Monthly Backlog Club

Video Games
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Let’s talk about how we’re going to get this backlog challenge going. We’ve had several ideas thrown around over here on the Grouvee site: peter’s Grouvee status Dec. 4, 2014, 11:12 p.m.

I really like the idea that we try and play a game together and talk about it once a month. I understand that doesn’t really work too well if you don’t own the game. I can figure out a way to make badges for participating in the monthly discussions, and that could be pretty awesome.

We could also just use this thread as a way to be accountable for playing games off of our backlog. Come up with a system of playing 4 games to allow 1 purchase or something like that.

What do you guys think? Would you be up for a monthly game club? Or would you rather just come up with a good rule set for a backlog challenge?

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I love the idea of playing together! This is something I look forward to.

I don’t dig the idea of having rules around backlogs etc. For me it just wouldn’t work. My gaming time is fairly limited and I don’t need any rules to tell me wether I can buy a new game or not. I’m a grown man damnit! I’ll buy games whenever I want to! :stuck_out_tongue:

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I much prefer the idea of a club over the challenge, especially as there actually seem to be new people popping up in these forums now. Sorry for mostly vanishing of late, by the way! Life’s been life-y.

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They could use some workshopping, but here are my ideas:

  1. I think we should have a backlog pledge (e.g. 1 game finished every 2 weeks, etc). Everyone has different schedules, and games vary wildly in length, so IMO it’s not reasonable to make it a competition. Perhaps award a badge to anyone who completes their pledge.

  2. For the Monthly Backlog Club, I think it would be smart to approach it similarly to how a book club operates. That is, one person chooses a game for everyone to play, and every month a new person chooses. I think it’d be best if the person choosing the title has already finished the game, that way there’s some guarantee that we’re not all blindly going in to play something unworthy of our time (unless that person has questionable taste). I also think this would be exciting for the person choosing because they will get to hear everyone’s opinion of a title they enjoy, and they can revisit the title if they haven’t played it in a while. The hurdle would be finding a title that one person likes that no one else has yet played/finished.

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Alright, so here’s my idea!

We have to make this as group friendly as possible, obviously. Which brings up the issue of different people having different games and different consoles or a PC. Chances are, with it being so few of us at the moment, whatever game picked, probably wouldn’t get played by anyone.

I see this as an opportunity for 2 things, conquering some backlog, and growing the forum. So my suggestion is this, everyone in the ‘club’ can nominate a couple games each month (the number of games we can nominate depends on group size). For now there’s just a few of us, so I’d say 2-3 games would be good, once we get a bit larger, we’ll drop it down to just 1.

The chosen games would be compiled into a list of that month’s backlog games to play. It may turn out that the only games you’re interesting in play are your nominations, and that’s fine. When you complete a game, you create a thread in the forums for it for discussion (as long as you’re the first one to finish it, otherwise use the thread another backlog club member created).

You don’t have to finish a game either. We’ve all played a game we ended up disliking and not wanting anything else to do with. This club isn’t meant to make anyone play a game they don’t like.

Anyway, all of the chosen games will have a special badge related to them for you to receive upon completion. For example, lets say you finished Dragon Age 3, the badge could be ‘Inquisitor’. I’ve no problem making a special image for each of the badges. I think the badges should remain open for earning later as well, just in case someone can’t get to a game on the month it was chosen.

Obviously this relies on a bit of trust, someone COULD claim to have played a game and never even touched it. Though to receive your badge, you do have to participate in the discussion of it. Meaning if you’re the first, you create the thread and share your thoughts, or add your thoughts to an existing thread.

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Haha, I kinda thought the idea of getting video or photo proof that you finished a game would have been a good idea but I suppose Jess is right. It isn’t right to try and coerce someone to finish a game. Maybe some gamblers would be willing to side-bet with me. XD

I’m all for a book club type of thing going on. I didn’t know the way it works is someone usually picks a book for everyone to read. Logistically it would be kinda difficult because not all of us have the same things available to us. Being a pirate has its perks I guess. I think Jess’s idea of getting a few games put nominated a month is a good idea, that way people have a little breathing room if they don’t like the first game or cant get it for some reason.

