00:00:01.56 Dave Hello, everybody. My name is Dave Jackson, and you're listening to Tales from the Backlog. This is a video games deep dive review podcast, but this week we're not talking about one specific game from the backlog. We're talking about the backlog, capital T, capital B, backlog. 00:00:18.58 Dave I guess if you're going with my abbreviation convention, throw an L in that abbreviation too, because I apparently don't know how those work. But ah anyway, enough about my weird abbreviation for the show. I have two guests with me to talk about backlogs and the idea that there are no games to play. ah First of all, a returning guest to the show, host of Fun and Games and Reignite podcasts. Welcome back, Matt, aka Stormageddon. 00:00:44.39 Matt Storm Hey, glad to be back. 00:00:45.80 Dave Of course, ah ah a frequent chatter and commiserator about how many games there are to play and the state of the backlog. So good to have you back, Matt. And we're also joined by a first time guest on the show, formerly of Game Informer and currently contributing to the Indie Informer. Welcome to the show, Marcus Stewart. 00:01:06.09 Marcus Hello, thank you for having me. 00:01:08.29 Dave Yes, good to meet you. Good to have you on the show. I'm excited to get into this. 00:01:12.58 Marcus Same, I love talking about backlogs. 00:01:15.14 Dave And yeah, and from what I've heard, you've often expressed that there are no games to play and ah we're just sitting around waiting for something to fall in our laps, right? 00:01:24.43 Marcus Yes, exactly how did you know? 00:01:26.58 Marcus Have you been spying on me? 00:01:27.17 Dave Yeah, a little bird named Matt aka Stormageddon told me, yeah. So on the show today, we're gonna talk about the concept, the idea that there are so many games to play, way too many for any normal person to play everything that they're interested in. And you know as there are more games to play than time to play them, 00:01:49.48 Dave Naturally, we have games that pile up and the library swells out of control and all of that stuff. We're going to talk about all of that. But also, this is the three year anniversary of Tales from the Backlog. So for three years to celebrate three years of backlogging, I figure we might as well tackle the subject that's in the title of the podcast today. So too many games to play, right, Matt? We've talked about this many times. Every time a review code pops up or every time ah ah something gets shadow dropped during a presentation. It's kind of this ah excitement, but also like, oh my God, like can we just chill for a week or so? 00:02:29.80 Matt Storm Yeah, it's funny. I used to dread the summertime because it's famously kind of a lull, although it's not even as true anymore because the indie scene kind of fills that hole. But I feel like now more than ever, I never have enough time to play all the things I want to play. 00:02:38.77 Dave Mm-hmm. 00:02:44.04 Matt Storm Part of that is as of when we're recording, but not that by the time you hear this, I'm just fresh off of PAX West and like my backlog is big enough. And then I play like 30 indie games that are really awesome and go, well, I guess I'll add all of those. 00:02:56.22 Matt Storm Not all of them are coming out imminently, but like at least four games I played that I liked were dropping two weeks later, and it's like... 00:03:04.45 Dave And then ah like during that same timeframe, like Astrobot has just come out and everybody, you know, all of us who are playing games all the time, we have enough things to play. And then suddenly this, like, I think everyone knew Astrobot was going to be good, but then it's like 95 on open critic good. And you're like, well, shit, I guess I should play Astrobot. 00:03:25.77 Matt Storm Yeah. i've Astrobot is one of those that I like, I'm not going to buy it. I'm in the middle of Star Wars Outlaws. I'm enjoying it. And then next thing I knew I was at a J and L game in Manhattan. Shout out to J and L. And I was holding a copy of the game. It's like I blacked out and then suddenly woke up and was holding the video game. 00:03:40.67 Dave Exactly. Yeah. You're like, you, you're ringing up and you're like, I don't know how this happened. It keeps happening to me. 00:03:44.72 Matt Storm Yeah. It's like those TikToks where people like trip and swipe their credit card. And then suddenly they bought like a four course meal and don't understand how they spent all that money. 00:03:52.64 Marcus and like That's a good premise for the third Hangover movie. 00:03:55.58 Dave Yeah. 00:03:55.63 Matt Storm Exactly. 00:03:56.02 Marcus It's like, how did we get this video game? 00:03:56.45 Matt Storm They all get drunk and buy video games. 00:03:59.95 Dave Yeah. Just walking out of, uh, like a local retro game store, they just spent like $30,000 on copies of earthbound and like, what is going on here? 00:04:10.62 Dave But ah Marcus, I'm sure that like, you know, working professionally in the industry, doing reviews and things like that, that not only do you have more games to play like for your job than you have time to play, but then add personal interest on top of that. And this kind of compounds for you too, right? 00:04:29.31 Marcus Yeah, it's probably like it accelerates working in this line of work too, because we'll get games often for review or for preview code. And so you'll get something, even if it's not necessarily for a review, because at least the review gives you sort of the excuse to finish it. 00:04:44.88 Dave Mm hmm. 00:04:45.11 Marcus Um, but wouldn't something like, Oh yeah, I got this code or I'm just playing it because I want to talk about it on the podcast. So it's like something that I'm not assigned, but you want to be up and up on, and then you'll play as much as you need to, or as much as you have time for. And even if you really like it, it's like, Oh, here comes another code. So then it pushes that game in the back. And then, you wind up doing that so much that you have a backlog of games that you have started. 00:05:11.61 Marcus or have like worked halfway through that you want to circle back to before the end of the year to sort of finish especially with something that you just either you like or you know is going to be like okay we are going to have a conversation about this i should i should put more time into this but it is a lot of um like they're like starting games and then having to put them down for a period of time 00:05:31.98 Matt Storm Thank you. 00:05:32.65 Dave Yeah, which is something that I don't i don't do on this podcast because you know I'm just doing this like what I'm playing ends up on the podcast and I usually finish everything I play. 00:05:33.39 Marcus yeah 00:05:42.81 Dave So that necessarily doesn't happen to me, but something you said there, the game of the year season is prime backlog feeding season when, and by the time people hear this, game of the year season's coming up. 00:05:55.44 Dave So you're gonna hear the game of the year podcast, watch the YouTube videos, read the articles, And suddenly you've got 30 more things on your wish list and oh no, the winter sale just started on steam and you know, how do I have 10 more games in my library? So, the game of the year season talking on discord again with people is another thing that just like, you know, in my discord server, I feel like everyday someone is dropping a steam link and it's like, that looks really cool. Wonder when I'll have time to play that, but it looks really great. 00:06:27.28 Marcus Yeah. 00:06:27.31 Matt Storm Yeah, I think it comes down to like, we're sickos to like really cut to the chase. Like I am envious of people who just play the one big release every year, like the Star Wars Outlaws or the Astro Bot or the whatever triple A huge release that they're looking forward to. You know, we've got Zelda coming, but like sickos like us who are playing indie games, games folks have never heard of, previewing games, reviewing games, trying to make content for the internet. It's just like, 00:06:54.93 Matt Storm spinning plates. like i The backlog stats that I took that we'll talk about later, that doesn't include what I'm actively playing, which is a list of like five or six games that are like in a transitional period from the backlog to being completed. And I do find myself often also blaming jerks like Dave Jackson who says, oh, this game's really good. 00:07:16.51 Matt Storm I'm going to talk about it with Michael Haim, one of the coolest people online. Well, I guess I've got to play that game now because I want to listen to that podcast episode too. And then it bleeds right into the community, like you were saying, like on your Discord server, folks posting screenshots. 00:07:28.10 Matt Storm And I remember on the Game Informer Discord, often there'd be a game where like someone would share something. I'd be like, well, I guess I guess I'll add that to the list. I don't know when I'll get to it. But you know, the because ah vocal gaming communities especially are often sharing whatever they're playing. 