I only buy games that I think I will actually play (this broke down a bit during the GOG holiday sales. But I did only get games I could see myself actually enjoying).

Then I play them as/when I feel like it.

Great stuff guys! Thanks for all the replies. It's been fun reading everyone's take on having a lot of games, etc.

I do agree it's a good idea to bounce around between genres and wouldn't want to play two lengthy RPGs back to back. Variety is goodness.

It is nice once you have a lot of games, being able to wait on new releases. I never buy anything new. I have plenty to play. I add new things I'd like to play someday to my wishlists and wait on sales to pick them up cheap. By the time I get around to Skyrim it'll be available with all expansions and DLC in a Game of the Year Edition that I'll pay no more than twenty bucks for or possibly even ten if I wait long enough. The game will be just as much fun then when I get around to it.

While I think I'd like to play some older games, for now I'm going to play Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines because someone kindly gifted me that on Steam. I've already been very slow in getting around to it and I feel guilty for not having played it yet.

I like to limit myself to just a few things at a time if that. In the past I've generally gotten sucked into one game and just played that until its end. I think now I am going to try having a few games going at once and playing whatever strikes me when its playtime.

Here is the point I am at in terms of my philosophy for my virtual game collection:

1) I buy games only from 1 distributor (GOG)

2) I buy games only when they are on sale

3) I keep a notepad list of the games I finished, but that is the extent of my logging

4) When I have a series of game I haven't played (ex: MDK 1&2), I play them in order, but otherwise, I play with whatever I feel like playing the most at any given time (I just peek at my game boxes in my GOG shelf and pick one)

6) I don't force myself to finish a game anymore. When I grow weary of a game, I set it aside and come back to it at a later time if I feel like it. I measure getting my "money's worth" for a game more in terms of quality hours spent playing rather than finishing the game through and through.

7) If a game I bought really doesn't do it for me (ex: Earthworm Jim), I don't insist on it. I just acknowledge that I wasted my money on that one and accept it as a necessary overhead when buying games I haven't tried (ie, a fraction of them, I won't like, but given that I end up liking between 80% and 90% of the games I play, it's not that bad when the prices are cheap).

I play the iconic ones, like Shadows of the Colossus, and just hold onto the rest, trying to keep up with the newer titles.

If you're talking 7 years of game releases you'll never catch up with them all (unless you have amazing amounts of free time) so just enjoy what you can and don't sweat the rest.

I think the other thing to consider is that the reason why we get a game at the time changes, and so do we. I went through many phases with gaming, considering at one point I wanted to play nothing but Zelda, and at another time, I wanted nothing but Half Life, etc.

I guess the key is to ensure that you are fine with spending the money on the RIGHT to play the game, as opposed to wanting to definitely play the game. I never value games by the hours/dollars ratio, as I feel that valuation in general fails. There are so many things I can do for free that are funner than gaming...gaming is for certain moods, and certain times. It's not a "I spend $20 to see a movie, so my entertainment budget is $10/hour" or other such rubbish.

I just wish sites like GOG and Steam would allow sell-backs in some form. For GOG of course it would be for undownloaded titles only. I thought of a system once before, where Steam could allow you to trade back previously purchased titles for UP TO their profit margin towards another game, with a maximum trade-in.

For example, maybe Steam makes 50% off a given game, let's say Call of Duty 4. Now, I have played this out, and I hate seeing it in my list, bloating things up, and doing noone any good. So maybe Steam sells it for $20 now. SO they allow me to trade it in for up to $10 off another Steam game. Obviously, they would need to allow users to trade more than one game towards another, while still ensuring the publisher gets their cut. But I feel this could be implemented in a way that would allow users to perform a "Buyer's Remorse Erasure".

So I suppose, the way I deal with a backlog is to recognize that I don't necessarily have one, as I probably have no intention of playing many of the games I have bought.

Backlog? what's that point of backlogging, i got so many game's i dont have time too!

I don't have a good way of managing my backlog, the only thing I have is a method for preventing it to grow too much. I'll usually guilt trip myself into finishing a few more games before I buy any new ones (look at all those unfinished games that I've spent good money on. I won't allow myself to buy any new games until I have finished at least 5 of those).

I do have a backloggery.

but I tend to Wing it.

I've got an obscene amount of unfinished games because I just buy new ones all the time.

Atm I'm playing Skyward Sword and L.A Noire, I'm nearly there with Skyward Sword i'd wager.

After I realized I could never possibly complete all my games, I hired a couple of guys to play some of them off my backlog. We made an agreement that they complete two games per week (two weeks for RPGs) and report back to me how enjoyable the game was, and what were the highlights.

I don't have a huge backlog, but then, I'm very picky about what I buy and play. At any given time I have 2-4 games I haven't played yet, and they belong to different genres. Sometimes I'm in a mood for slow, ponderous adventure games, and sometimes I get an itch for a fast-paced action RPG.

But I have one rule, same as with books: when I start a title, I don't touch any other game until I've finished the current one. Not because I'd get the plots and characters all mixed up, but because I like deep focus.

If there aren't any new games good enough for me to play them, I just pick some game I've already finished.

Well, once in a while I get rid of a lot of those games I think I wouldn't play anyway. (But why did I actually buy them?) And then I buy some more games. I eventually actually play some of my games, but I don't have any method of choosing what game to play next.

Sometimes my fairly big backlog intimidates me so much that I spend too much time pondering what to play that I end up not playing at all...

Not buying even more is quite helpful for managing the backlog. :)

Well, first, by playing the games I own - many times I've found out that in the end they do not interest me that much and buying them (even though I knew I'm not a fan of its genre) was a mistake. However for the sake of the money I spent, I usually complete them once.

Secondly, by limiting my purchases. Games will always be on sale (especially on Steam) so the times when I buy something impulsively are rare nowadays. It's pointless buying something for 30$ and not playing it for 7-8 months, while in 10 months l buy it for 12$ in a GOTY edition with all DLCs.

Made this for one of the many previous discussions we've had about game backlogs . . . =)