I see numerous threads where people worry that they shouldn’t buy a new game because their ‘backlog’ is too big, because they bought a lot of cheap games.
This makes no sense.
There is no law saying you need to ‘finish’ a game. (I’ve never understood how you ‘finish’ a game anyway. Games are games, not books).
If you bought a game for $10 and played it for 2 hours, you got a great deal. It doesn’t matter a damn if you only played 10% of the levels.
I never played a single campaign mission in Company of heroes. I never finished oblivion, bioshock, half life 1 or 2, spore or world of goo. I haven’t even got past the civ stage in spore.
It doesn’t matter.
If you got enough entertainment from your purchase, then that’s fine, feel free to move on. I can quite happily buy Empire: total war, knowing full well I will never finish that game, and that I have a whole shelf of ‘unfinished games’.
Am I the only one who thinks like this?
The problem is not that I feel obligated to finish a game, it’s that for a lot of them I want to finish them. If I keep buying new games I become less likely to get back to ones that i want to finish.
That being said, yeah, if you don’t want to finish a game why the hell do it.
Yeah, basically. Completing a game is not like completing a book, at all, and is a poor analogy for one reason; a book ends once you complete it.
What you’re saying is that reading the first major battle in one of the lotr books gave you enough entertainment, you could stop reading it and be fine. I doubt that would happen, as its part of the overall story, which a lot of gamers go for, including myself.
When I complain about my backlog, it’s not because I have a number of unfinished games, but many I haven’t even started. I buy games once they become discounted, but ultimately it’s still a waste of money if I never even install the darn things.
That said, given how crappy the world’s economies are right now, I’m grateful my life’s comfortable enough that I can afford to gripe about unplayed games.
The sad thing for me is that I have games that I’ve never played. I buy games sometimes when they’re really cheap and then never get to them. Company of Heroes is a great example actually. For shame!
I bet if you could find all the content that the crappy gameplay in any given game is keeping you from seeing on (say) youtube or something, at high quality, people would stop worrying about this sort of thing.
If I don’t care for a game I don’t worry about finishing it. I never finished Myst, for example.
For a story oriented game that I like, I want to finish it, cause otherwise I am left hanging.
For a game like Civ4, I want to play it enough to get the feel for all its major aspects. I want to play till I feel I’ve played it enough to move on. With SMAC and MOO2 playing it through to a victory a couple of times was enough. With Civ4, I want to play rather more than that, playing to victory on higher levels, on different maps, with different civs, and eventually playing some scenarios.
If I have a backlog of games I WANT to play, why should I buy a new one?
(I’ve never understood how you ‘finish’ a game anyway. Games are games, not books).
I guess there are varying definitions but for something that is single player only and has a story line, there definitely is a finished state. I finished Assassin’s Creed and, while I enjoyed it, I don’t see myself playing it again to get all the flags or something. For all intents and purposes, it’s “finished”.
These two covered my reply really well. For a lot of games, I really do want to finish them, but either real life intruded in some way, or I felt like taking a break from the game, but never got the chance to go back. For example, in Planescape Torment, I want to finish it because I love it so much each time I play it. But each time I get about half way, real life has intruded in some way, and I haven’t been able to play games for a while, and then I put it off, and when I come back to it after months/years, I start again from the beginning, and it happens again.
And like Steve said, there’s lots of games I haven’t even started, which I really feel bad about. Since I own them, I should at least check out what they’re like. Like Company of Heroes, STALKER, and so many others.
And there’s so many games in those two categories, you’re right Cliffski, I could care less about the games that I didn’t finish that i don’t really feel passionate about finishing. Like not being able to finish the tutorial fight successfully in Space Rangers 2? Screw that game, there’s so many good games in my backlog that don’t have steep difficulty curves, unless that is the next Star Control 2, I’m not bend over backwards to try to figure it out. (And if it is like Star Control 2, then I wouldn’t have to bend over backwards to figure it out in the first place).
I never played a single campaign mission in Company of heroes.
Frequently referred to as the worst part of the game, so that makes sense.
I never finished oblivion
Completely understandable, however…
bioshock, half life 1 or 2
You really, really owe it to yourself to finish those 3 games.
world of goo.
Oh come on!
I haven’t even got past the civ stage in spore.
