First its homework, projects and exams. After that it’s coursework, more exams and dissertations. Then after that it’s emails, overtime and yearly objectives. We live in a world that teaches and enforces a relentless to drive to grind, achieve and complete; and to do it even if when we don’t particularly want to. I’m not here to argue against the principles of education or the modern workforce but I think it’s important to realise that this mindset can backfire. In particular it really fails us is when it comes to gaming, where it has led to the emergence of a phenomenon that all of us gamers will be familiar with, the looming monster that hovers in our horizon, the ominous mountain of evil in the distance it’s the dreaded B-word: The backlog. That unconquerable foe that we will definitely complete someday… just as soon as I finish this other game.
Like most gamers, I acquire games faster than I can complete them, this “problem” has only gotten worse with time: Steam sales, cheap bundles and financial independence. It’s hard not to pick up cheap games at a remarkable rate. Not to mention we are absolutely spoilt for choice in the modern day. With thousands of games on offer and more coming out every month combined with the fact that it takes a second to buy a game but can take at least fifty hours to finish them so it’s unsurprising that we end up with a lot of our incomplete games in our libraries.
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that, I’ve never kicked myself for acquiring games, if I have the money spare and it looks like a good game, why not? (please note that I am not endorsing irresponsible spending ) I did, however, always kick myself for not completing them and I’ve spent far too much time strictly trying to power through and complete games that I felt I needed to, after all, I’ve spent the money on them, therefore they must be completed, the cost to entertainment ration must be balanced! Getting your money’s worth is important, but playing a game for the sake of completing it defeats the point of playing games. We play games for fun; this is blindingly obvious but sometimes very easy to forget.
We are taught from a young age to maximise efficiency, grind out work and complete tasks, it’s easy to fall into the mindset that we need to be cost efficient and ensure that we are extracting every penny from our library and that every game we own must be completed or else what was the point in buying it. It turns gaming from a fun hobby into a checklist. I have enough lists in my life, my shopping lists, my list of tasks to do at work and my lists of chores that I’m definitely going to do tomorrow. I recently began to realise gaming was also becoming a big list.
I have begun to reframe my attitude towards my library of games, which stopped becoming a source of endless fun and started to look like an insurmountable quota that I had to meet. I wasn’t enjoying games because I was forcing myself to finish them and I wasn’t playing the games that I was genuinely into at the time because I was playing more recently acquired games that I felt needed to be completed. It was compound anti-fun behaviour. So, I started telling myself to ignore the backlog.
Easier said than done. I uninstalled the games that I had downloaded just because they needed completing. Suddenly I had all this space. Had I really been constricting my hard drive this much by loading it up with my backlog? Immediately by letting go of this need to complete games I had freed up precious hard drive real estate, and immediately I downloaded my favourites. Games I’ve spent hours on, my guilty pleasures, games I’ve played for years and never got bored of, those games just click. This enamoured me to my collection once again and gaming once again started to become novel.
With plenty of space and freed from the pressure of the backlog I scrolled through my list of old games, and it was like walking down the aisle of my favourite sweet shop. “I love that one” I thought, I click on install. “This one too, and this one!” Both games get swept into the proverbial shopping cart, except I’m not shopping, I’m picking these out from my own collection. Years and years of games tailored to my own tastes, a perfectly curated collection of all the games I love. Given to me on a platter, I didn’t even need to buy these games. What used to be an archive of unfinished games and a constant reminder of wanton spending, became a cornucopia of bespoke entertainment, a platter of my favourite games. This wasn’t a backlog, I wasn’t in the midst of a to-do list, I was in my own video game shop and everything was. I don’t need to play them all, just like I don’t always eat Fruit Pastilles, I’ll forget about them then one day I’ll be sitting on my sofa desperately craving for a packet. My gaming library is my own personal sweet shop, and It’s got all my favourite sweets in it.
What I’m trying to say, is that instead of seeing the games in your Steam Library, Playstation or Xbox as backlog checklists you need to finish, think of them as deep and delicious reservoirs to draw upon. See it as a collection tailored perfectly to your own tastes. Imagine showing all those games to your ten-year-old self, it would be paradise. Looking at it this way makes the act of playing games so much fun.
Wait for that urge to play a game come to you, don’t force it, it drains the fun out of it. Maybe you’ll never get round to a game, but that’s okay, tastes change, situations do. Maybe you bought a game and you never play it, it’s not a waste of money, it’s a lesson.
If you don’t finish a game, that’s also okay, games that I could have “no-lifed” when I was younger I just couldn’t now, I bought the Legendary Edition of Mass Effect and played the first one and half the second, then my holiday came to an end, and suddenly I didn’t have time, but I didn’t force it, I simply enjoyed the little trip down memory lane and I moved on. Forcing yourself to finish games saps the joy out of it, this isn’t work, it’s not a deadline that needs to be met.
Gaming is an oasis, a safe and refreshing place where you can rejuvenate yourself away from the troubles of work, the negative headlines and of the pressure we put on ourselves. The last thing we should do is fight a battle within the confines of gaming. Gaming time should be protected. Submerge yourself in your library, but don’t try to drink all of it. It’s not a checklist, it’s your own personal toyshop, leave the working adult at the door and let loose the enthusiastic inner child.
