I have a big backlog of games, movies, books, & television that I’d like to work through before I die. I struggle with all of the things that I’m sure you’re all familiar with; a combination of life and way too much mindless scrolling taking up so much of my time that I didn’t feel like I could work up to the things I said I wanted to do. Through a combination of things, I’ve been working through that and actually managed to read through a surprising number of books last year. Then I realized I had a new problem.
I’ve found that, when I tried thinking back, I couldn’t remember exactly what I’d read. Maybe that’s indicative of how much what I read stuck with me that I really can only remember blazing through the Dungeon Crawler Carl series, but it bothered me.
I watched a series of videos by Daryl Talks Games about him working through his backlog over the years. And somewhere in that three hours he talks about writing his thoughts on the games he’s finished after he’s through. I’ve been doing that in a running Obsidian note and it’s helped me solidify my impressions a bit on the stuff I’m consuming. I’m not sure I’m satisfied with that as a solution, but I’m working on that.
Another problem I’m finding I’m having is just picking something and remembering to go back to something that I wanted to try, but didn’t have time for.
How do you guys keep track of what you’ve finished and what you want to finish? Have sites like Letterboxd, Backloggd, and Goodreads worked for you? Do you do something else?
I use those sites that you mentioned when I’m finished with something to sum up my thoughts. But for games in particular, I keep a journal of my thoughts about the medium and the games I’m playing too.
A journal is a good thought. My wife is into junk journaling and I’ve been trying to think of a reason to try to do it with her. This might be just the thing.
The great thing is you can do it at whatever level you like.
For example, I currently just do it on my Kobo with a stylus, but if I stick with it I might get one of those gaming themed notebooks and a photo printer for screenshots.
Videos like this definitely make the bar seem high, but I think I’ve landed on sometime to try for now. I’ve landed on having a binder with a menu of things I want to get to. Then once I finish it, I’ll cut it out and put it in a journal where I’ll paste the picture and my thoughts. That photo printer for screen shots is a great thought. Might even give me a reason to care about photo modes.
I don’t have an official tracking system. It’s more about looking at my physical/digital library, picking something, and pressing GO. In one of the discord servers I joined, we have a channel for sharing games we completed. I’ll ususally take a screenshot and post there when I finish a game. At the end of the year, I’ll search for my posts and create a final list for the year. Normally I only finish 12-15 games a year.
I LOVE journaling my thoughts on any media that really stuck with me after I’ve finished. Admittedly, outside of games I don’t always remember.
For games, I try my best to write a Steam review and a Backloggd review upon finishing (only started this in like 2024) and I now have a dedicated games journal that I’ve been using a lot this year for logging my thoughts on games both for myself and for coverage notes.
I just kept a folder of box art PNGs, but I started it early enough to have literally every game I ever played/tried out. Something about forgetting that I have played a game makes the bad feels about wasted time skyrocket, I dunno. Aside from that, I wrote a handful of steam reviews and backlogg’ds
Timely enough, I just started doing this myself out of a desire and personal goal to more consciously interact with the media I consume. I just spun up a Backloggd account as well this year, and have been striving to journal each play session with either a brief on the events of the game during this play session, my thoughts on what’s going on, or if there were any moments of friction that I’ve felt with the game play or game systems. I’m also planning on summarizing my entire experience in some type of review for Steam/Backloggd/YouTube.
I like the thought of writing a few thoughts down after a session, then making a summary. I feel like it’d help what we’re consuming stick. So much of it just washes over me and I’m not left with much of an impression other than I liked or did not like that.
I use Backloggd for tracking my games, but after the first year I did shift my mindset with it. The struggle, for me, with logging and tracking is that you can unintentionally turn it into a sort of challenge where you’re trying to get through as much as possible and lose out on the experience like you mentioned. My first year using the site I honestly spent more time focused on getting the “games played this year” number up rather than the actual gameplay experience.
The balance I’ve found is just journaling my thoughts after finishing (or dropping) a game and adding it to my backlog entry and Steam review. I enjoy sharing my thoughts and being able to reflect on them so I drop them in Steam reviews too, but I’ve made a shift away from spending more than a few minutes logging my gaming activity.
I’ve found I can’t do the same with other things like books, movies, TV, anime, etc. because it ends up feeling more like work than a hobby.