00:07:37.09 Dave Mm hmm. 00:07:42.20 Marcus Yeah, that's the, that's the other sort of silent, um, like threat is like podcasts, enthusiast podcasts. Cause even if, uh, if, if on your own, you might think you have a good handle on backlogs, but the moment you start hearing someone and praise a game that you were either excited about or you hadn't heard of, and then you're like, 00:07:59.35 Marcus Oh, I guess I have a new game that I have to check out because this person really sold it to me. And you're just like, it's like the happiest thing, because it's like, oh, I i i would not know this existed until I listened to this. 00:08:12.71 Marcus But then also, damn it, I have now one more game on this pile of ah of shame, whatever you want to call it. Like, oh, I should have gotten to this. 00:08:20.14 Dave Yeah. 00:08:22.15 Marcus Now it's, when am I going to get to this one? ah it's It's interesting. I have a one of my best friends I play a lot of games with. he is not in the industry whatsoever so he is my window into what it used to be like to be a normal person that like games because he just plays whatever he feels like like i still put him pretty high like he is an enthusiast but like he doesn't like he often doesn't play the latest and greatest thing one for like budgetary reasons but then also just like you know with stuff like game pass and like he's very big into like sales like steam sales stuff like that so he'll be playing things from like last year or two years old and then he'll tell it's weird he's on the opposite real tell me like oh it's cool that you get to play all the new stuff constantly and i'm like in my mind like i think it's cool that you could just go by whatever you want 00:09:07.85 Dave Yeah, there's ah there's one, I think maybe like two people across all the discords and like places that I talk about games with that are like that, that just have this insane self-control where they're like, 00:09:18.49 Matt Storm Yeah. 00:09:23.19 Dave ah these games I want to buy are on sale, but I'm not ready to play them yet. So I'm not going to buy them. And I don't have a backlog. I buy a game and then I play it and I finish it and I buy another game. And that's how it works. 00:09:34.44 Dave And I just like I can't, I can't relate. I am a FOMO elemental. I am weak when the steam sales start. I get, you know, I redeem free games on Epic and Amazon every single week. 00:09:46.06 Matt Storm Yeah. 00:09:47.73 Marcus Because why wouldn't you? 00:09:47.96 Dave And so yeah, exactly. Like if you 00:09:50.87 Matt Storm It's a free game. 00:09:52.12 Marcus like Just take it. 00:09:52.27 Dave if you play If you play on PC, you will just accumulate games. If you like to keep up on what's going on on Epic and Amazon and GOG will give away free games and Steam started giving away more free games or more people started giving away their games for free on Steam recently, I'll rephrase that. But um yeah, if you're if you have a PC or a Steam Deck, you could just log in every week, collect your games and into the list they go. 00:10:21.76 Marcus Yeah, and it's not even accounting for stuff like... 00:10:21.78 Matt Storm Yeah. 00:10:24.65 Marcus You know, I have PS Plus, so like, oh, those free games every month. 00:10:26.79 Dave Yeah. 00:10:27.62 Marcus Then like Game Pass is, we it's weird almost like it's not quite the same because it's like a library of games. 00:10:28.20 Dave Yep. 00:10:35.18 Marcus Like you don't have to install them, but it's like, it's like a backlog. It's like a communal backlog. 00:10:40.16 Dave Yeah. 00:10:40.42 Marcus It's like almost if you're a Game Pass subscriber, you technically have a backlog. because You have this list of games that is readily available to you at all times. And even if you don't have any active plans to play them, you will see something to go. 00:10:54.07 Marcus maybe I'll check that out. I don't know if there's a distinction of like if you download it and let it languish, it is now officially in your backlog, but if you like leave it like I see it there, I'm eyeing it, but I'm not gonna install it yet, but I'm i'm gonna get to that one. 00:11:07.90 Dave Mhm. 00:11:08.04 Marcus It's its own thing. 00:11:11.11 Dave Yeah. 00:11:11.99 Matt Storm Yeah, I think for me, I have to keep the because I have a PC game pass. It's got to be a separate thing because like I don't even know how to track that. Like it would just be hundreds of games that I would also have to add to my backlog that could change as they update the platform. 00:11:25.54 Matt Storm And I just can't do the same with the PlayStation plus like the streaming platform side where you can stream certain games, especially old games. It's like I can't even consider those as well as far as I'm concerned. 00:11:35.69 Marcus yeah It regulates itself too, because it's like, oh, this game left the library that I told myself I would play, but then never got around to it. 00:11:37.88 Matt Storm Yeah. 00:11:40.45 Matt Storm Wait, I guess I would now. 00:11:40.64 Dave Yeah. 00:11:41.57 Matt Storm like 00:11:43.86 Dave Or you can give yourself that pressure of like, I told myself for two years I was going to play this game on Game Pass and now it's leaving next week. 00:11:43.91 Matt Storm Well, it's fun. 00:11:51.53 Dave Shit, I got to play this real quick. So. 00:11:53.84 Matt Storm Yeah, I mean, I knocked off a couple of games from the backlog this year just because I didn't even know like you were talking about the free games on Epic and stuff and like I download pretty consistently and like I agreed to do a podcast shout out to the play along podcast ah to and I was asked to play a playtale innocence, which I'd wanted to play for years and years and I almost bought it and then went, well, let me see where I have it. 00:12:15.71 Matt Storm And so I saw that I had it on Epic and I played it on Epic and then funnily enough, 00:12:15.87 Dave yeah 00:12:19.51 Matt Storm After I finished it and we did the podcast, I was like, oh, that was a great game. I can't wait to play the sequel. I was like, oh, I'd prefer to play the sequel on my PlayStation. So let me go look at my PlayStation library and see if I have the sequel. 00:12:31.27 Matt Storm I didn't, but I had the first game, which I would have rather played on my PS5 instead of at my computer. 00:12:35.00 Dave Yeah. Yep. 00:12:36.50 Matt Storm And I had no idea it was there because I didn't even look or I didn't track it. And it's just wild, the kind of stuff that now whenever I want to play something, even just for leisure, not for capital C content, I will search my how long to beat, which is where I catalog everything just to see if I have it already, because I have duplicates of some games at this point, because I don't even either I purposely bought them on a second platform, like the three versions of the Mass Effect trilogy that I have, or I, you know, haven't intentionally bought them, but have them in multiple places because I got them for free or whatever else. 00:13:09.01 Marcus Yeah. 00:13:09.02 Dave Yeah. Marcus, do you track the games that you have in the ah the quote, the backlog? 00:13:15.65 Marcus Well, not in totality. um And I thought about that, like creating a database of every game that I own. So I could, because I've had those issues too, where you're like, you're like I think I'm going to check this game out. 00:13:30.60 Marcus I probably own it somewhere just by virtue of, oh, it was a free PS Plus game, or an Epic game, or I got a... 00:13:37.68 Dave and 00:13:38.59 Marcus ah because we Especially in GI, we would get so many extra codes for stuff that... like we would just do giveaways pretty much, because it's like, oh, we don't, there's no plans to cover these for content unless you want to, but we get sent so many codes, so we'll just like, like raffle them off basically. 00:13:52.87 Marcus So like, I've gotten like batches of codes all at once that I just forget, like, oh yeah, that one game was in that, like a batch of 10 codes that I got the one time. 00:13:58.39 Dave Yeah. 00:14:01.11 Marcus um So I was like, I should make a list just so I remember, because I also have duplicates of things, but I do keep track of my backlog of games that came out this year. of like, I own this and I should play this again, it's more for work purposes of like, okay, I have like a sizable list of 2024 games or noteworthy 2024 games, not just anything, but like, okay, um this has enough buzz or I should probably fire this up at some point. 00:14:25.81 Marcus So that is what I like to actively pay attention to. 00:14:26.02 Dave Yeah. 00:14:29.13 Marcus Because otherwise, I would go insane trying to catalog everything. 00:14:35.39 Dave Yeah, I guess I'm lucky that I started cataloging it relatively early on. ah so like i didn't have I don't have like a physical game collection that was out of hand by the time I started tracking stuff. um And I also crucially did not have a PC to play games on for a really long time. So that It was almost like I started my how long to beat account and started tracking things there when I still owned like 10 games So it was really easy to manage and now I have a PC I have PS plus and I'm just like collecting all these games and I make sure to To log them there so I don't rebuy them somewhere else. That's the main reason i'm I'm keeping track for the podcast also people can 00:15:20.33 Dave you know, choose the games they want to put in my Patreon polls and stuff. And I keep the list for them too. But it started as like, I need to log this so that I don't buy Baldur's Gate 2 when I own it three places at this point. um People in the community wrote in, we asked the community for a lot of thoughts about how they feel about the backlogs. Do they track things? And then later we'll talk about, 00:15:45.85 Dave how do we deal with any pressure, if we feel pressure, to play all of them, basically. um The community mentioned they track their things via backloggery, infinite backlog, their own spreadsheets. We have a spreadsheet in my Discord server for our backlog resolutions that people use. 00:16:06.15 Dave People use notepad files on their phone. People use a Trello board. I don't even know what that is, but it sounds ah sounds fun. um Lots of different ways that people are keeping track of this. So we're not alone in um tracking all of this stuff. 