Backloggery is always a good idea.

So what does backloggery offer over say something like Gamefaqs my games function?

(which for reference, has shown me I own 785 games, and finished 461 of them, which is kind of impressive...)

Sales happen all the time, there's always, ALWAYS, a next time. The only real question is, do I want to play this right now?

Set yourself a limit on that kind of expenditures. Make a must-have and nice-to-have wishlists. Buy nice-to-have games only when must-haves are all purchased. Keep to a time schedule (like buy games only at a certain day of a week).

Uhm.... Donate some money to a poor gamer like me?!? This would certainly slow down your spending addiction :-P

see you on the other side, and Godspeed!

Seems like your biggest issue is that you feel obliged to play all those games just because you payed for them? If so, try to get rid of that notion and just play what you feel like playing. You could always consider the "needless purchases' as your atonement for the games you supposedly played but didn't pay for in the past (assuming HoMM3 wasn't the only game you tried to pirate). ;)

That shows nicely that GOG's model of battling piracy does indeed work. "We pick up past and would-be pirates and get them hooked until they can't stop buying." :)

I'd say they're both about on par. Backloggery looks a little nicer, offers more data about your collection (percentages, graphs and such) and has minor little achievements for achieving certain ratios. GameFAQs is easier to update and change around (Backloggery you can only edit one game at a time unlike the list function of GameFAQs). It also has more readily accessible information due to being linked to a games database.

Backloggery is still very much in development though, and they add a lot of new features often. However, it's probably best to just stick with what you already have; I don't see any real advantage to either.

Am I correct in assuming that none of these backlog sites offers a way to track your progress with a given game individually, aside from writing comments? Something like the progress bar for finished games, only for each game individually, if you know what I mean? I don't mean the site to actually track your progress, but e.g. a scale where you can indicate yourself whether you only just started, are half way through or close to completing it etc.

I'd find that much more motivating than just to discriminate between unplayed, started and finished games. If you've started a lot of games, it would help set your priorities if you can also compare how much progress you've made with each of them individually.

GameFAQs has a scale, but it's not really in depth (tried it, played it, halfway, beat it, 100%). It's hard to do a unified system, because so many games have so many structures.

I prefer entering my info manually on Backloggery (I.E. "Bastion - 12/20 levels, 3/10 Proving Grounds, 1/3 Bonus Arenas" or "Ultima 4 - 3/8 Virtues, Level 5"). Backloggery does let you input how many achievements you have, which can be a handy system for sorting how finished you are.

That there is the reason we have big backlogs! So many games are in that price range during sales. This is why keeping my mind on the total I've already spent on a whole lot of games I haven't the time to play, helps me control the impulse buy reflex.

I've given some thought to the speed with which I finish games. I have around 100 on Steam and 61 on GOG (and let's not forget, some of those games are gold editions with included expansions or DLCs, so the number is really higher). Even if I don't finish said games due to boredom or repetitiveness, they'll still eat a lot of my time. I also have a job, chores and a wife to spend time with, so realistically speaking, how long will it really take me to go through my current backlog? If newer or older yet better games show up on the horizon, they'll get installed before the not so good, heard-they-were-good, I-bought-it-on-a-whim-because-they-were-cheap ones.

I wonder if I'll still have XP or even Windows 7 by then. I wonder if my unplayed games will even run five years from now (I can expect GOG to keep up with the times, but not Steam to make it's older titles playable). Then those $5 will feel like a waste, and worse, it wasn't just five dollars. It was $4.99 + $7.50 + $2.99 + $4.99 + $3.75... That's why the big number helps me rein the wallet in.

I'm seriously trying not to buy games this Christmas. I have enough. As soon as I no longer have enough, I'll indulge myself with a treat, but right now, I'm stuffed.

Curiously enough, this hasn't stopped me from trying to get free games. :-/

Welcome to the 21st century! :P

The only difference is that games from DD shops take up less space and therefor it's easier to hide your fetishism. ;)

Resisting buying games is like resisting buying a beer. Who would ever think while buying a beer "do I really need that beer" ? Nobody sane, I suppose.