The words “inventory” and “backlog” tend to have a negative connotation when talking about video game collections. The words make it sound like work, when playing video games is a hobby; it should be fun! I find managing my inventory fun. It is why I manage a database and a website just for it. Recently, I’ve been staring at my inventory and trying to figure out how I should handle the games I have not played. I need to do a balancing act of playing new games, replaying games, and playing games in my backlog.
In 2010, give or take a few years, video game tracking started being built into video game consoles and platforms. The amount of time you played a video game and your achievements were now available for you to see. I liked this. I wanted something to bring that data into one place, including games that were not on platforms tracking this information. I found Raptr.
Raptr worked great until it didn’t. They started depreciating features, and changed their focus. It eventually shuddered, making me lose access to all my data I added to it. Around 2015, I couldn’t find a replacement, so I built one myself. I built a database, and kept track of all of the games I played from 2015 onward. Eventually, I decided to try to scavenge as much data on the games I played before 2015. This was mostly a success. While I did that, I also decided to inventory every game I owned. Pretty soon that evolved into Royfuss Games, and now I have all of the data I want in one place.
Now that I had a bunch of data, I still had a problem. How do I handle the over 400 games I own, but haven’t played? I decided to look at every game in my inventory, and separate them into status categories. You can see the up-to-date results of that labor here. Basically, I plan to never play over 300 of those games. This year I have been trying to not buy new games, and I really focused on those games. For the most part, this worked well, but I found something better to keep me motivated.
Last year I tried out a bunch of websites to see what could best management my backlog. I added several of my games just to see how they worked. One of those websites was Infinite Backlog. I liked the site, but it was missing a lot of features of was looking for. Recently, I was reminded of it, and decided to check back in. The two developers have been busy.
The site is extremely flexible. The developers have left it to the user to determine how best to manage their collection. For example, you can define a game’s status as “beaten” or “complete.” If you want to say “complete” is getting all of the achievements, then you can do that. If you think “complete” is beating the game and getting all collectibles, but leaving some achievements, then that’s okay too. Every aspect of the game can be manually edited however you want.
Games have several properties. You can add multiple versions of a game, such as if you own it on console and PC. I feel the status options are broad enough to assign to any game. You can also define the date you completed the game, how many times, and how many hours. The acquisition details, like date, store, launcher, and price, can also be defined. Honestly, it has many of the fields I have built into my database.
The developers have a strong focus on the social aspects of the site. The community is pretty cozy right now. You can write reviews, post on the main activity feed, comment on other people’s stuff, and so on. They also have leaderboards and friend lists.
My favorite part of the site is your level and IB score. When you add games and play them, you earn XP, which contributes to your level. It is pretty easy to boost your level just by adding your games. However, the IB score is the more interesting of the two. The IB score is like a credit score. It spans 1 through 500, and it is a calculates a score on how you are doing with your backlog. They weight the score based on how big your collection is, so smaller collections don’t dominate the leaderboards. Otherwise, changing a game from “unplayed” to another status increases the score.
I spent a few hours adding my game collection into the website. I think gamifying my backlog will help me stay motivated in the long run. I’m looking forward to updating games as I play them. I’m also participating in the social aspects of the site. The best part, the developers are always improving it. I hope the site sticks around at least for as long as I have a backlog. If they were to shutdown, then I still have my database which I will continue to maintain.