How to Beat Analysis Paralysis with Gaming Backlogs 

Yes 😜😜 Just kidding, I don't use myself.

i mean no, but its better tho

i could never. my eyes hurt.

You are blind now though

It saves battery and your eyes, idk why anyone avoids dark mode. There’s also toooons more blue light in white than black, especially on OLED type screens where the pixels turn off for black

I thought I was alone in this regard until people started joining our discord server with the same mindset. For the longest time, I've been this way. To the point I just straight up am not interested in newer releases until I'm familiar with, or at least ATTEMPT older versions. Recently, I grinded through the original Suikoden, so I could get into Suikoden 2. Even though I read many times you don't need the background to enjoy 2, I couldn't help myself.

@@ChrimChrimbo And here I am beating all God of War games from the begining just because of Ragnarok xD

@@chingoedw88 ngl, I considered it after seeing some footage from Ragnarok!

@@ChrimChrimbo and those times where a remake is about to get release. of course you have to play the original one before😢

This is my exact thinking. I also deal with obsessive thinking and have adhd, so there's probably a correlation there between reading too far ahead too quickly and overthinking possible negative outcomes.

That's a great idea. In another video, I talked about how I played Uncharted 1-3 and I burned out so hard that I don't want to go back to play 4. You are wise to try a bunch of genres at once to keep things fresh. Great idea!

I could try this. I have over 700 games over many platforms that I don't feel like buying any more games for a while and it's been a problem picking which game to play.

Great idea. I unconsciously do this and didn’t even realize it until you laid it out in words. If I just played survival horror, I’ll switch tracks to an action FPS like Boltgun to mix things up before I return to horror, and even then I’ll pick a different type of horror, maybe something more like a walking sim or psychological horror. It keeps things fresh and I end up playing more games and also enjoying them a lot more.

That's totally fair! If anything, most 7 out of 10s have something to contribute, especially toward getting an overall sense of game design and how a specific mechanic can be repeatedly implemented in game after game. Rougelikes, for example, I've played so many of these, and many many many of them are 7 out of 10s (probably bc I've played so many of them), but even if they play mostly the same, you start to get a sense of what makes up the genre and what the cornerstones look like.

So true! Even games that people said really sucked can be good sometimes, or give you a good laugh

Yeah. I hear you on this. I play RPGs and I have recently been LOOKING for the 7's out of 10's. Not just considering them, but picking them over more highly rated entries solely because they're more likely to give me something I haven't seen in a genre I've played to hell and back.

This is why I love eurojank. The games are just so ambitious that they can't help but be charming despite their flaws. It's interesting to see them even partially realizing their potential and anyway I'd much rather support that than a cookie cutter AAA game.

This is a really good point that I was mulling over while editing. There is a temptation to focus on your backlog simply because you have one. My video pushes ppl to play their backlog instead of doing other things, but ultimately, if you want to spend the evening chillin and scrolling social media, who cares? It’s fine!

@@ChrimChrimbo absolutely. Sometimes you get burnt out and too tired to play so you end up watching RU-vid which is a mood

My solution to this is to abandon certain games if they don't interest me and to rotate between multiple games if I'm not in the mood to play a specific one. I do limit the amount of games I can play using this method though, otherwise I wouldn't finish anything

@@Jabroni_14 I do the exact same. I also come back to games I dropped to give em a 2nd (maybe even 3rd) chance later on. Sometimes they finally click. Others just don't so I basically put them in my "ignore" list

I just immediately quit. I don’t care how much I spent. Wasting time on it helps nobody.

Huge agree on this. Often, we game out of habit, but don't take time to step away for a bit. I took two breaks during 2021 and found a lot of insight about myself after stepping away from something that was so engrained into my life. The nice thing is you can come back with fresh eyes and maybe only get into stuff you really like.

That’s too logical man

I appreciate this comment so much a day before the steam summer sale begins lol . Too many In my backlog

30% is a great number though! Glad this video was helpful. Feel free to stop by the Discord server where we work together to beat our backlogs! I've found the community there is super helpful for encouragement and challenge. I totally relate to balancing family/adhd/life/etc, so I'm glad this video could be helpful for you. Thanks for watching!

Thanks! Yes, I thought the article I had read was super interesting and applying it to gaming would only be one aspect of its uses. Glad this was helpful!

This is good advice. I find I pick up and drop a lot of games but some just stick til completion (usually puzzle games). A lot of games aren't worth finishing. I think they show their stuff early and I don't have enough time in life to play them all to completion.

Totally. Picking random stuff (depending on the mood) is a great idea.

It's definitely more of a decision paralysis, but introduces a general analysis paralysis as a result. Thanks for watching!

Totally. That's been me this last year. Lots of old retro stuff. Such a wealth of games out there!