00:16:24.81 Marcus Yeah. 00:16:24.99 Matt Storm Yeah, I mean, I blame my how long to beat account on you because I wasn't tracking things, but I'm also a spreadsheet nerd. And so once I realized I could like open my Steam list on one monitor, open my ah web page on another monitor and just slowly enter every game that I have. um To be fair, though, on my backlog stats that I am going to share, 00:16:48.80 Matt Storm I only track the games I want to play or I care about um or I'm curious about. If it's like some free adventure game from 100 years ago that I'm not that interested in, I don't log it because I'm never going to play it. But like if it's every Shadowrun game and expansion imaginable, I have those logged because someday I would like to play them. ah And just to give a breakdown because I'm so much of a nerd, my specific stats, 00:17:15.54 Matt Storm So my backlog on the Nintendo Switch is only 35 games, which is a lot, but not as much as I thought. ah My backlog on the PS4 slash PS5 is only 10 games. This is not counting, this is counting um PS Plus games that I really want to play. 00:17:27.13 Marcus Wow. 00:17:32.94 Marcus Oh. 00:17:33.74 Matt Storm It's not counting like my entire PS plus library. I've also played a lot of the games on my PS plus somehow ah Subscription I think I just lucked out that way also There are no sports games counted in this because all if I do want to play a sports game I'm just gonna play whatever new sports game came out probably ah My PC stats are more interesting. So my steam games. I only have 49 games on my backlog that I really want to play and I probably have over 300 games on my Steam list, but I've played a lot of the games. And also I have some duplicates with some other places. Epic was 74 games and then GOG was only 24 games. So my PC total is 147, which sounded like a more accurate number. And my total unplayed but backlog games that I'm currently tracking on how long to beat is 192 games, which I feel like is still a lot, but not as high a number as I expected it to be. 00:18:26.56 Dave It's still a long way to beat list is 315 for backlog stuff and that's counting all platforms including emulation ah games that I like know that if I was going to play them it would be through emulation. 00:18:41.91 Dave And so it's not necessarily that this is like my collection. My How Long to Beat page also serves as the list for people to pick from on the Patreon polls. So I do curate that a little bit. There are games that I own that are not on there because I don't want them to pick them. 00:19:00.41 Dave ah I actually do think I have Balan Wonderworld on the list just because it would be funny if someone picked that. But like there are a bunch of stuff like you know the free Epic games and stuff. I'm not logging all of those because I do not want to play those. 00:19:10.66 Matt Storm Yeah. 00:19:14.10 Dave ah So there's ah there's there's quite a lot on here. And I'm sure that I've forgotten to log months on Epic and all of that. So there's just so much. 00:19:26.26 Marcus I also, um I keep track, so I primarily use Excel for everything, so I'm a basic boy. 00:19:31.68 Dave Mm-hmm Okay 00:19:31.77 Marcus So I have like multiple sort of games lists of various types through Excel, but then I got into using Notion this year from Friends, and I found a game tracker ah format that someone in the industry recommended whose name I'm forgetting. And I feel bad now because they made a perfect sort of like it's titled video game organization list. And it's just to keep track of not only the games you finish, but also the games you have in progress. And that's primarily what I use it for. So it's kind of like if you graduate from the backlog, you are now at games like Starks again, at least for my line of work, you know, you start something and you forget that you started it. 00:20:13.26 Matt Storm Yeah. 00:20:13.37 Marcus So now it's like it's like a clear visual reminder of like I have these games currently in progress. 00:20:19.85 Dave Yeah. 00:20:20.15 Marcus ah Circle back to these at some point, because it's very easy to be like, oh, yeah, I did. I was playing another code recollection back in February. I should go back to that. 00:20:28.55 Dave yeah Yeah. I mean, like I'm, I'm usually playing like four or five games for the podcast at a given time. And even with just four or five, sometimes I'll be like, I don't want to play this game. I don't want to play this game right now. What else am I playing? And I have to like to bring up my list of the stuff. Oh, that's right. Night in the woods. Let's look, we can play at night in the woods right now. You know, uh, that happened to me yesterday. So, um, yeah, there's, 00:20:55.98 Dave And like, this is not even getting into logging the games that you finish because I feel like a lot of Discord servers that I'm in either have a channel for posting the games that you finish with a little, you know, review the gaming log that I stole from Matt's server shamelessly. 00:21:13.91 Matt Storm Yes. 00:21:14.11 Dave ah People have spreadsheets. There's all kinds of like, so when I finish a game now, there's like eight places I keep track of it. So that's kind of gotten out of control as well. 00:21:22.81 Marcus Same. 00:21:23.70 Matt Storm Yeah. 00:21:25.48 Marcus I started in 2009 was when I started writing down every game I finished and I would write them on and I still do ah physical just just notebook paper. 00:21:34.84 Dave Hmm. 00:21:35.15 Marcus And I have kept everything like a written list of every game I've completed every year from 2009 to now. 00:21:42.61 Matt Storm Wow. 00:21:42.78 Marcus ah So yeah, I usually have an exact record. like I know exactly how many games I've beaten over that length of time. 00:21:49.67 Dave Nice. 00:21:49.75 Marcus But then like time is going on, it's like, okay, I have that. And then I have an Excel sheet that is every game I've ever finished just in life. That is like hundreds of hundreds of hundreds of games. 00:22:01.12 Marcus ah And then now I have um this notion list. And then the buddy I mentioned before, he keeps a group like a shareable spreadsheet, like an Excel sheet with me, him and another friend, because he's really a big nerd and likes logging completed games. 00:22:16.52 Marcus So then I log into that thing. And that's more of a communal like, hey, what did you finish? Because he's like, oh, it's cool to see what everyone's finished. And then maybe get a message out of like, oh, was that good? I haven't played that yet. 00:22:25.66 Dave Yeah. 00:22:25.94 Marcus Like, what did you think of that and stuff? ah So I have four now, I guess, that I have to update. 00:22:32.02 Dave It is really cool to like, you know, say like, hey, I'm thinking about playing Pathologic. Let me look through these places and see if there's anyone else that played it. And then I can be like, hey, anything I should be aware of, ah you know, did you like this stuff like that. So it is cool to be able to find somebody, especially because I'm always looking for podcast guests. I even go on Twitter and just like name search like the game I'm going to play. like Did any of my friends post about this? Maybe I can reach out to them. 00:23:04.08 Matt Storm Yeah, I've kind of started my own circle of hell with a gaming log channel on the certain POV discord, which I started. 00:23:04.07 Marcus yeah 00:23:11.83 Matt Storm It was just like a play. I had started it because I thought it was twenty twenty, maybe twenty nineteen. I decided it was the year of the first person shooter. I'd said for years that I didn't like those games, but then I would play a game like Doom and really enjoy it. 00:23:23.64 Marcus Yeah. 00:23:25.63 Matt Storm So I was like, I guess I don't hate first person shooters. 