Part of what drew me to this site was the similarity with GoodReads. What I’ve liked in the past with GoodReads is their yearly reading challenges. Usually these default to 52 books a year. This year in order to also work on my backlog of games I set the same challenge with games. I took the avg book length and avg time it takes to read a book of that length and gave myself the challenge to play that equivilant amount of time on games. Only finished games count.
I found this challenge helped me stay focused and motivated to stick with games. It’s Dec and I met both my reading and gaming challenges. Anyways, I thought I’d share in case anyone else might find this interesting as a goal for next year.
I’ve always thought about building a challenge type feature for the site. I think a lot of people would use it. The only thing I’ll say is that I hope you still enjoyed your time with video games during the challenge. I’ve always found I resent anything I’m forced to do.
I like using it to organize my thoughts on what I’ve played and to try and play more games I haven’t played before rather than repeating. I’ve been trying to think more critically about the games I play, and having to put my experience into words makes me realize things I probably wouldn’t have otherwise.
It would probably be hard to come up with a challenge that would meet everyone’s needs. I can understand how a challenge might make something fun into a chore.
I don’t spend as much time playing games as I do on my other hobbies. I’ve been collecting games for a long time, but don’t put much time into them (doesn’t stop me from buying more). I used this challenge to get me more invested in games as a hobby and to finally work through some of my backlog. It’s actually been a great experiment. I’ve found playing games to be a really fun hobby, and enjoy making time for it. It’s had a reverse effect on my backlog (I’m adding games at a higher rate than I did when I wasn’t playing so much). Looking back it does make me proud that I’ve beaten more games this year than I probably have in all prior years combined.
Anyways, I don’t know how many people can relate to all of that, but I thought maybe some people might relate to trying to work through their backlogs. I’d be interested to hear if anyone else has made challenges for themselves and found entertaining ways to work through backlogs.
I played with some Users on Grouvee a backlog attack game with selfmade batches. 8bit made me a nice River-City-Ransom batch. I give you some so called “bounty-hunts” if you like. Another idea is to give ranking-points by all-time-classic games. That would motivate people to play more historic stuff.
That sounds really cool. What would “bounty-hunts” mean?
I’d be interested in an all-time classic games list. Reminds me of those lists for books and movies you gotta read/watch before you die. I pretty much already do this with books and movies, and it would be fun to do the same with games.
Bounty-Hunts just ,means i take alook at your backog and tell you what to play (we did 3 games). Each time you finished one, you earn a self-made batch.
That’s an excellent idea. I do have the problem that I don’t have the same amount of free time all year round, plus it is almost nonexistent… sigh… I miss the old days when I could play to my hearts content after school. Now I only have about 15 to 30 minutes a day. And they keep making this games that just don’t end!
I adore lists and challenges of this type: as long as I give myself space to be ok if I don’t finish. I did the tabletop 10x10 on board game geek.com a few years in a row (pick 10 games, play em 10 times) and it was such fun. Didn’t complete either time, but discovered new games I LOVED and played WAY more than 10 times. I think if you completed you got a badge or something.
I also just started doing Scavenger Hunts on Letterboxd (different host picks 30 prompts a month, everyone picks movies that meet those prompts, you all use the same hashtag for the month so you can interact) and it’s been fun to clear some movie backlog and get into new stuff. No awards for finishing these, just fun and finding community.
Like you said, it gives me a framework and some direction of what to pickup when I just want to watch/play EVERYTHING.