I hear there’s no reason to even get that far!
It doesn’t matter.
Agreed, although I always feel like I’m missing something when I begin a game and then stop. I find my problem is switching between games and then feeling a bit overwhelmed thinking about what to play when I look at my Games folder. Should I continue my Total War 2 campaign, or finally finish Thief 3? I still haven’t unlocked half of the levels in Rollercoaster Tycoon 3 or Railroad Tycoon 3. Trials 2 keeps sucking me back even though I’ve no-faulted Easy and Medium levels, and Mount & Blade has such an epic scope and “do whatever you feel” quality that makes me feel like going back to it would be work, even though I want to go back.
Awwww, cliffski’s dreaming of a new frontier in disposable entertainment. You don’t have to even finish it before you buy something new and more importantly at full price! Isn’t greed cute?
I don’t really take my backlog too seriously; it’s not that great a financial burden, so it’s more of a running joke than a Serious Problem. I’ve at least got the option of playing all sorts of great games that I might have completely missed and be unable to get otherwise, and it’s just a matter of prioritizing them.
I just regret that I’ve let so many RPGs slide onto the list, since they tend to take the longest and, as others have mentioned, you usually want to see the story-driven games through to the end.
And I have a bunch that I haven’t even started as well, usually either as a hedge against potential future unavailability, or because they seemed to be at a couldn’t-possibly-get-any-cheaper point (which has proven wrong on a few occasions, but oh well).
I never have had, nor will I likely ever have, a backlog. I buy a game, play it exclusively to finish, then get another, and repeat. There are two games that I’ve bought that I will never complete, and one that I’ve yet to complete (FFXII on the PS3) but that I return to from time-to-time (I’m 60 hours in, not counting lost time due to party death), but those don’t stop me from getting another new game.
It’s more about controlling my desire for “stuff” than worrying about having unfinished games. If I have games unfinished, I don’t really need another. I’m still satisfied playing TQ when I want something to play between new games. Otherwise, I’m sure I’d be out buying a lot of mediocre games, and I certainly don’t want to support mediocrity.
I have to completely agree with you there. I look at my games folder with what I have installed and just find myself stymied by the indecisiveness, with the half accomplished games. To me, I view the time and energy I put into a game as leading to an end purpose of giving a sense of pride when I can look back and go, yeah, I did that. Rome Total War, I want to see the whole world covered with my Julii banner, but I’m at the critical mass part of the game where the micromanagement, and the perfectionist in me pulls me back and I say in my head “this just isn’t what I’ve envisaged.” A lot of my problem is to do with perfection, which even stems into games that can not be beaten (ie: Sim City 4).
That being said, why people bother with posting their backlog is odd. I can not see how it will change anything. You’ll still go out and buy that hot new game, or the dusty classic sitting in the bargain bin no matter what is on the list to be finished, and the list will just keep on growing.
I’m actually glad I own a laptop over a desktop PC. Not being able to upgrade often, and being behind in the graphics card generation means I have a good excuse not to buy new PC games.
I have a billion games I’ve never played, and therefore have an absurd backlog, but I can’t imagine not finishing a game that I started and put in more than an hour - I guess it’s because I tend to favor story-driven games, or like the story aspects of games even in genres like shooters where a lot of people don’t care about the storyline.
Just the types of games I like, I guess, but for those games it would definitely feel like walking out of a movie part-way through or leaving a book unfinished - I’ll never do it. I always finish my games.
Yeah I get to mark off a lot of new games as things I simply cannot run satisfactorily (GTAIV, Saint’s Row 2, World at War, etc.), although I’m still surprised when a demo shows me that I can run the game just fine (L4D) and then I get the “grrrr, I have to buy it” feeling.
A backlog for me almost always means games I either haven’t started (mostly, that’s my list) or have barely started and got distrated, but really do want to play. I feel no obligation to finish games at all. If I get bored and move on, it’s not in my backlog. I’m done with it. My backlog is just games that I haven’t gotten the time to play MORE of (or to start, as noted).
It’s a token gesture of responsibility. You have these games that you bought and haven’t really played and you want to ditch them and buy more games that you probably won’t really play. So you must make a half-hearted attempt at clearing the backlog before you can spend more money without regret.