00:23:27.40 Marcus Yeah. 00:23:27.43 Matt Storm I mostly hate Call of Duty. let me play a bunch of first person shooters but that fell off the track by like halfway through the year and i started playing other kinds of games as well and so it was just fun to keep track of my journey and then from there the twitter thread starts so now i do a twitter thread every year and now the fun and games has a patreon we started writing articles for free and by we i mean mostly me uh jeff is planning a few but hasn't written any yet and so With that, then I started, well, if I'm going to keep the thread on Twitter, if Twitter like implodes next week, which could happen any week now, we've been saying for six months, ah I should have that same list also on the Patreon so folks can refer back to it. I can refer back to it. And then I post in all the other discords that have like game review sections. And it is fun, though, to see like in some servers, it's one kind of game and another server. It's another kind of game. And then even on the Patreon, I did my first ever 00:24:20.04 Matt Storm like article style top 10 games of the year list last year which was a lot of fun and kind of a different way like I thought I was just gonna repost my thoughts from my tweets like my little blurbs then I was like no actually I want to recontextualize this now coming back to this at the end of the year and it was a lot of fun to do that but I just find that it's just another way of tracking all the things I've played and all the things I have yet to play um but I also going back to the like end of year stuff that has famously gotten me to play tons of games that I would have otherwise missed that have ironically now, or unironically, I don't know if I'm using that right, ah have become favorites. Like Life is Strange, True Colors, I played at the end of the year, came out after Jeff and I did our game of the year episode, or games of the year episode, or year in review, and I was so pissed because I was like, this would have been near the top of my list had I played it before we talked about that. 00:25:08.27 Matt Storm um Which I find happens often with the backlog. I wonder if I could actually I wonder if How long to beat has like a tag for like game of the year so I can like go back and see my games I have my top 10 list of the year every year since 2018 I think digitally like I just keep a quick list that then now I've been building out into my article for the end of the year But like it is kind of funny how we catalog both what we want to play and what we have played. But I think it comes from like the community of wanting to share like, Hey, would you think of this? Oh, should I play that kind of thing? My favorite thing is if someone says, Oh, has anyone played this game? And I just grabbed my tweet and went, here's what I thought. I don't even have to regurgitate it. I could just share the link. 00:25:50.23 Marcus Yeah, I think because, um especially for writing and working in the media, it's nice to have records of your play history. 00:25:58.67 Matt Storm Yeah. 00:25:58.89 Marcus Cause there's so many times where if I'm writing something and I need to remember like, I played this, right? Like I'm referencing something or like, even if it's something like a moment or a mechanic or something like that, it's just easier to go back. 00:26:10.65 Marcus Like I did play this, right? Or when did I play it? You know, did I play it when it came out? Was it a little later? Does that change my perception of it in any way? And like i like having that written down has helped me a few times, as as well as having, because I write down my goodies too, so I was like, oh, I could tell you, I could recite every game of the year, that was my game of the year from 2009 to now, very easily, like off the top of my head too. 00:26:33.48 Marcus um So it's like, oh, that's but it's probably useless, but also still... Like I don't know when I'll ever like to actually make use of that in any real way outside of just the occasional conversation. 00:26:45.88 Marcus Or it's like, yeah, that game was my game of the year in 2015. But it's like that thing where I was like, well, I'd rather have it and not need it than need not have it sort of a thing. 00:26:53.90 Dave Yeah, yeah. 00:26:54.82 Marcus I don't know where my memory is going to be in 20 years. ah you know So. 00:26:58.83 Dave see what happens to my memory right now. So like that maybe that's why I'm tracking the games that I play in nine different places in case you know in case seven of them go down. 00:27:07.36 Matt Storm In case I forget. 00:27:09.08 Marcus t's backlog memento. 00:27:09.11 Dave I'll still have a record. Yeah. 00:27:11.47 Matt Storm Exactly. 00:27:12.61 Dave um So like we, we've established that all of us have access to so many games. 00:27:12.68 Marcus yeah 00:27:19.22 Dave And I feel like the number of games coming out that I want to play is bigger and bigger every single year. I think about myself being really, really into video games in 2020, but I didn't feel like I was drowning in new releases in 2020. For a combination of things, like I said, now I have a PC so I can play games on Steam, which is where you know you guarantee every new indie game that comes out is at least going to be on Steam. If it's not on PlayStation, like I was, you know PlayStation only back then. um But the point is, 00:27:54.62 Dave Now, we're even just completely disregarding games from past years. Just with the new releases that we want to play, ah there's too much. There's too much for me. and if you know This is what I do with most of my free time. I play games and I do podcast stuff. 00:28:13.43 Dave It's too much. So the question is, do we get FOMO? Do we feel overwhelmed by the amount of new things that are coming out? And like we said, Astro brought intruding on the plans that you had made to play the other new game that just came out two weeks before that. And, ah you know, all the other things. Oh, there's this indie game named Arco that's gaining underground momentum and overwhelmingly positive reviews, and it looks really cool. And It's just like, you know, it's so much all the time. There's never a break anymore. So do we get FOMO from all of this? 00:28:50.70 Marcus Yeah, it's like I had that prior to working and doing this professionally just as an enthusiast like that kept up with everything. 00:28:50.88 Matt Storm Oh, yeah. 00:28:58.35 Dave Mm hmm. 00:29:01.59 Marcus Or it's like you want to be in the conversation. right like you want to. You want to experience what everyone's experiencing, especially when it's something that's being praised and you're such a fan of games. And you're like, I want some of that taste. 00:29:13.03 Marcus But then getting into this line of work, it's the FOMO of like, well, you it's like your job to keep up to an extent. 00:29:19.57 Dave Mm hmm. 00:29:19.72 Marcus You know, obviously no one can keep up with everything. It's just not humanly possible, but there's a part of you that wants to do as best as you can to get as close to that, at least for me. 00:29:28.28 Dave Yeah. 00:29:29.30 Marcus um So if this has been weird, like, you know, being ah out of GI and now just there's a part of me that's like you could give yourself permission not to. 00:29:41.81 Dave ah Yeah. 00:29:42.50 Marcus to have to feel like I have to keep up as much. But that has failed. That has not been a serious conversation. Because it's like, as soon as possible, Astro Bot but I reached out to my Sony concert, like, can I get a code for that, please? 00:29:55.83 Marcus And got one. And it's like, well, this is what I'm playing now. ah' So like, I can't wait for this. 00:29:58.40 Dave Yeah. 00:29:59.51 Marcus I need to see this. um And I think it is tempered by the fact that reality is like no one will ever be able to keep up with everything forever. That's just it's just not possible. And it's just a fact of life. So you accept that as an inevitability. But I think it's just like it's just fun to stay on top of stuff and you want to talk to people. I guess again, we talk about games for our living, right? 00:30:28.91 Dave Yeah. 00:30:29.05 Marcus And you want to be able to be like, I wish I would like to have something to say about Astropod. yeah 00:30:33.72 Dave Yeah. 00:30:35.81 Matt Storm Yeah, I definitely feel FOMO. I think part of it also though, like so fun and games, not to overly plug my own show, but we did an episode on FOMO and what we came to, which was a thesis basically and not a solution, which is often what we come to, is that FOMO is directed by this idea that you won't be able to talk about it once the time has passed. 00:30:55.47 Matt Storm And I have seen proven time and time again that it is not true if you are in gaming communities. 00:31:00.27 Marcus Yeah. 00:31:01.18 Matt Storm like I have found that even when I played ah Disco Elysium, I don't know, six years later and then went back into the Tales from the Backlog Discord and started talking to you, Dave, about it. You're like, oh my God, that game, great. Did you do this? Did you see that? People who are excited about games are going to talk to them no matter what, but that didn't stop me from buying Astrobot earlier this week or at the end of last week. 00:31:22.44 Matt Storm so like 00:31:22.64 Dave Yeah. 00:31:23.74 Matt Storm I can say it till the cows come home, but I won't believe it. And I think part of that also is that I, like Dave, have started to also play older games, either for certain podcast tournaments that I may or may not be a part of or for coming on Dave's show or shows like it. And it's like now I'm playing Wolverine X2, Wolverine's Revenge, to go talk about it on a podcast and actually loved it and had to play it to the end, which nobody asked me to do and I did to myself. 00:31:50.68 Matt Storm And, you know, while, like, I'm already getting pre-emptive FOMO about Zelda because I'm currently playing Astro Bot. I still haven't finished Star Wars Outlaws. And there's like three other indie games I got code for that I want to play at least a little bit. um But then at one point my spouse said, well, you know, if you want, you can get, because I was trying to figure out what game to buy and, you know, can't afford everything. ah I wish I had the kind of money to buy every game that came out. 00:32:16.36 Matt Storm But my spouse was like, well, you could get Zelda for your birthday, which is only my birthday on October 12th. It's like two weeks later. And I was like, oh, yeah, I could wait two weeks, like as if I couldn't do that. But given the option and someone else telling me, and oh, yeah, that's OK, even though it's perfectly reasonable to not play that game the minute it drops, my brain couldn't process that because I had this fear of missing out on this brand new Zelda game where you literally get to play a Zelda, which thank God. 00:32:43.08 Marcus Yeah. Waiting two weeks is like, that's still like light speed by like most normal players, right? 