Wow that’s awesome you are going to get it checked out. It’s really freeing to get a professional opinion. Best of luck to you!

Welcome! Maximizing is my greatest folly. We have a ton of people in a similar situation. Even though I'm not posting on RU-vid, the Discord is as healthy as it's ever been. Hope we can help!

That's awesome! Glad to hear it. I think I'm slowly getting over the AP hump with games, but I see it in many other areas of my life. The cool thing about figuring it out with non-important stuff like games means you can figure it out in more important areas (like grading!). Thanks for your comment, cool to read!

Yes. It's sometimes helpful to just pick something and go for it!

That's a good approach. I think you can learn a lot, even from garbage tier games. I've found it really helpful to think through ways to improve crappy systems in crappy games, instead of just complaining about them.

Now you have Baldurs Gate 3!

Thanks! Getting better at beating decision paralysis takes time but you can do it!

Glad you enjoyed it! I have more in my… backlog.

Glad it was helpful!

It's hard to make niche content because it doesn't reach as many people, so comments like this are so kind and nice to read. Thank you!

@@ChrimChrimbo I'm sure its tough especially when the message is "play what you already have" instead of "buy this new thing with my referral link". It may not rake in big bucks but its good stuff 👍🏼

@@TheDukeofDan definitely. It’s also a hard message in a culture that obsesses over a new things every couple days. Appreciate your comment!

Welcome!

So true. I get stuck in this too. The hype cycle can be really exhausting. I recommend finding a community of gamers that aren't obsessed with the hype cycle. It's so much more grounded.

Of course! Glad to help.

Of course, glad it was helpful!

That's so great to hear! Glad you enjoyed it and glad it was helpful!

Glad I could help!

That quote in tip 8 was really good. For me, the most helpful tip was to just get started and get playing something, even if you don’t feel ready for it. Thanks for your kind words!

Exactly. Blessing and curse.

I feel called out hahahahaha. I take forever on my turns.

Glad it was helpful! Thanks for watching.

Yeah, what's up with that?

Boo.

maybe.......

Glad to help!

I'VE BEEN WATCHING YOU FOR A LONG LONG TIME MUSHY.

Obra Dinn is AMAZING. I was sad when it was over. Yes, it's OK to not play everything that came prior, though I understand the temptation. Best of luck!

Thanks!

I get that. People are designed to work, but we also need to rest. I’ve found that if I work hard, the rest feels more deserved than if I’m lazy with work. It’s definitely fine to play games for rest, and hope you’ve been able to work through that!

Of course! Hope it was helpful.

Thanks, I'm glad you enjoyed it. I'm finding my backlog grew exponentially once I got a gaming PC, and I don't have as many older console titles to play, but I'm seeing a lot of other people have a lot of console stuff to finish. I think your rule makes sense, especially considering how easy it is to fall off a game and never return. I kind of want to start implementing that for myself. Thanks for the comment!

" ..I'm likely the SLOWEST gamer on planet earth" You haven't met me.🙃😉

I feel this. I've been emulating retro games recently and sometimes I find myself mindlessly reloading save states the second something sub-optimal happens. While older games are generally crummy at valuing your time, I do feel like there is something to be said about mistakes and living with them, even in a digital context.

Good solution. For me, it depends on the game, but I realized I was getting in the completionist cycle, and that REALLY slowed down my ability to get games beat. I've tried moving away from it, but it's tough. What is it about completing a game that you really enjoy? Or do you even enjoy it?

yasssssssssssss

I thought I was alone too! Then I discovered r/patientgamers and realized it was widespread. This is a big reason we started a discord, to provide community around backlog beating. Thanks for joining!

Welcome to Discord! Hopefully you can find like-minded folks to help you through your backlog journey. Glad to help!

That’s a great idea. I like limiting my options. Definitely helps to make a decision.

Genius. I love organizing my library by rating and playing stuff that way. You are right, you find a lot of great stuff that way!

You sound like me! Glad to hear you have priorities straight. Journaling has been on my mind lately and you are getting me to think I should try it out!

@@ChrimChrimbo I find Backloggd to be pretty fun to use for gaming journaling. Keeps it all in one place too for the games you play. My main journal is just for everything and I can copy and paste the gaming journals there xD

Yes! It does make sense. It's tough out there.

Thank you!

that is exactly how I felt making the video! welcome to the club!

I definitely start to rush games if I'm tired of the mechanics. Even if I'm only halfway done. This is why I tend to appreciate progression systems in games. Often, it helps for the game to switch itself up some over time.

Work from home life is a good one, but it definitely leads to long to do lists. Also thanks for reminding me bc I need to get my cat to the vet too...

Glad it was helpful! It was a big video to put together.

Yes. Our standards are unencroachably high sometimes. Sometimes that's a good thing, but it's a good practice to let them lower for some things.

