Chipping away at the backlog

May 14th, 2025

These days you have so many great games competing for your attention that you end up not knowing what to play. Heck, I've had this problem for the longest time with the 3DS because I went on a rampage downloading all the 3DS games I could think of - and then some! Anyone familiar with Steam sales and/or rampant piracy knows what analysis paralysis feels like.

When you think about it for just a few seconds, the decision is obvious: bite the bullet and just play something - and that works! ...that is, until you get to any moment where you start to second-guess that decision, or until you come back on the next section and have to go through the decision again. Plus this moment of tension where you have to make a choice is inherently tiring, so much so that it has a name - "decision fatigue".

I have not been having much decision fatigue when it comes to games to play lately, because since February I've been playing the Metal Gear series almost exclusively. Whenever I find some free time to game, I just play the next game in release order. This is a fine enough system if I only want to play Metal Gear - the moment I decide to play something else to spice things up, I go back to dealing with analysis paralysis.

Recently I came across a cool video that presents what I think might just be the solution to this: have three games to play, and only choose between them. His method is a bit more involved than that, I suggest you watch the video, but I'll still explain it if you don't.

8BITJOYSTICK has a dedicated space for all of the media he is consuming at any given moment - the "now playing" shelf. This is where he puts three games, three shows and three books (or physical symbols for each for digital versions).

All of the things in each type of media should have different genres to prevent burnout. An advantage to this he did not mention is that you have to go out of your way to remember certain genres existed. For example, if you've been playing a lot of shorter indie games, you are likely missing out on some older and longer games that are also some of the best the industry has to offer. His recommendation is that you have one longer game, one narrative game, and one shorter, highly replayable game.

Another cool idea he throws in is keeping a small physical journal. I have a lot of small notebooks lying around, so I finally have something to do with one of them LOL! This should not be confused with the notes a reviewer would take - even if you are a reviewer, you should play everything for fun the first time and only take notes on a second playthrough. No, this small journal is for direction for your future self. The solution to a visual puzzle, the next place you should go to for progressing the story, a strategy you think might work but couldn't test yet - all of these are short notes that shouldn't take long to write but that will absolutely save time trying to pick up the pieces from what your past self did.

It is very important that this notebook is physical, because the less time you have on your phone or computer distracting you, the better time you will have. In fact, having your phone in a physical case so it's not even something you think about (with sound on for emergency calls) is fundamental.

I also really like the idea of carving out a specified time for these things. 8BITJOYSTICK recommends that you carve out something like 2 hours per weekday, which should give you 10 hours per week, which will be considerable and constant progress.

One self-imposed guideline I feel like introducing here is that I should only change the in the "Now Playing" list at the end of the month. When I finish a game and feel like it has nothing more to offer me, I can substitute it for another one, but something I feel like I missed out on in MGS2 was the extra replayability. I never tried playing the skateboard mode, I never tried collecting all the name tags in the tanker chapter, et cetera. When I finished it, I both really wanted to do those things, but I also wanted to just get to the next one because of the sheer size of the rest of my backlog, and how much time I'd be wasting replaying something I already experienced (even if I've replayed a couple of games already before lol). At least with the "try to stick with the game for a month" rule, I don't have that pressure anymore.

So, what am I going to play/watch/read this month? Well...

• Games
• Long game: Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater - this will be a recurring series this year, but hopefully I should have finished it by March next year
• Narrative/shorter game: Psychopomp GOLD - looks like a crazy game and I'm curious. Judging by HowLongToBeat, I might beat it in two sessions, so I might add some other game to the list afterwards, but this is why the "one-month game" thing is a guideline and not a rule
• Situational game: Team Fortress 2 - I have not played TF2 in a while, and there is still an april fools event going on for MvM, which is my favorite kind of event
• Movies/Series
• Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken! - it's a beautiful anime about the magic of animation; unfortunately I didn't finish it when I first watched it, so here's another try!
• Twin Peaks - people mention this series a lot when it comes to horror, might finally be time to check it out
• The Last Temptation of Christ - I heard this one was quite controversial when it came out, but my parents seem to have a good impression of it; might as well go see what all the fuss is about
• Books
• "When Life is Prayer", Jean-Cristophe Cominardi - it has been 5 months since one of the friars lent me this (and another) book, and I have yet to finish it
• "Frankenstein, or the modern Prometheus", Mary Shelly - when I started making Minecraft videos (which I have since stopped because life got in the way), I used to read chapters of this book to cover the time the mining sessions took; I should pick it up again

It is not unlikely that I will be unable to finish some of these this month - we are in the middle of the month already and life is going to be busy in the near future - but we'll see what works, what doesn't, and next month I'll reassess things.

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