00:32:43.35 Dave Yeah. 00:32:47.79 Matt Storm Yeah. Yeah. 00:32:48.76 Marcus Like people that are not insane. I was like, if I was a kid two weeks, you're like, what? That's basically tomorrow. Cause I only got new games on my birthday and Christmas and both. 00:32:53.63 Dave Yeah. 00:32:54.22 Matt Storm yeah Basically. 00:32:56.23 Dave I was just going to say, yeah. 00:32:57.59 Marcus And that, and my birthday is in November. So that means the end of the year is when you get new games and that's it. 00:33:02.01 Dave Yeah. 00:33:04.47 Marcus So yeah, I'd be like, yeah, I can wait two weeks. That's fine. 00:33:06.88 Dave Yeah. um And like, so I'm doing this podcast that's, yeah that's focused on backlog games for the most part. And I even when I play a new game, like when I buy a new game on the day comes out, and I do it on the podcast, the episode comes out like five months after release day just because of the way that I have to you know use my time and scheduling and editing and all of that stuff. I do it slow so that I can continue to do the show and then like you know this week I'm doing the the most recent episode is the time of recording is Final Fantasy 4 so like that's you know i'm I'm doing older games too but while I'm doing that 00:33:48.58 Dave I'm seeing Astrobot come out and I'm i'm getting like intense FOMO about Astrobot and I'm getting intense FOMO about Arco. and i like I wrote up a draft email asking for a code for Arco and I'm like, I don't have time to play Arco. What are you doing right now? so ah think It's still in my drafts. When I have time to play it, I'll reach out or maybe I'll just buy it because that game looks tight. but um I think it's really cool for everyone to like everyone thinks it's cool to like pretend that you don't feel FOMO and if you don't then more power to you that's awesome ah to have that kind of like control over your thought process but I like it's every time a new game jumps into the conversation I really feel that like 00:34:34.86 Dave I want to get excited about this with other people. That's what I think stems from me. like Yeah, I can do Final Fantasy IV on the podcast and the people that like Final Fantasy IV will come chat about it. But it's not quite the same as joining in right when Elden Ring dropped and being part of that whole community thing right when that game comes out. like There is a little bit of that that you do miss, I think, with a lot of games, unless they're like the classics, I think. So that's where that FOMO comes out for me mostly. 00:35:07.67 Matt Storm I was going to say I basically became a fan of Souls games because of FOMO. Like I had Dark Souls 3, installed some mods that made me a little less squishy, but I still got clobbered and was able to get through Dark Souls 3. And so a week later, I was like, well. 00:35:22.87 Matt Storm Maybe I should buy Elden Ring, because everyone else is talking about it. um I blame certain people who are our peers, like one Jesse Vitelli, who was, I think, guiding it at the time at Prima. ah And I was like, oh, that's all people are talking about. I guess I'll get it, and then I end up loving it and playing it multiplayer. And I think that's part of it, too, is like if there's community within the game, too, like multiplayer, or you can play and conquer bosses together and stuff, the FOMO is even stronger for me, because that community is probably not going to go anywhere a month out, but maybe several years later, like no one was playing Dark Souls 3 multiplayer when I was playing it. um But like that can also drive a lot of my fear of missing out is like if there are actual online community tools. like I think about Animal Well, which I loved this year, 00:36:08.57 Matt Storm but that was absolutely a FOMO game that I had no interest in. And then people started posting about finding cool stuff. And I was like, well, it's free on PlayStation. I guess I'll download it and then become obsessed with it. I think FOMO can drive a lot of me pulling stuff out of the backlog for better or worse too, because I see people talking about it and it prevents it from becoming a backlog game. Cause I kind of snatched it up and I was like, all right, fine, I'll play this thing. 00:36:30.91 Marcus Yeah, there are games that are almost designed to, and not like it in a nefarious way, like a battle pass, but it's like, you can have fun with this technically anytime, but the best time is early. 00:36:40.92 Marcus Like I think of Death Stranding where I still feel like I play the game at launch. 00:36:43.05 Matt Storm Yeah. 00:36:46.51 Marcus And I always wonder, is this game going to be nearly as effective a year from now? Because the crux of that game is interacting with people indirectly and seeing their creations and like, leaving the little hearts and stuff like that. And then just the conversations around that with people were fun. We're just like, man, did you see this? I almost had to climb this mountain, but someone made a really helpful network that, you know, I don't know how long this is going to be here, but it was great. And then I would be inspired to make stuff because I wanted to be someone's like just like a construction hero. And then it's like, man, if if you bought that game today and played it, like, are people still playing it to where you don't you miss out on that initial sort of like 00:37:23.03 Marcus like community like cooperation phase or like journey was like a similar thing like like if i don't get in like now i don't know if this game will maintain its like player base a year from now where i might not get the same like the the the hook of the game might not be there if if the if people aren't flocking to it in the same way so again combined with hearing the stories of like man just I ran into some cool people in this game and it it really enhanced the experience. 00:37:51.46 Marcus You're like, well, I should get it now while people are still thinking about this, you know, and animal well and and like games like tunic or stuff like that, where it's more just like, you know, it's not a communal game, but it's like those very like cryptic games. 00:37:53.97 Matt Storm Yeah. 00:37:54.45 Dave Mm-hmm Yeah 00:38:04.56 Marcus where you want, again, you want to be in that like, oh, the conversation, like did you find that one thing? Or did you? And you don't want to come later because you're afraid of either getting spoiled, or you just want to also be like, oh, I found this cool thing. 00:38:17.46 Marcus And everyone's like, yeah, we already know about that. All right, well, I just want to let you know I found it. 00:38:21.67 Dave ah ah yeah 00:38:21.89 Marcus it's yeah like That's up. 00:38:24.74 Dave Yeah, yeah that was ah that was a thing with the Animal Well. Like All the people that played it at release, I feel like even the people that played it at release, you would see things online where it's like people have already solved it. So in some ways, that FOMO is almost not real to begin with because by the time you get to that point in the game, 00:38:45.77 Dave there's going to be you know a YouTube video that's like, here's how to do everything in Animal Well up like three days after the game releases. so that means that the feeling of it is real in your head, but in reality, like you can still play Tunic today and have an amazing time with it. like 00:39:02.42 Marcus Yeah. 00:39:02.71 Dave You can still play Animal Well today. And I just finished playing Void Stranger, which is another one of those very, very cryptic and secret-filled games like that. um I just finished playing it. I didn't get spoiled by any outside sources. um None that I didn't search for myself. So ah that the FOMO feeling is real, but um it's it's not necessarily that ah it in reality, the way it it is the way you think it is. 00:39:31.10 Dave So um We have some community responses about this idea of having too many games and having FOMO about it. And so we want to take turns reading out what the community says about this. 00:39:44.12 Dave And I'll get started with Mikey Tabletop who says, ah Mikey says, don't get FOMO by not playing the newest game. It's not going anywhere, which is correct. I mean, once, yeah, objectively correct. 00:39:54.29 Matt Storm Yeah. 00:39:55.41 Marcus Objectively, yes. 00:39:56.00 Matt Storm Yes. but 00:39:57.61 Dave ah The Astrobot FOMO is pretty much over for me after like three or four days. Like I have moved on. 00:40:03.42 Matt Storm right 00:40:05.75 Dave I feel like, you know, the posts on Twitter get fewer and fewer. People are still really excited about it, but like the FOMO wave is very strong and then it fades pretty quickly, at least for me. 00:40:15.88 Marcus You gotta weather that storm. 