That's so cool about the backlog. Finding those games that you otherwise would have passed over. Glad you found a good one!

Yep, I'm finding that building out a schedule to stick to helps in more areas than just playing backlog games.

I made this for you Chris Nelson. didn't you know?

@@ChrimChrimbo 😂😂😂

We have some ppl like that in the server. I recommend just getting started, or picking some games in a genre you like and start playing. At the end of the day though, if you had a week left to live, would the backlog really be on your list of things to finish before you die?

Chronic Consumerism

Literally so smart. I started doing this last year and it’s been such a tremendous help.

Totally on the same page with you. I end up grinding achievements or in-game currency to unlock whatever DLC or anything I can. It's so dumb and I don't even have fun half the time. Moving down to a game or two IS THE WAY, totally agree.

that's a great way to do it!

Also, I clean up my WatchLater regularly so that it doesn't go over the limit like my sister's who has ADHD. The reason this video survived after multiple clean-ups is because the text in the thumbnail continued to pique my interest. All that to say, props to your thumbnail game. It worked and it worked wonders.

Another scary note: I literally got home from a long day of work, longed for a break with playing a game, but felt guilty about not making more progress on the essay (which I already found time to work on after my shift and before I commuted home), told myself "I'll play games after writing for half an hour", so I wrote for about 20mins, and spent 30mins on RU-vid, thought to myself "Ok final video" which happened to be this one, and now I've spent about 10 mins commenting on this vid which I've only watched 2 mins of so far. OK now I'm rly gonna go back to the essay, which I will follow with some Zelda. I swear.

Thanks for telling me you were pooping.

Yep. Sometimes they are worth it (hitman) but maybe not with all of them.

Thanks!

Always.

It's comforting to know other people are in a similar position!

This is a really good mindset that I find hard to get on board with. I love challenging difficulties for the most part but I’m stuck on a game for way too long.

For sure.

Excellent. I love my Steam Deck. It's great for so many reasons. I recently got into modding Morrowind, and that's been a whole thing. Some of those longer games with mods kill the backlog, but it's still cool if you are enjoying yourself and trying new things, even if they are just mods.

welcome.

Genius. If it works, it works.

WOW I'M LATE TO THIS COMMENT SORRY. Definitely have been there myself. Sometimes you just need to have something downloaded so when you sit down at your PC, just hit Play.

The more I think of this matter, the more I identify factors - this is one deep rabbit hole!! To go back to playing games in chronological order, I think this makes perfect sense. Not only is this the "natural release timeline order" regardless of if the stories / progression falls in line, but there's so much more to it than that. Older games could well be better than their sequels (when Borderlands 2 came out I was going to start these games there and skip 1, but I decided last minute to play 1 first and I way prefer that game over 2). You ideally also don't want to play a later game in a series first not only to avoid spoilers or miss out on backstory, but playing a later game with better graphics and often better gameplay mechanics can make the earlier games seem very old, if not too old and janky to bother with. So for myself I will play all the games in the series, even if there's several titles to get through, but it's not to make the newer titles make more sense, it's just so that I don't miss out & appreciate what could be better games. That said, if it the timeline goes too far back, such as I loved Skyrim (plus Fallout 3 & NV) so much that I later tried Oblivion and it was too old & janky so I haven't bothered. Some games need to be played around when they're released as they break new ground, but when played years later they're simply nothing special anymore due to more games following in their footsteps (and possibly / probably doing a better job too). I even play games that are known to be complete rubbish, just so I can asses how bad it is and how accurate the reviews & reviewers were. That might sound crazy to some, but I've played games that were supposed to be bottom of the barrel (Aliens Colonial Marines, Duke Nukem Forever) and thought they weren't as bad as reviewers made out. I guess when you were brought up on ZX Spectrum games, crappy PC games still hold technical merit at the least! I also made 4 groups in Steam: Play, Replay, Leave & Racing (I'll always love the latter) and I think that this is important to do as it clearly defines and shoves in your face what you plan to deal with. As a consequence of seeing 30+ AAA 40+ hour long games in your Play section I'm now extremely mindful of if I'm going to bother with every game there or if I'll send it to the leave pile (which can actually be very satisfying / relieving to do)! I'm also analytical of annual release franchises, say Assassin's Creeds - I'm way behind on them as I burned out on them all so my next game in AC Syndicate, but I watch spoiler-free reviews before purchase to see if each release is distinct and worthy enough to buy. Better yet, comparison videos available due to hindsight can be awesome when the highlight if a sequel doesn't bring anything new and can simply be skipped (for AC I'll play Syndicate and Origins, but plan to skip Odyssey and Valhalla). The last factor that comes to mind is also backlogs are practically encouraged nowadays by post-release patching / fixing and Steam sales - simply wait a couple of years and games will by then actually be finished, as bugless as reasonably possible, and much cheaper, all adding up to greater sized backlogs compared to if they were absolutely fine and bought day 1 at full price. Buying 6 games on sale for the price of 1 at release is obviously a bargain, but comes with that extra cost of adding to the backlog even more!

