I have way too many on Steam and GOG and not enough time to play anything lately. I've been buying Steam games since the platform was in Beta, so I've racked up nearly 1000 titles. GOG has only given me a few dozen games, many of which eventually made their way to Steam recently, so I repurchased many of them there, just for ease of use.

Way too many and freebies are only a small portion of that. I think I never started at least 60% of my game collection. I could go NEET and have games to play full time for years without further expansion.

Nope, I'm pretty much the opposite of a hoarder, I get rid of things I don't see myself using so aggressively I've sometimes sold/thrown out stuff I later could have used. I don't want stuff I don't see myself needing even if it's free and in digital form, I've even asked Steam support to remove games I didn't want to keep from my account in the past before they added the ability to do it yourself. It's like I share the same magnetic polarity with extra stuff, I fling them off immediately if they get too close.

I currently own 116 games, of which:
- 6 are games I haven't played at all, likelihood of playing them in the future is 100%
- 9 are games I have not beaten completely, not including the 6 I haven't played at all. Three of these are games I might not ever beat, two of those three are games I got mostly because I've got good memories of them but might not play them that much and one might prove too difficult for me, I never was super good at 8/16bit era action games.

I likely have more games that I could play in my lifetime. But I don't think there is anything wrong with certain purchases being aspirational. Have to hope for retirement one day.

I like to think that I have way more life than I expect left.

I definitely have more games than I'll ever play: 700+ on GoG, 550+ on Steam, plus physical copies for PC, plus dozens of console games, plus emulation.

I've accepted the fact I'll never play that many games.

Rather, I just like having those games on hand so if the mood strikes for a particular game, I've already got it and I'm ready to go.

And part of the reason I buy so many digitally is that if licensing issues makes them unavailable for sale in the future, I've at least already go them in my library. Seen that happen one too many times already.

Shponglefan wrote on 2022-12-08, 17:52:

I definitely have more games than I'll ever play: 700+ on GoG, 550+ on Steam, plus physical copies for PC, plus dozens of consol […]
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I definitely have more games than I'll ever play: 700+ on GoG, 550+ on Steam, plus physical copies for PC, plus dozens of console games, plus emulation.

I've accepted the fact I'll never play that many games.

Rather, I just like having those games on hand so if the mood strikes for a particular game, I've already got it and I'm ready to go.

And part of the reason I buy so many digitally is that if licensing issues makes them unavailable for sale in the future, I've at least already go them in my library. Seen that happen one too many times already.

x2

yeah, steam sales make it far too easy to snowball your account. that, plus gog and physical copies... they all add up. that said, my problem isn't that i can't get around to playing what i own but more that when i start a game i find myself getting bored despite being initially excited. modern games are very cutscene heavy, and while i'm not such an enemy to the more cinematic game there are times when i just wanna get going. a couple of games i've played lately have been push forward on stick into cutscene simulators for a good couple hours before you're let off the hook. bleh

I try to make it easy - my steam has no AAA open world checklist abused crunched slogfests. The closest they have to that is Saints Row 2,the third,IV which are short enough games (though 2 kinda pads it out)

I have some weird collections of games for different systems... manly for emulation... No idea how many games... usually all ever released. But I only played a few in those collections over the span of 15+ years.

I don't have a big games budget but still managed to build a massive collection through bundles. Fortunately, I don't find myself interested in many newer games, so my backlog has been growing at a far slower pace. Even though I haven't played most of my steam library, I have been getting something out of it by copying the soundtracks to my music collection.

Speaking of backlogs, a big pet peeve of mine is that a lot of games are much longer than they need to be. I don't have a ton of time for gaming, so I'd rather finish an 8 hour game than an 80 hour game. A lot of the time these 80 hour games are just padded out and would actually be better as a shorter game.

looks like most of us are similar in the sense we have lots of games and likely will never play most of them!

gog and steam and added to that greatly by enabling cheap digital collection, i cannot imagine having hundreds of gog/steam games but i guess over time it can become that way

thinking about it some more its a bit like reading novels or seeing movies, there are simply too many to read/see in a lifetime yet so many are worth reading/watching, how do we decide?

also, thinking about all those games, can you imagine the development time put in by individuals and teams for these games that we evaluate and decide to play or not in seconds! think about how long we spent with popular games like duke3d, doom, half life, c&c, morrowind and all the classics from the 80's and 90's then realise for each of those there were dozens of alternatives with similarly long stories, virtual places to visit, details to uncover and so on.

Sombrero wrote on 2022-12-08, 13:14:

Nope, I'm pretty much the opposite of a hoarder, I get rid of things I don't see myself using so aggressively I've sometimes sold/thrown out stuff I later could have used. I don't want stuff I don't see myself needing even if it's free and in digital form

that is different! i tend to thinking about throwing things away only when i believe having them is worse than not having them, which is almost never - especially digital things

Ensign Nemo wrote on 2022-12-09, 03:59:

Speaking of backlogs, a big pet peeve of mine is that a lot of games are much longer than they need to be. I don't have a ton of time for gaming, so I'd rather finish an 8 hour game than an 80 hour game. A lot of the time these 80 hour games are just padded out and would actually be better as a shorter game.

i can see that, games can be long and this can be great fun - but frustrating if it isnt all engaging and if time is short. However i'd still prefer really good games (games where i like 'being' in the environment) to be long, with lots of activities and so on

We all do at this point.

It's very unlikely that I'll play most of the games that have been given away for free on GOG. Not sure why I even bothered to claim those to be honest, as some of them feel like shovelware.

But anything that I purchased deliberately will be played for sure. Of course it's possible that I may dislike a game and drop it after playing for a while (without finishing) but that's a different matter.

Do you have more games than you will ever play?

Yes. But it's actually the boxed games I have way more of. I have a modest number of games on steam, most of which I either really did play and some are freebies (either gifted or were always free or I got them because the retail key worked).

Some games like FEAR I don't have any hours on steam because I played the boxed version and I didn't have steam back then.

Yeah I definitely do. Between 130 GOG games, 320 Steam games and 50 or so on epic, ubisoft and Origin, not to mention a collection of DOS, Amiga, PS1, PS2 and Dreamcast games on disk and installed on my HDD I think I'll never run out if I played everything!

I have more games than I can play in 5 lifetimes.

Procyon wrote on 2022-12-29, 19:23:

I have more games than I can play in 5 lifetimes.

Amen to that. I figure in 100 years (as long as humanity can refrain from blowing itself up) there will be game archives lost within game archives, etc. etc. Already, there is such a glut. Especially in the indie scene. Many, though, are high quality so some great titles get buried in the sea of releases nowadays.

liqmat wrote on 2022-12-29, 19:32:

Many, though, are high quality so some great titles get buried in the sea of releases nowadays.

That's what is so wild to me. There are probably some fantastic games that almost nobody is playing, because they simply can't get noticed.