00:40:17.65 Dave Yeah. Yeah. 00:40:19.67 Matt Storm ah Next up is Disc Chimaera from the Game Over Hell YouTube channel, who says, maybe only a little FOMO because of video creation, which is legit, right? Like the YouTube algorithm, just based on what I know from being friends with content creators, it's like, we got to hit that big thing, right? The new Five and Nights at Freddy's game, because that's when all people are searching for it. So you want to talk about all those tips and tricks. So everyone, and like, Disc Chimaera also does tons of older games too. So like, 00:40:44.97 Matt Storm I feel like that's a constant fight and battle of not missing out because you want to be part of that creative storm too. 00:40:50.76 Dave Yeah. 00:40:51.20 Marcus Yeah, or even if you're not as interested in it, it's like everyone else is interested in hearing you talk about it. 00:40:56.76 Matt Storm right 00:40:56.97 Marcus So it's like, we're afraid you might miss out because I want your thoughts. 00:40:57.17 Dave Oh yeah. 00:41:00.51 Marcus You're like, well, I guess now I have to play this because everyone's yelling at me to do it. 00:41:04.74 Dave Yeah. 00:41:04.76 Marcus ah 00:41:05.10 Dave I've, I've kind of made peace with, uh, I'm never going to be on the cutting edge of the algorithm for searching for new releases. I've made peace with that. Uh, it probably hurts my downloads, but that's the way it's gotta be. 00:41:17.65 Marcus Yeah, see, Rfulscruff says, no FOMO, I'm rarely playing the same games that my friends and peers are playing anyway. And if there's a game I'm that interested in, I'm lucky enough that I'm usually in a position to buy and play it on release anyway. 00:41:32.91 Marcus Okay. 00:41:33.17 Dave strong will from Artful Scruff. And not that ah an Artful Scruff's a regular in the Discord server, and not that they don't you know jump on the hype wave for new games and get excited. I think they just have a tighter control over what they get excited about, you know even if everyone else is really excited. 00:41:51.41 Dave Next up is Randall, who's one of our patrons. Thank you, Randall. Randall says, I no longer feel FOMO outside of my MMO gaming habits. I haven't purchased a new game at retail price since Wasteland 3. 00:42:04.53 Matt Storm Jesus. 00:42:04.81 Dave That was a while ago. I will get to the games when I get to them. Another strong will outside of the MMO gaming habits. And I've never played an MMO, but I understand, like, I would assume that once that new stuff starts dropping or just the fear of missing out on you know, hanging out with your friends and doing stuff when they're doing stuff. I'm sure that that would be a force. 00:42:26.24 Matt Storm Yeah, as someone who has played Final Fantasy XIV, got through the base game and the expansion, but owns every expansion through Endwalker. Yeah, that happens and it's really real. 00:42:39.32 Dave Yeah. 00:42:41.87 Matt Storm Up next is Snacktaku, a patron. ah FOMO, not really. I never pre-order games and almost never buy games at launch. I'm always out for a good Steam sale. 00:42:52.69 Matt Storm If I have to wait a year for it, so be it. i'm ah again If a game really intrigues me, I can always watch Let's Play on YouTube. There are rare exceptions like the new FromSoft game, which I will want to explore experience blind. 00:43:06.65 Matt Storm Another strong will. 00:43:06.92 Marcus That's an interesting one, like the idea of using Let's Plays as an alternative to sort of get your fix without having to pay for it. 00:43:08.55 Dave Yeah. 00:43:13.79 Dave Yeah. 00:43:15.50 Marcus I've never been a Let's Play person. 00:43:17.28 Dave No, neither. 00:43:17.39 Marcus like it's just not just The moment I start watching, with the exception of gaming for a replay I could do, but those really are just like older games anyway, and you're watching it more for the personalities. 00:43:23.94 Dave Mm hmm. 00:43:26.34 Marcus But other than that, it's like once I start watching someone, it just makes me want to play the thing. And then I was like I can't. i just 00:43:32.86 Dave See, I. 00:43:33.02 Marcus It's just not my thing. And I don't want to be spoiled. like I want to experience it. 00:43:35.52 Dave Yeah, that's the thing. 00:43:36.67 Marcus like It's not the same watching it. 00:43:37.57 Dave I'm, I'm so worried about, or I'm so like, not, not worried, but I don't want to be spoiled on something if I want to play it. So I'm not going to like watching a streamer play it or watch let's play. 00:43:48.77 Dave Cause then I, and it's stupid because ah every time I've done this, I've gone and played the game and it's been just fine, but I still feel that way. 00:43:55.69 Matt Storm Yeah. 00:43:57.10 Marcus Yeah, and also and not even just a spoiler, but it's like, and maybe this is me being overly ah romantic and artsy about it, but it's like, I want to feel the game. Like, I want to feel the controls. 00:44:05.19 Dave Yeah. 00:44:07.00 Marcus I don't want someone like you, you can't get that sense. Like, does that, does firing that gun feel as good as it looks? Or that jumping and Astro Bot, you're telling me it feels nice, but I gotta know. and Like, it's just like that weird extra factor for me, or it's like, I'm too... 00:44:16.87 Dave Yeah. 00:44:22.46 Marcus too much of a, I don't know, in ah an artist, in aficionado, what's the word? 00:44:27.90 Dave Well, I get it. 00:44:28.95 Marcus That it's like, I gotta get my hands on it myself. 00:44:31.80 Dave You got to be in it too. If you're watching, like if I'm watching a let's play, I don't, I can't go more than a couple of minutes without checking my phone or going into a new tab or checking on a discord server or something like that. 00:44:44.10 Dave Like if I'm actually playing it, I can't do any of those things. So it's not the same for me either. 00:44:47.94 Marcus Yeah. Hmm. Let's see, ah DC Senior Bracer F. Frank, a patron, says, I sometimes feel FOMO with new releases because I normally play longer games and am less clued into indie games. So when members of a few different discords that we are all in start talking up this ah ah start talking up this and that great new game, I think maybe I should set aside six or 10 or 15 hours in the next week or two to get through this highly rated game. 00:45:18.32 Marcus but then I never commit to it, even though it's admittedly a small amount of time in the grand scheme of things. 00:45:24.81 Dave I feel that as someone who likes it, I already started, so we're doing a backlog resolutions challenge in my discord server this year. And I already started thinking about what I want to do next year and they're all 40 to 60 hour RPGs. 00:45:39.55 Dave So I feel like, you know, we have less time to play more games because, you know, I'm playing octopath traveler too, and I need 80 hours to play that game. 00:45:52.05 Dave So, you know, I feel that for sure. 00:45:54.90 Marcus It's the paradox of getting older. 00:45:55.06 Matt Storm Yeah. 00:45:56.14 Marcus Like when you're a kid you have more time but less money to buy games and then when you're an adult you have the money and freedom but less time. 00:46:02.42 Dave Yeah. 00:46:03.06 Matt Storm Yeah. I mean, basically, that's how I played 1000xRESIST this year. It's like I wasn't going to play it. And then I found out that you were doing the episode and started to listen to that episode. And you started, well, spoilers are going to come in a little bit. 00:46:15.55 Matt Storm And I was like, oh, fine. I want to go play the game and then like spend the next whatever it was, 10 hours playing it. And it's one of my favorite games of the year. But it's like it's part of that FOMO of like, well, I don't want to. I don't want to like you were talking about the streams. 00:46:28.38 Matt Storm I don't want to hear your experience about this game. I want to experience it myself. 00:46:30.68 Dave Yeah, yeah, absolutely. ah Next up is Nick, who's a patron from the Friday Night Gamecast. Thank you, Nick, and everyone should check out Friday Night Gamecast. Ah Nick says, similar to our perception of time, our perception of the backlog and the relationship to the pressure it puts on us as gamers and content creators or completionists is entirely dependent on how we want to organize our life and time spent playing games. The first piece to this is knowing when or how to stay in your lane. 00:47:00.65 Dave Simply put you should never force yourself to play a franchise or genre you either have no interest in or desire to play Simply because friends or peers are enjoying that game and I get this ah the FOMO For games that I know I don't actually want to play because I like the new Warhammer game just came out multiplayer ah but Space Marine 2, I think it's called. 00:47:25.84 Dave And it looks kind of cool. I don't like playing multiplayer games, but I still feel that way because other people are like, this is awesome. I'm having a great time. And I'm like, I could be having a great time too. 00:47:36.56 Dave But I know in my heart, like Nick says, I don't like playing multiplayer games. I don't like scheduling multiplayer gaming time with people. So I should just sit this one out. And then in a couple of days, that feeling's gone. 00:47:47.21 Marcus Yeah. 00:47:50.92 Marcus Yeah, I'm pretty good about like, I don't get FOMO for something that I know I'm not going to like, or is not my thing. Like I'm, I know what I enjoy. 