I decided to share a new hobby I’ve been doing since last summer, namely creating a list of games from my game library that are in an overarching, chronological order by our planet Earth’s timeline.
I did this out of curiosity to make a track record of games and I must say, it was rewarding in a few ways: It helps me learn about the outlines of humanity’s historical periods, and it offers me a list to follow as a video game backlog.
As a bonus, I even extended the list to beyond our current time period, including science fiction games in the process. (Updated 24/05/24)
It’s rough in the details and the description of my method but I’ve written down my motivations behind it for you to help understand how I built and follow this list. If there’s any game details that you’d suggest or would prefer to see corrected, you’re free to leave any feedback.
All in all, I hope it sates some kind of curiosity for you and that it might inspire you along the way. Cheers!
P.S. In the beginning, I made this list on Evernote, since I was mostly comfortable on this platform back then. That is, until they decided get greedy and made it clunkier for free users with their subscription prompts. You can still view it the way I started it, as much as it is outdated now and I jumped over to Google Docs to make the list.
That is really cool. I took a look at the link and it was very fascinating. I may have missed it but what dot he colors denote? Also, I think it would be interesting to put a column stating how fictional the title may be in the cases of tying to Historical aspects/ moments and how much you enjoyed it on a scale of sorts.
I looked at your list the way I’ve looked at movies that try to be as historically accurate as possible, like Gettysburg and think that it would add to it but that is simply my opinion.
Thanks for the fast response, Prin! And also for pointing out the colors in the table. I forgot to specify that the red ones are in my backlog and the green ones have been cleared previously (beaten or dropped), so I’ll update on that.
The suggestion to add the fiction level in its own column is interesting. For now, I do it by the wildmarks as described above the list. And yeah, adding an enjoyment scale is also a welcome suggestion.
I’m glad that you guys enjoyed it. I have taken the feedbacks into consideration and added a score column, as well as marking games that are on my wishlist.
My inner geek squeed SO hard at this. Brilliant idea, and really interesting. Are you including just the events of the game, or the game’s backstory as well (I understand that could become quite convoluted)?
On a side note, I used to use Evernote, but always found it didn’t quite do what i wanted and switched to Notion. How is Evernote these days? It’s been a fair while since I looked into it.
It’s pleasing to know that you liked my list, Joey!
It depends from game to game at what extent I focus the events on. The essential events make for a varying arrangement taking place on my list, so I’ll mention some prime examples below:
Max Payne has a backstory taking place in 1998 but since the main event takes place in 2001, the game will be sorted in the 21st century category. Both years will still be mentioned in the list.
Mafia’s story spans through 1930-1938, as well as 1946 in the epilogue (as far as I’ve skimmed through the wiki page), so it’ll have its place before Pathway (1936) and Saboteur (1940) because the scale of the main event virtually outweigh those of the other games.
Each Assassin’s Creed’s year are listed by the year of the historical events but won’t include the current event, since the date of the modern-day events haven’t even been specified.
The tricky one is the strategy games that covers several centuries across the time category. I listed Age of Empires DE as first in the Antiquity category since the first scenarios date before the events of other games, same as AoE II DE in the Later Middle Ages category. At the same time, Age of Empires IV is listed last since its earliest event comes later but also finishes last, so I listed it last as well. I will still play the scenarios in accordance to the dates of events that take place before other games, jumping back and forth between the games.
Like I mentioned before, I feel comfortable working with Evernote but I did notice that the list’s width gets cut off in the shared link page if I stretch it too wide, so I had to sacrifice some optimized layout for readability. I did hear about Notion and used it a bit a year ago, though I haven’t broke through enough to apply it in my everyday documentation. If it works better in comparison, I might consider converting to it.
Almost a year since my last post here, but I must say that I always revisit the list to keep it up-to-date. Today, I have taken upon the task to divide certain campaign games across the timeline. And I must say, it was quite fun and educational.
Have a look into the list if you’re interested. I have included every campaign from Age of Empires 1-4, Empire Earth: Gold Edition and Transport Fever 2. Feedback is appreciated, if anything comes up.
I have now changed platform to keep up the convenience and finesse of working with large table lists.
Currently, I am using Google Docs as a platform for finesse and convenience. I have updated the first post of the thread.
Since the management in Evernote started pestering about subscription offers out of greed, I have been looking into different alternatives. Notion was the first ideal platform, but it was too limiting in color range for table formats. Finally, I went down with Google Docs and could shape it up the way I fundamentally wanted, despite being a novice with Excel-like applications. I could ask for some help by more experienced users in making the features more convenient, so feedbacks and help is welcome here.
With the game “Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey” done and over with, I can consider it a first milestone for getting the first bookend of the chronolog settled!
Hence, I can’t but look forward one step at a time and play along the humanity’s timeline. Next up, Far Cry: Primal and beyond…!
As of today, big updates have graced this backlog list, such as campaign missions from the Age of Empires games and Empire Earth spread out and sorted by timeline. Most recently, I broke World War II-based games down into missions and made a tab exclusively for them.
For all I can say, it is first and foremost a backlog list made for fun and curiosity, though more rewarding is mapping out the historical frame of events, factual as well as fictional.
