tickyboxes are very important components of my life.
I wrote two-thirds of a life update type thing at work yesterday, left the text file on my work computer, and was home today with a migraine - which woke me up at 4 am with the kind of headache where it feels like an ice pick has been driven through your eye, and then I had a panic attack, and paladin woke up and snuggled me until I calmed down and went back to sleep, and then when my alarm went off an hour and a half later my head was still feeling like murder, so I called out and got another six hours of sleep, then got up for a couple hours and went back to curling up on the couch and then I made dinner. Such has been my day. So the life update will happen tomorrow instead.
I meant to yammer about this on the day, but it slipped by me. My seven-year Backloggiversary (i.e. anniversary of starting my backloggery) was on the 21st. I find Backloggery to be both a terrible master and an excellent carrot-and-stick at the same time. Back before I knew it existed, I had a task list in my personal Outlook with all the games I owned but hadn't beaten; I also used to keep a text list in irregular patterns on LJ/DW. I guess I like keeping track of things. (The other day I proposed in a text conversation with
anteateradvance,
celeloriel, and
seventhe that I count up how many times I'd beaten each FF game and
anteateradvance said something along the lines of dear God why would you do that to yourself and I laughed, and then I did it, and it was kind of terrifying. Maybe I'll post it here, or to MU, eventually.)
ANYWAY. Ways in which Backloggery is really bad for me include the thing where it encourages me to treat games like a chore: I must Do The Thing and Tick The Boxes Off The List, which is dumb and pointless because hello, games are supposed to be fun. Sometimes I get kind of overwhelmed by the number of games sitting in the unbeaten column, since my free time to income ratio is kind of *lolsob* right now. It also tends to keep me grinding away at a game I'm not enjoying (there are ups and downs to this; sometimes it's enough to get me through one bad patch of an otherwise good game, and sometimes it's not.) I also sort of dislike the way it divides games into beaten vs. completed because my completionist soul is sad at every thing that is beaten rather than completed, but on the other hand it's nice to have the tickybox that said I DID ALL THE THINGS.
There are things I find it really helpful for. For one, it's a complete list in one place of all the games that I have, and I can pretty easily keep track of what I have and haven't played. And, in the same way that it can be a thing I use to beat myself up with, it can also be helpful to me: when I look at the giant pile of unbeaten games, maybe I'll choose to start one of those instead of picking up FF6 for Yet Another Playthrough (not that there's anything wrong with replaying games, which I love to do, but sometimes one gets in a rut, yes?)
At one point in my Backloggery history (before I got Steam, sob) I had gotten my game collection balanced to where my number of unbeaten games was smaller than my number of completed games. I would like to get back to that point again, although Steam makes it hard. (Damn you, wallet wildebeests!) My habit of re-buying favourites on new systems (goddamn it, Square Enix) doesn't help with this either; arguably I should not let those count against my unbeaten games, but on the other hand then I get the satisfaction of knowing the hours I spent replaying something on a new system is making a dent in my backlog. CHOICES.
One of the things I find most fun about Backloggery is the way it lets me passively keep up with my friends' gaming adventures--you can add friends on your multitap and it will show you their gaming updates, which is neat because then I can see if someone is playing the same things I am, or wandering through something I enjoyed. (It also gives me fodder for starting conversations, which I have become super bad at -- speaking of which, let's talk! Do you have IM? I also have IM and I am missing talking to people and would like to do that more, so! Let's do the thing!)
Do you keep track of your gaming habits? If so, what do you use?
I've posted this at http://lassarina.dreamwidth.org/1110719.html and you may comment there or here. On Dreamwidth, this entry has
comments.
I meant to yammer about this on the day, but it slipped by me. My seven-year Backloggiversary (i.e. anniversary of starting my backloggery) was on the 21st. I find Backloggery to be both a terrible master and an excellent carrot-and-stick at the same time. Back before I knew it existed, I had a task list in my personal Outlook with all the games I owned but hadn't beaten; I also used to keep a text list in irregular patterns on LJ/DW. I guess I like keeping track of things. (The other day I proposed in a text conversation with
anteateradvance,
celeloriel, and
seventhe that I count up how many times I'd beaten each FF game and
anteateradvance said something along the lines of dear God why would you do that to yourself and I laughed, and then I did it, and it was kind of terrifying. Maybe I'll post it here, or to MU, eventually.)
ANYWAY. Ways in which Backloggery is really bad for me include the thing where it encourages me to treat games like a chore: I must Do The Thing and Tick The Boxes Off The List, which is dumb and pointless because hello, games are supposed to be fun. Sometimes I get kind of overwhelmed by the number of games sitting in the unbeaten column, since my free time to income ratio is kind of *lolsob* right now. It also tends to keep me grinding away at a game I'm not enjoying (there are ups and downs to this; sometimes it's enough to get me through one bad patch of an otherwise good game, and sometimes it's not.) I also sort of dislike the way it divides games into beaten vs. completed because my completionist soul is sad at every thing that is beaten rather than completed, but on the other hand it's nice to have the tickybox that said I DID ALL THE THINGS.
There are things I find it really helpful for. For one, it's a complete list in one place of all the games that I have, and I can pretty easily keep track of what I have and haven't played. And, in the same way that it can be a thing I use to beat myself up with, it can also be helpful to me: when I look at the giant pile of unbeaten games, maybe I'll choose to start one of those instead of picking up FF6 for Yet Another Playthrough (not that there's anything wrong with replaying games, which I love to do, but sometimes one gets in a rut, yes?)
At one point in my Backloggery history (before I got Steam, sob) I had gotten my game collection balanced to where my number of unbeaten games was smaller than my number of completed games. I would like to get back to that point again, although Steam makes it hard. (Damn you, wallet wildebeests!) My habit of re-buying favourites on new systems (goddamn it, Square Enix) doesn't help with this either; arguably I should not let those count against my unbeaten games, but on the other hand then I get the satisfaction of knowing the hours I spent replaying something on a new system is making a dent in my backlog. CHOICES.
One of the things I find most fun about Backloggery is the way it lets me passively keep up with my friends' gaming adventures--you can add friends on your multitap and it will show you their gaming updates, which is neat because then I can see if someone is playing the same things I am, or wandering through something I enjoyed. (It also gives me fodder for starting conversations, which I have become super bad at -- speaking of which, let's talk! Do you have IM? I also have IM and I am missing talking to people and would like to do that more, so! Let's do the thing!)
Do you keep track of your gaming habits? If so, what do you use?
I've posted this at http://lassarina.dreamwidth.org/1110719.html and you may comment there or here. On Dreamwidth, this entry has
comments.