00:47:58.64 Dave Yeah. 00:47:58.71 Marcus So even if it's something that's like, Oh, this thing's blowing up like this MOBA. It's like, I'm not a MOBA guy. It's not, it's not for me. So I, I feel nothing basically other than like, Oh, I'm glad people like it. 00:48:04.30 Dave Yeah, 00:48:07.88 Marcus You know? 00:48:07.95 Dave yeah that's true. 00:48:08.72 Marcus Uh, so I do have that boundary of like, so, so. 00:48:12.16 Matt Storm Yeah, I mean, I would push back on it only a little. Like, I also don't get FOMO for genres I don't like, but then there are games that have broken that wide open. I mentioned Elden Ring earlier. I hated Souls games. And to this day, I think they're not always for me, but like, I'm going to be more likely to experience them. Or the most famous case, Hades, one of my favorite games of all time. I hate roguelikes. I'm bad at them. I am awful at them. 00:48:36.24 Matt Storm But I love that game. I'm going to play its sequel because I gave into FOMO admittedly like six months to a year later when it came to switch. But still, it was new then on switch. And so like I do agree here, but I have been surprised about genres that I like less. 00:48:49.79 Matt Storm However, I will say I will never buy a sports games day one. 00:48:50.06 Marcus sure 00:48:52.47 Matt Storm And I like football. I like basketball. But I don't play a lot of those games. But I will say when people were talking about NCAA recently because they finally had a new game that it did cross my mind of, well, I could buy a football game. 00:49:03.93 Marcus Thank 00:49:04.05 Dave Yeah, yeah. 00:49:04.52 Matt Storm So it does happen still. 00:49:06.30 Marcus But what Matt, what if they brought back NBA Street? 00:49:09.03 Matt Storm Oh god, I would buy a day one sight unseen without a doubt. 00:49:09.65 Marcus What if they... 00:49:11.35 Dave Oh yeah. They, they kind of are not with the licensing, but you as the indie creators always do, like, well, they're not making and NBA street. 00:49:19.00 Matt Storm Yeah. 00:49:20.12 Dave We're going to make our own version. So I forget what that's called, but I did see an announcement for something like that coming out. 00:49:28.87 Marcus Okay, ah let's see. Adam of the Backlog Bloggery. I occasionally feel FOMO, particularly when peers I respect and like socializing with are playing a new game. 00:49:40.63 Marcus It is nice to be part of the conversation while it is happening, but for a long time, I was a very late adopter to current generation games. That's the other big thing too, is um if it's like a platform situation, right? 00:49:52.72 Marcus And especially if you get that, 00:49:52.74 Dave Yeah. 00:49:55.02 Marcus the closer we are to like, like a new platform like that first year or two after the current platform is introduced and it was probably the harshest this generation because of how hard fine the two consoles were for so long. 00:50:07.02 Dave Yeah. 00:50:07.73 Marcus So it's on one hand, it almost takes the. Kind of the anxiousness away because it's like, well, I can't get this thing even if I wanted to, like it's out of my control when this will be back in stock, you know? 00:50:23.03 Marcus So don't sweat it to an extent. um But yeah, that but it because of that, it can also be the most frustrating of like, I just don't have the thing to play the thing that everyone's excited about yet. 00:50:32.29 Dave Yeah. 00:50:34.41 Marcus And you're like, ah. 00:50:34.80 Dave Yeah. I remember the PS five FOMO cause I really wanted to play the demon souls remake was like super strong when, uh, that was like, you know, very hard to, to, you know, you'd log in to buy it and it would sell out in half a second and like, well, I guess I'll try next week. 00:50:38.83 Marcus Mm. 00:50:51.63 Dave Like, uh, at least where I was living at the time. So I definitely get that for sure. Um, and even worse, if it's not that. You know, I have the money to buy this and I want to, but I can't because of availability. If it's like that, you know, for whatever reason, like I can't buy the new switch that's going to come out whenever, like the FOMO that will feel for that, I'm sure will be super strong. 00:51:16.41 Marcus Yeah, that Mario game that's going to launch with it probably. 00:51:18.86 Dave Oh yeah. 00:51:19.50 Matt Storm yeah 00:51:20.13 Marcus hey 00:51:21.41 Dave Uh, next up is Thrak from the 3DO experience podcast. Thrak says, I feel FOMO on occasion, but I find it tends to go away pretty quickly. Agreed. Thank you Thrak for, uh, for mentioning that games are eternal. 00:51:33.39 Marcus Well, are they, though? 00:51:33.78 Dave So any discussion about them can happen at any time. And I, I, I agree. 00:51:39.37 Matt Storm Yeah. 00:51:40.03 Dave Are your games eternal? Are your physical games eternal? 00:51:41.26 Marcus I mean, 00:51:42.32 Matt Storm I mean, Concord is, I was going to say Concord definitely isn't. 00:51:42.74 Dave Are your digital games eternal? 00:51:45.83 Matt Storm So, you know, and that'll be dated reference by the time this comes out anyway. 00:51:46.19 Dave Yeah. 00:51:46.79 Marcus I was like, but are we still playing Mario 35? 00:51:49.55 Dave I'm sure, yeah. Yeah. 00:51:53.60 Dave For most games, I think that that's relatively true. 00:51:57.59 Matt Storm Yeah. 00:51:57.70 Dave um for that like You get that experience in something like Elden Ring or Tunic or you know those games that are full of secrets and full of discovery. 00:52:08.41 Dave And so like if you're the new player and you're just surrounded by experts, you're surrounded by all the people who've done everything and they're like, All right, well, just tell me when you get to this place or ah they don't know how to talk to you because they don't want to spoil something for you about the game. Like that's a little bit different than being in that day one conversation, but it's a necessary thing, I think most of the time. 00:52:31.43 Matt Storm I mean, as someone who always uses guides, like I'll, I'll discover on my own, but I'm quick to jump to a guide. If I get stuck, I don't mind being surrounded by knowledgeable, more knowledgeable people. So I can say, Hey, how do I find this thing? 00:52:45.07 Matt Storm Up next is Steve from the IndieQuest podcast. ah i'd like to say I'd like to say I don't or that I'm above it somehow, but I definitely do in some situations. There are just so many good games to check out. And when your online peers and friends have so ah started up on the hot new thing, it can sometimes be hard to stay excited about that game. You're still playing that the people have moved on from. That said, I'm pretty good about identifying when it's FOMO. 00:53:14.14 Matt Storm when FOMO is kicking in and working through it. Yeah, I mean, like we just said, like when you're in a Discord that maybe has topic based discussion sections that update with the latest and greatest game, it's kind of a funnel for that information. 00:53:19.96 Dave Yeah. 00:53:27.95 Matt Storm So as long as you don't click on it, you won't know. But then as soon as you click on it, you see all the screenshots and people celebrating or pooping the game either way. It's like, oh, I want to be involved. 00:53:38.69 Marcus Yeah. 00:53:38.90 Dave yeah 00:53:40.76 Marcus See, CtrlAltNoob by saying, even though I am super budget conscious, well done, I have a huge backlog of games that I would like to get to eventually thanks to Epic Games, other giveaways, Prime Gaming, PS Plus, and Bundles. 00:53:55.29 Marcus Despite having so much ready and waiting, the fact that it tends to decide what I play next is the game that is most likely to leave soon on whichever subscription service I am using at the time. 00:54:06.08 Marcus I mean, yeah, like having something leave like Game Pass definitely creates that sense of urgency and sort of lights the fire of like, I've put this off for so long. Now this is my quote unquote last chance or my last chance to play it and not have to, you know, open my wallet to do it. 00:54:23.99 Dave Yeah. 00:54:24.27 Marcus ah So that can help. Certainly I. I rarely feel that urgency anymore. I feel like Game Pass is the only one I actively, well, I guess like, because I've never used Prime and Epic doesn't really, I mean, you have a limited time to grab their free stuff, but I don't monitor it or enough. So it's really Game Pass, it's the only one that is usually in my forefront of like, oh, here's what's coming and going. But I don't know, unless it's something really, really good, which isn't often, I'm i'm kind of okay with like, oh, I downloaded this, but it's leaving because I think I'm kind of realistic of like, 00:54:55.97 Marcus I'm not gonna play this now, or I just don't have the time, so it's fine. 00:55:01.57 Dave Yeah. 00:55:01.65 Marcus It's like if I didn't play it at this point, I think I'm okay with it leaving. 00:55:05.24 Dave That's the thing. It's like, this has been on game pass staring me in the face for two years. If I really wanted to play it, I would have by now. So let's, we can just let it go and we'll, you know, if it's been on game pass that long, it'll be cheap in the next steam sale. 00:55:19.29 Dave We'll just pick it up. If you really want to play it or just wait, see if it shows up somewhere else for free or quote for free. 00:55:25.62 Marcus Yeah, it might come back to Game Pass. 00:55:27.24 Dave Yeah. I remember looking at like hardspace shipbreaker leaving game pass and it was like, you last played this 500 days ago. And it's like, can you really be upset that it's leaving game pass when you haven't played it in over a year? Come on. 00:55:39.66 Marcus It's the ultimate like, what's, I don't know if there's a name for this behavior, but like, you know, you take a toy from a kid that wasn't using it and the moment you take it from them, they flip out like, whoa, whoa, whoa, I was using that. 00:55:46.87 Dave Yeah. 00:55:47.66 Marcus And it's like, it's been sitting there for like months and you didn't care until I took it away. 00:55:48.22 Matt Storm That's mine. 00:55:50.52 Dave Yeah, exactly. Yeah. ah And Noob also mentions the other things I forgot, like um if you have humble bundle, or if you buy those ah fanatical bundles, or buy an itch.io bundle for social justice causes, congratulations, you now own 1700 games. So You know, look through all of those. You're not going to play all of those, but look through them. You'll probably find like 30 or 40 that look really cool. So there's more games for you. 00:56:21.91 Marcus It's also more work when you see something that you want to buy and you're like, wait, I should probably check to see if I already have this because I own like 1700 games. 