Why Do We Hoard Our Video Games In Backlogs?
How the backlog could change everything.
It’s coming round to that time of year again – the end of it. That means all those 2019 releases you’ve always meant to get around to are now toppling over each other, your Steam library stacked with as yet untouched titles that just looked so good for £1.99 in that Summer Sale. So why do we, people who supposedly love video games, for some reason become burdened with the act of playing them?
The simple answer is they’re too easy to collect and hoard, and there’s the universal truth that we all think we have more time than we do. At the heart of a backlog, and especially an indie game backlog, is one of the most permeating flaws in the way we consume entertainment today – the click and forget cycle.
It’s the instant gratification of clicking three times and owning something you came across mere moments ago. The progression from initial curiosity to ownership takes place within a matter of seconds at some levels, and is one of the core reasons we hoard entertainment never to touch it again. We have so much access to so much information and entertainment that we rarely allow this purchase journey to breathe beyond those few seconds – there’s always something else for us to look at, another newly recommended game to download, or another link to click.
It’s only once we review our decisions now that they’re safely in our libraries that we recognise the length of time we will have to devote to a piece of entertainment and realise that it’s far longer than the few seconds of instant gratification we felt when we hit checkout on our cart – we start to view our backlog as a chore.
And this happens with indie games more than Triple-A titles because you’ve invested far less in that initial commitment. I’ll come clean. Of all the indie games I’ve bought in 2019, I have played just over half. Not completed, not capped-out – played. As in opened the game and got beyond the menu.
To be fair, I’ve bought an eye-watering amount of indie games this year – there would literally not be enough hours in the day. We’re able to purchase more hours of entertainment than we could ever find the time for quickly, easily, and with very little consideration. In contrast, I’ve played every Triple-A game I’ve bought in 2019, because I buy them physically. Plus, that’s £60 a go – of course I’m playing it. Not only am I spending more up front, but I’m also dedicating physical space in my home to this experience.
So not only is it a case of the speed at which we can make these decisions and access this content contributing to our indie game backlog problem, but it’s also the low initial outlay that stops us from feeling the need to make good on such purchase decisions. It’s easy to forget about a game when it only cost you spare change and sits somewhere in the ether.
We build up game backlogs because we’ve become so used to instant gratification entertainment that all it takes to feel like we’ve engaged with a game is to buy it. It helps that it’s a quick and easy decision – we’ve got instant information telling us that it’s positively reviewed, we flick through screenshots, read a quick description that succinctly tells us everything we won’t be doing, we realise it’s only 90% off for a few more days, then we click three buttons and it’s in our library with only 99p gone from our bank accounts. Beyond that, we have our own daily lives that ride on far more than a 99p outlay – we have jobs, children, grocery shopping, cleaning, travelling.
The problem, however, becomes one far larger than an accumulative spend. It becomes one of dispensability that could threaten digital indie games themselves. If, after all, everybody buys them but nobody plays them, there is no long-lasting appreciation for the innovation that takes place within the 1’s and 0’s of a smaller title. Then they become the fodder of a Steam Sale to be waded through, everyone knowing they won’t actually play them so why bother.
By holding a larger price tag, by contrast, Triple-A titles imbue their games with a sense of value straight from the off. We all assume a £60 game is better than a £6 game, after all. Game backlogs are created through a split-second desire repeated time and time again with each new slew of discounts. They may seem like harmless charms of a digital age, of busy lives and commercial plenty, but if we don’t give our game backlogs the attention they deserve, they have the potential to turn some of the experiences and stories we love most into forgotten single-use commodities.