Poor Peter though, he really wants to finish his backlog and he doesn’t want to buy anything new until he finishes a few, and no one will join him. I’ll go the distance with you man. I’m only saying that because I just recently bought three games I been meaning to buy so I’m set for a few months. XD

Badges would be cool. You know I have a button making machine that makes badges. I could make a few with the Grouvee icon and have them sent out. Make a few of everyone’s favorite games, of the games we are doing for the club.
Are we legit calling it the Monthly Backlog Club? Sounds alright. I was thinking VGB, Video Game Backloggers. Sounds kinda like KGB? eh? :smiley: Ok maybe not.

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:smile: I’m OK with that. I just want to play cool games. I was mostly looking for a cool thing to do on the forum, and I think the monthly club will work great for that.

I like this idea because it’s the most flexible. I think it’s a good way to start. In a perfect world, we’d do the one game for everyone idea that @yourehungry mentioned, but I fear that would make it hard for more people to participate if people don’t have a game, or hate the genre of the game, etc.

We can make a thread to put your “nominations” out there, then everyone has a list of games that they can play for the month.

Then like, you @Jess said, we’ll have one thread for each game. I think I might make a Club forum category for this.

Anyone have objections to this format?

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Is there a poll system that will allow you to track who voted for what, and allow users to write in their own poll entries and vote yes/no on each? Cause that would be ideal. I guess it is not a big deal that we do it with forum posts the first few times around but I figure that could get messy real quick.

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There is a poll system, although it doesn’t really track who voted for what. It also doesn’t let people add items to the list. I’ll try and stay on top of the forum thread and add games to the OP as they come in.

When do you guys want to start this?

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2015 seems like a reasonable place to start.

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New year sounds good to me. That way my resolution can be to play more games. :grin:

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To overcome many of the obstacles mentioned, perhaps the book club model could be that one person selects a genera, that way it is more likely everyone who wants to can be involved. The button could be the genera or theme chosen.

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I’m not so much a fan of that proposal. While it’d be kind of interesting for everyone to show up and present their review of their own game, there wouldn’t be much room for actual interaction. By having everyone play the same game, you get multiple points of view on the same piece of work.

I think Pete just needs to put his foot down and declare something :stuck_out_tongue: Democracy just doesn’t work! Pete, be the merciless, iron-fisted tyrant this site needs!

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Just to be clear, you don’t like the idea of multiple games being played? What about the genre idea? Because that kind of restricts it to a select list of games. The main thing that worries me about making it one game is that it can become a chore to play something if you hate it. Then people won’t want to do it. If we could restrict it to like 4 games in a genre, that could possibly work.

I think I’ll put up the starter thread next week. I’ll make a rule set based on suggestions here, then we’ll get it going.

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Is the point of this to have everyone be able to discuss a game that we all played more or less simultaneously, or is the point just to plow through backlog? If it’s the latter, then multiple games makes perfect sense. If it’s the former, I’m not sure what kind of coherent dialogue this would be able to generate.

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It’s kind of for both, but mostly for everyone to gather round and have something to talk about.

My plan is to make it where I pick a genre, then we decide on 2-3 games to play from that genre. That way people will hopefully have one of the games and might not have to go out and buy one if they don’t want. We’ll have a thread for each game.

Maybe it won’t work, and maybe we’ll need to go to one game. I figure we’ll try it once and go from there.

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I thought we were going to be voting using a poll system, that way everyone gets to throw their nominations into the poll and we’re left with a few top choices.

I agree with Andrew. I feel we should limit the number of games down to at least 2, at most 3, to give people a little room on game selection. Ideally I’d say 1 but I’m not sure how gung ho people would be about participating if it is a game they know they won’t like, simply can’t afford, etc. Trying not to exclude anyone is important at this point because there are only a few of us on the forums as it is.

I’m not too keen on this genre idea. If anything the games should be from different genres that way it is more likely someone will participate in at least 1 of the nominated games. Limiting it to the same genres means there is an increased likelihood that people will not participate if it is a genre they can not enjoy. For instance, I refuse to play a point-and-click adventure game. If all of the games in the month are point and clicks, you probably won’t see me until next month. Some people feel this way about JRPGs, Fighters, etc.

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That’s more or less what we’re doing.

I don’t mind throwing this out.

I’m starting the other thread today. I’ll link to it over here when I’m done.

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This is a very nifty idea. The format as outlined in the new thread sounds good to me, as well. Count me in! :>

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Here’s the main thread for January: [MBLC Nominations] January 2015

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