Sorry I’m just now reading your comment! Totally in the same boat. I love games but it’s more than a hobby sometimes. It’s really healthy to examine things from time to time and boot them for awhile or switch them up. Sounds like you are on the right track. I think backlogs get unhealthy when we obsess over 100%ing it. It’s gonna be a better experience (and not such a life-suck) if we enjoy our time with it instead of make it a chore. Your idea of making games into a Leave category is brilliant. I typically call it “abandon” but the idea is the same. Also FWIW-if you are still playing the same four games, like that’s totally fine. The amount of times I’ve replayed the dark souls series, or that I’m about to start a second playthrough of BG3, whatever. I think you are getting your monies worth, plus you are enjoying it, so why move on to something else?

​​@ChrimChrimbo Thank you very much for your reply. No worries about being late, I forgot that I left a comment. In response to what you said (just as my feedback).... Going completionist / 100% to me is reserved only for games that I love so much that it deserves experiencing everything it has to offer, plus I get suckered into wanting that Platinum trophy (on PlayStation) to demonstrate this. That said, I love Souls games too but left the platinum trophy for DS3 due to the massive grind for covenants. I agree with you though that In my opinion, feeling a need to 100% everything just to tick those boxes is frankly probably compulsive obsessive disorder. Just wanting to get through every owned games main story is bad enough as it is. The matter of replaying good old games Vs playing inferior new ones to me is a double edged sword. While going back and reliving a great experience is truly awesome, I personally feel this should also be reserved for special games. Reminiscing too often obviously puts people into the trap of living in the past with a fear of the future. Saying that, modern games are often simply complete crap so going backwards into backlogs / replays might be "inevitable" anyway. Lastly, as for the mentality of "if you're having fun then why change" - I used to think exactly like this, but now I'm middle aged I'm left wondering of if life could be even better if I changed my ways. Just because something is good, settling for that may lead to compromises that we don't see as we're blinded by the good. I want to return back to writing music as it was a passion of mine, but I've never achieved anything with that whatever as I've allowed having fun all the time take not only priority but complete dominance. I don't really regret having fun for so long, but I now think there comes a time when you have to moderate that and try to achieve more in life as life has so much more to offer than just games 😊

YES. The number of games I wouldn't have even touched if not for my Steam Deck. CRAZY. I love it. Welcome, fellow Decker.

Yes. I'm finding I prefer completion in two areas: 1) if it's a game I REALLY like that has reasonable objectives to reach within a reasonable amount of time/investment. 2) Picking only certain aspect of a game to complete. For example, currently I'm playing Elder Scrolls Online. To actually 100% it would be braindead, so I'm opting for 100%ing each zone I visit by completing the zone guides. It's manageable, but it's not everything.

@ChrimChrimbo that's a lot to aim for. I just play all I buy once and go on whims to see if I wanna bother again. Samurai jack threw repetitive enemies at me so I'm probably gonna opt out. Then of course new games like etrian odyssey has quality of life the older ones don't, so similar stuff (long boot/load times even on modern hardware, slow animations and unforgiving save systems get old fast imo) may get tedious as well.

Thanks, mr. Mike.

You are brave. I never finish any games when I do this.

@@ChrimChrimbo If there’s one I like a lot it tends to stick and I’ll finish it but I generally don’t view beating games as that important unless I’m engrossed the entire time.

Interesting point on Crosscode because I really like that game (the little I've played of it). It can be tougher with longer games, but sometimes you just have to be in the right mindset. You've got me thinking about Stick of Truth now though....

@Chrim Chrimbo It's underrated if you ask me. Very few pure RPGs have gameplay like this one, and of course, the South Park humor never gets old.

Ask them devvies, boi

Good. It's too stressful.

GENIUS. I used to need to play everything in a series, but I've been getting more comfortable with watching a playthrough, especially if it's an OLD OLD game that sucks to play.

I'M NOT ALONE!

Same. The older games can be tough, but they can also be so fun.

Classic.

I was stuck here too. At the end of the day, trophies and achievements are just random manmade bits of code that tick off dopamine. I'm finding it's much more enjoyable to both be selective about which games to 100% and ALSO pick and choose which parts of a game I want to 100% (for example, beating every difficulty level instead of finding all the audio logs, etc)

Thanks for all your tips! I really like the one about buying a game now you will play now. I've been trying that recently, and it makes things so much more manageable. I think setting rules around what/why/when you buy is PROBABLY a much better approach than just having a lot of stuff and not knowing what to do with it.

YES. Never give up.