the consequences of a large game library
I’ve always been infatuated with the idea of a library when I was a kid. Like a real, book library. The kind no one really remembers well, I imagine. But what I loved was the idea of a room full of books; of knowledge, of escapism into other worlds, and all of it being readily available to me at any time.
Cut to 2024 and I haven’t visited my local library in well over a decade, but the digital era arrived in full to try and compete. What was once getting a single movie or game every few weeks at a Blockbuster or books only at the school book fair turned into weekly Netflix DVDs and Gamefly packets. Then came the streaming era, where movies were just readily available at any time. Spotify entered beta and I jumped on immediately, ready to ditch my CD collection in my car and Zune full of ripped discs for a seemingly endless collection. OnLive tried to do the same for games way back when, and while that was a spectacular failure (that I also tried), I did use that time to create a new Steam account, and that was the beginning of the end for me. Digital downloads replaced my DVD cases, and regular steam sales took over my GameStop runs in due time. All the fun of making bad purchasing decisions without even leaving the house! Of course, in time even that wasn’t enough, and so came Humble Bundle, Fanatical, and less than savory third party key resellers.
All of this was justified under the idea that I was building a library, true to form. An endless collection of games where I could pick anything I wanted at any time, ready to jump into a new adventure every night. Though, unlike the readers of the world who would be happy to tell you how much paper books matter and keeping a physical library has made them happy, mine offers almost none of that joy.
What does one do with 2,261 video games? The running theory would be to play them. But where do you start? Again, the Occam’s Razor approach would be to look at some game descriptions, or even just some box art, pick one, and go. Start playing and never stop, and eventually you’ll run out or keep getting more and simply not care which. And I’d really like that to be true, but almost every time I’ve found myself paralyzed with anxiety about where to starting something. If I had a small library I’d pick one of my few options because its all I have, but with such a vast array of choices, with literal hundreds of “amazing/top tier/GOTY” games, I can’t limit my choices. I’ve tried narrowing it by feel many times. Going with my gut. I’ve tried sorting my user reviews, so that I’m all but certain my experience will be at least good, if not great. For a time I religiously stuck to howlongtobeat.com, thinking that if I was keenly aware of how long a game was supposed to take, sometimes with a chapter list in hand, I could steer the ship in my brain towards doing something. Anything.
Choice anxiety, or analysis paralysis as I’ve sometimes heard it, isn’t exclusive to me I know. It’s a very well documented problem among people for as long as we’ve been around. But I think what irks me is that this is a design of my own making. In my over a decade long quest to have so many options that I’m never without a choice, I can’t make said choice anymore. Compound that with possible ADHD making large tasks seem impossible, being in and out of jobs that can suck up to 12+ hour a day from me, mixed with some hot retail therapy plus being terminally online (read: glued to checking new game releases) and I’ve built some kind of weird labyrinthian hellscape that I’m not sure what to do with. Purchasing new games sometimes helps, like buying a new book or going to see a movie. It becomes the focus of my attention at least for a bit, and if I had to wager, I’d say I tend to finish stuff when its fresh compared to when it sits in the stock for a while.
But that feeling of buying a new game, something that used to bring me so much joy when my parents would take me to the local game stores, does little for me now. I think for a lot of people, there’s a core memory associated with this, back when each game was something somewhat precious because you had so few of them. You could trade with friends or back to the store, but otherwise, that was kinda what you had to work with. Combined with bespoke consoles that only play games, and only games for their system at that, and hooking up my PS2 usually meant that was what I was gonna do. With my getting older and having more money than time I eventually built a custom gaming windows computer, which can not only play basically every games from 2024 to 1984, but also do movies and YouTube and any other form of time wasters that I want. The possible scope of the library grows larger along with the library itself, and suddenly that one new game every few weeks becomes three new games every other week.
There might be one solution that I’m sure you’ve thought of. A word that brings amazement to those new to the concept and pure dread to those who dealt with it for years. A word infinitely bigger than its seven letters could possibly be.
BACKLOG
“Just make a backlog, right?”
A ‘backlog’ something that didn’t even enter my vocabulary until a few years ago, even though I think the concept is pretty old, possible even predating video games. I’ve read and watched plenty of stuff on backlogs, with Daryl Talks Games’ “a misguided guide to finishing your gaming backlog” being the number one that comes to mind, and Transparency’s “You DON'T Need a Backlog” also coming to mind.
I’ve tried making a few over the years, with each attempt getting more specific in some effort to stem the ever rising tide of new additions, and in some ways it has helped. I’ve used it to finish a good few things and found many enjoyable experiences (and some middling ones, but that’s to be expected I guess). Yet ultimately, whenever I try to do something about my “unplayed/unfinished” games, it feels like trying to drink the ocean, which-
- Please don’t do that we like the ocean.
- Is basically impossible.
It’s funny to think that given the chance, depending on when you ask me, I’d almost like to start over. I think a lot of librarians would heavily disagree with my sentiment, but this isn’t a communal sharing of adventures and information. Heck, it’s not even physical, so there’s be literally nothing of value lost if I did. Except, naturally, the thousands of dollars I’ve spent making this library, the thought of which losing would either completely break me as a person or create some kind of personal spiritual nirvana within me from having to “let go” of it.
I’m not sure what the ultimate “solution” is to my ultimately extremely privileged problem. Start over, take a long break, give up entirely, or maybe learn to think of it as the library I once wanted as a kid. A place of endless new journeys and ideas, and not as something to otherwise ever think about. The idea of not finishing everything in my library before I can’t anymore somewhat scares me, but the idea of also completely everything and being left with nothing seems somewhat empty.
I dunno. Maybe there’s a game somewhere in my library that can help me figure it out.