For various reasons ranging from child rearing to going to college nights I missed out on a lot of gaming years ago which GOG now makes it possible for me to catch up on. On top of that I became addicted to MMO gameplay starting with Asheron's Call and then quickly moving to EverQuest, which I played for about seven years hardcore. Since that time I spent time with EverQuest II, Dungeons and Dragons Online, Lord of the Rings Online and World of Warcraft.

All during this time of MMO madness I continued to follow PC gaming with great interest and kept mental notes of all the great games I'd love to play someday. Several years ago I started picking up different titles on Steam sales but I continued on MMO gaming and not getting to them. Pretty soon I had quite a lot of games, all of them unplayed. Then a little over a year ago much to my delight I discovered GOG. In the meantime classics I loved years ago such as Ultima VII have been released here. Naturally, I just had to get them. My first GOG purchases about a year ago were the Icewind Dale series. I'd always wanted to play all of the Infinity Engine games.

Moving to the present, not long ago I completed Baldur's Gate (the first one) and just loved it. When I wasn't playing it the music and characters were on my mind. I'd made several attempts at this game over the years and finally really played it! Yay!

I'm pretty much done with MMOs now. There is nothing new under the sun in terms of gameplay with them really. The highlight of those years was easily the original EverQuest for me and nothing will ever again recapture the magic of that experience in that amazing world. My kids are grown and now finishing college. I'm also now disabled with plenty of time on my hands and so I can now really get into enjoying all the games I've missed over the years from old to new.

That's the story of how my backlog has come to be over recent years including the most recent Steam and GOG sales where I picked up quite a few games at amazing deals. My average cost per title was only four dollars! And these are not bad games either. Every one of them I already knew about and knew I wanted to play someday. Each one I did my homework on, checking reviews and especially user reviews along with the odds it would run on my present PC system with Windows 7.

So now it's on to the topic at hand. How to manage a backlog of over two hundred games! I haven't tried to figure it out but it must be years worth of gaming. Yet that doesn't stop me from watching what is new, what is coming up and what is on sale. I am admittedly obsessive about this hobby and seem to have become as much a collector as game player.

So how do you manage all the titles you haven't gotten to yet? How do you choose of so many, which to play right now? Is there any method to the madness? Do you like the backloggery site and if so why? I've taken a peek at it and it looks neat but i am not too keen on inputting so many games to use it. I made my own list broken into groups by genre and ordered by date of release. So far I've been thinking I want to play them in order from oldest to newest, party so shiny new graphics don't spoil me. I think I might appreciate them more if I go from old to new over time. But then sometimes I think with so many old games now, will I ever get to anything new in this lifetime? Maybe I should mix it up somehow?

Aside of old to new there is genre too. I think maybe playing the oldest within each genre I own for variety might be good. Did I mention I obsess over this stuff too much? I know I am not alone here though from lurking on forums here and on Steam. It seems a lot of people are in similar boats. So many games, so little time, decisions, decisions.

So I'm curious about how others manage their backlog and decide what to play. I thought it would be fun to talk about it here. I'm sure this has been done before but its a subject that I hope is fun enough to talk about again. Given my little gaming life history told here, this is my hello and introduction of myself to the GOG community while I am at it even though it is not the firs time I've posted. I promise not to do walls of text too often like this one!

I use Backloggery, as you mentioned earlier in your post.

I've set myself a couple of goals, both long term and short term, and try to stick to them. Like this year, I'm focusing on getting through a number of RPGs, after realizing that about a third of my backlog was RPGs of some variety.

Same problem. With rpg's I am starting with an oldie Might and Magic2(my M&M1 had some problems). Then plan to either play Balder's gate (oldest of the D&D's I have) Or the first Fallout. Might have to flip a coin. Then go back to oldie with Land of Lore1. Following the release year per series.
With all other type of games I kinda go alphabet order, giving them one month priority at a time (when not playing the rpg) Then some times Tropico calls me away....
Anyway I am much slower at knocking out rpg's than most people, so GOG has set me up with the Christmas sale for a looong time :)

I usually look at it, shake my head, and then go back to playing something within my regular rotation.

I too use backloggery, but am nowhere near as successful as Zchnique at finishing any of the games. I tend to use the fortune cookie to decide what to play next, but only as a suggestion. So I keep opening them until it suggests something I feel like.

I have a backlog of around 110 games here at GOG (this is counting shelf items, some of them contain two or even several games). As for how I manage my backlog, I decide in advance to play a certain genre, then I choose a game from my collection. I usually have several games lined up in order not to lose any steam (right now I have around 6 games waiting to be played, with the list updated every time a game is finished). Now, if only GOG stopped releasing games, I might just be able to finish my list by the time I die (To any GOG staff, please disregard the previous sentence).

That's funny. It sounds like something I would do. I might yet get ambitious and use backloggery for the fun of it.

So far I've just written them all down in notepad in the order of which I acquired them, and then I just pick a random one when I finished one of them. But my backlog is only like 30 games so it's not too big to manage. If it grows bigger I might look into that backloggery site.

Screw being bound by a schedule. Play what you want to play and when.

Personally I make a chronological list of of the games I may want to play, and then evaluate each upcoming game individuall to decide wether it's worth playing. I've found that by sticking with a play list I get more "work" done.
In the beginning of 2011 I was inspired by The CRPG Addict - http://crpgaddict.blogspot.com/ - and now I've completed my backlog from the 1980s.

I don't. :(

Just play Deus Ex (the original one, not the human devolution one).

Completely random... "oh I feel like playing this today."

Which is probably why it continues to grow. That said I am going to be only using a laptop for the next year or so, so I have installed a bunch of old backlog games to play.

two options:

1) you install ALL the games you would like to play the most from the backlog. start with an A... once you get bored/killed/something, move to the B. this way you can finish all of those games quite simultaneously (when you're 80 :)

2) you install ONLY ONE game you would like to play the most from the backlog. you delete everything else from your computer. you unplug the network cable / disable Wi-Fi. you play the game until it's finished, then you plug everything in again and download the second game in line :)

I keep them in a spreadsheet (faster than using backloggery), and move the finished ones to a separate column so I can see how many/which games I finished each month.

First I divided each game by vendor, but I'm using my spreadsheet more and more to decide which game to play so I'm busy putting all similar games together, which makes it easier to pick a game in a certain genre I feel like playing that day.