it's a waste. I should wait, this discount will come back, and even if I will pay more it will be great if I play it"

My advice:
- Make a list of what you really want to play.
- Do not buy new games if you don't want to play them now. You will get another discount sooner or later.
- For every new game you should play at least 2 games in your backlog.
- Avoid bundles or buy them only for 1, max 2, games to play as soon as you get them.

You will not be able to play 1500 games in one life, just take a real list of what you think you should really play and what you don't really like. Be realistic... it should be max 50 games (and it's already a lot of games).

the most important thing is to understand that you should always buy to play now, never buy to play in the future. That's why it's wrong to buy more than one/two games... you should be able to play them and you will not be able to do that if you buy too many games.

I have only 14 games (for while, i'll buy 2 more today), and 6 of them are free. And I really would like to remove them from my library. Well, you know, free stuffs, the hand clicks automatically. But, definitely, I won't play them (I played one, to be fair).

I do have a whole lot of games. Here's how it breaks down:

890 games on Steam - about 300 free or won (Steamgifts and some personally gifted)
34 games on Origin - 33 free
345 games on GOG - 107 purchased for myself, 238 free or gifted to me - (And I've gifted about that many to others, it turns out - who knew?)
19 on UPlay - all free
55 on Twitch - all free

I have hidden over 300 games on Steam. Almost all of these are purchases I regret. Either got suckered into buying a bundle that sucked, or especially when I was new to Steam buying games because I thought $5 was insanely cheap - so I spent real money and bought games that in truth I will never play.

On GOG, in the beginning I spent money to buy old games that I remembered so fondly. Truthfully, I will never play many of these ever again. I mean, as much as I love Arcanum, I played it to death back in the day, and I can't imagine I will ever play it again.

When people on GOG or on Steam personally gift me a game, I try to always fire it up and give it a go. I usually don't dive in and play the hell out of it right then (although sometimes I do!). But I give it a try so that I'll have some feeling attached to it when I scan the list to choose the next game to play.

But, truth to tell, there are many games gifted to me by generous souls that I will never get around to playing properly. Sigh. I have realized, though, that rather than feel guilty about that, I will instead gift games to other people. That is where the fairness comes into play.

And of the games I have paid my own good money for that sit as yet unplayed? Well, dammit, I intend to play every one of them!

I lie. I wish I could play every one of them.

But a lot of them kinda suck. I mean, take for instance Grand Theft Auto IV - which I have with all the add-ons. I have fired that thing up half a dozen times since I acquired it. And I hate driving around - which is an awful lot of the game. And I kinda hate the cousin on the cell phone thing. So, I'm not going to really play it ever. And I feel sad that I bought it and it sits on my virtual shelf unused.

I don't finish most games. I've said this around here before, but I feel no compunction about not getting to the end fo most games. It is my opinion that most games are too long for their own good. A good puzzle or strategy game is endlessly replayable - chess, Civ IV... but a lot of games are just padded with content that simply takes time to get through. A good editor could be employed for many games. Subjective as to which ones in many cases, but still true for a lot of games. So, not finishing does not bother me, but I sure would like to get to the point where I'm content to put down a whole bunch of games.

All taken together, I figure I have about 500 games either bought in earnest with desire to play or gifted to me and desire to play. Manageable.

The real problem is not what I have in my library - it's the insanity whereby I continue to acquire new games faster than I play through old ones! That is an unsustainable practice.

EDIT: Actually, there is another problem with having a big library of games. You get sucked into timesinks like Steamgifts, trading, bundle watching, etc. Big wastes of time!

There is no such thing as too many games... provided the games are good.

He he. My problem is more that I actually own a decent number of Japanese games (as well as other media) and I still haven't started learning Japanese since the possiblities aren't good around here. If I never come around that, I would definitely regret it a lot.

Blasphemy! Burn the heretic! There is no such thing as too many games! :-)