00:56:26.77 Dave Yeah. 00:56:29.10 Matt Storm Yeah, basically. 00:56:30.49 Dave Yep. Yep. 00:56:30.52 Matt Storm Yeah, I mean, I've bought multiple copies of games because I've just not double checked. And it's like at that point. But part of it is sometimes my own worst enemy. Like I started Dungeons of Hinterberg on Game Pass. 00:56:41.93 Matt Storm And I was like, this is really fun. I really dig this game. I bet it'd be even more fun on the Steam Deck. Oh, it's only 20 bucks. Well, I guess I'm buying this on Steam and then immediately started playing it on the Steam Deck. And I don't regret it because I played through most of the game on Steam Deck and it's been a blast. But like in that case, I didn't need to. I had it already. I was playing it and yet I still bought it. 00:57:01.98 Marcus I think that's fair. Like if it's something like, if convenience is a factor that justifies the purchase, like, like I bought Bellattro cause I reviewed it on PC and then realized quickly, like I need this in my life outside of sitting in front of my computer. 00:57:17.84 Marcus So I am okay with spending money on it too. And also it was technically the first time I spent money on it because I got a code. So like, I guess. 00:57:24.04 Matt Storm Right. 00:57:24.72 Marcus it lessens the blow. But even if I hadn't, I kind of look at it like a Switch versus a console version as like a fair game . I'm paying the money I am paying for the convenience of having this with me all the time. 00:57:37.19 Matt Storm Your logic is making me feel very guilt-free about the hard copy physical version of Persona 4 Golden. 00:57:37.25 Dave Mmhmm. 00:57:43.80 Matt Storm I just bought the run booth at PAX West, which I already had on Steam and had started on my Steam deck, so I already had it portably. And then I bought it on Switch because I justified it as, well, I have Persona 5 Royal on Switch, so I might as well get Persona 4 Golden as well, because then all my Persona games are in one place, except they're not because I have Persona 3 reload on PS5. 00:58:03.51 Matt Storm So, yeah, logic is impenetrable. 00:58:05.83 Marcus Right. It might get lonely. There'll be like, where's four? Four's not here. 00:58:08.43 Matt Storm right 00:58:08.43 Dave Yeah, exactly. 00:58:08.99 Marcus We're all here. 00:58:09.03 Dave Yeah. 00:58:09.41 Matt Storm and I mean, I do now have physical copies of all three persona games, just one on one console and two on the other. 00:58:09.47 Marcus Did you guys see where four is? 00:58:16.45 Matt Storm Anyway. 00:58:17.39 Dave Yeah. So we have a lot of thoughts about FOMO and the idea that we have all of these games. And you know whether you actually keep a log of all of them up into the 300s like I have, or if you just keep a list on your phone, or just a loose collection of ideas in your head about what I may or may not own. no um The next question to answer then is, do we feel pressure to play all of these things? um Because what I've been thinking about is the word backlog is kind of weird to you. you don't so I don't hear people use this in movies or a backlog of books to read or something like that. ah People usually say a library or a collection or something like that in other forms of media. 00:59:05.12 Dave ah We've landed on backlog and I'm, you know, I'm part of the problem. It's in the name of my podcast, but tales from the steam library just don't roll off the tongue the same way. So ah the word backlog in other uses outside of video games does have that connotation that there is a pressure that you will need to finish this. Like you went on vacation and you have a backlog of emails waiting for you. 00:59:28.17 Dave You have to answer those. So I wonder if a little bit of the pressure that people feel, or at least that I feel, not to put words in both of your mouths, but ah comes from the word that we use to talk about all of these things. And if there is an expectation that we're actually going to get to all of these games. 00:59:47.87 Marcus so I've never associated Backlog with the expectation to play them. I just associate like these are games that I own that I have not started, but not necessarily like and that means you will play them. 00:59:58.48 Dave Mm-hmm That's me right now 01:00:01.35 Marcus um There was definitely a time in my life where I finished everything that I started, even if it was actively bad. um And this was like And sometimes it's like for fun of like, it'll at least for me it's like a challenge of like, I don't wonder if I could finish this like garbage game. But then other times I kind of rationalize it as like, well, I will need the knowledge of this game because I want to be a professional games media person one day. So surely someone will ask me how vampire rain concluded. 01:00:30.61 Marcus know uh but like now again as you get older and you become more realistic with like your time i am i am i will leave games that i'm just not fighting with like i i that sent that weird obligation like i gotta finish like nah it's like if it just doesn't click then There's so many other, once you realize that you could be spending your limited time with something else that you like, that very quickly evaporates in his sense of like weird commitment to something that is just like not gelling with you. And the same comes with playing something that just goes back to what I said about understanding the inevitability. I will never play every game that I own. It's just not mathematically possible. 01:01:12.44 Marcus So why try to like blowing against the wind? they Like it's like, I'll take games just because it's like, yeah, they're free. Why wouldn't I take it? It's here. It's like a free candy dish. 01:01:23.80 Dave Yeah. 01:01:23.93 Marcus And like, but will I eat all the candy? Probably not. But it's, you know, it's there. 01:01:29.90 Dave One interesting thing is how long to beat. ah If you keep a log of all the things that you have, it will tell you how long it will take to beat everything. ah So mine, it says will take 299 days to beat all of the games on my list, which is... 01:01:39.12 Marcus Hmm. 01:01:43.70 Marcus Oh, days I was gonna, I thought it'd be years. Cause I was gonna say that would be sobering enough to be like, you know what, that's fine. 01:01:46.79 Dave Oh. 01:01:49.91 Marcus But then days that's almost like technically attainable. You're like, oh, less than a year. 01:01:53.19 Dave it would 01:01:53.94 Marcus I could do that. 01:01:54.00 Matt Storm Bye-bye. 01:01:54.28 Dave That's part of it. yeah it's like it's not it's if i stopped If I stopped buying games and stopped collecting free games, I could probably get through all of these things. But ah like the question is, do I actually want to? Do I feel like I should? um I personally, like I get a little bit of guilt about games that I've bought that I haven't like started playing yet, especially if it was like, 01:02:20.15 Dave you know not a game I bought for two bucks in a Steam sale. I don't feel too bad about that. 01:02:23.40 Matt Storm Yeah. 01:02:24.92 Dave But if I bought a game for 30, 40 bucks and then never touched it, um like I have physical games on my shelf, Switch games, you know those were not cheap, ah that I haven't touched yet. 01:02:36.07 Dave And if I look at those, I'm like, come on, man, like you spent 60 bucks on that. Play that shit. But I don't. And I play stuff I want to play instead most of the time. ah Sometimes podcast stuff gets in the way of, uh, cause the way I do my show, I do finish every game I play so that I can have the full discussion about everything in it. Uh, but I do get that feeling like when I was playing Dave the diver and I had that thing in my head, like, Hey man, you could be doing literally anything else right now. You like, were it different or, you know, if you made the executive decision, you could just stop playing this and play a game that you like instead, uh, which is, 01:03:14.92 Dave You know, if I do pull the plug early, I can make that decision. And you're right, Marcus, it's a great feeling when you're like, that that light bulb goes off and you're like, I could just turn this off. I don't have to finish this. I could play something. I could play anything else. I could take a walk. I could do anything. I don't have to finish, yeah, this ah this thing. So um I do feel a little bit of pressure to play the stuff that I've bought. um Not so much all the freebies from Epic and stuff, because, you know, 01:03:44.59 Dave I didn't want those. They were given to me. 01:03:47.30 Marcus Right. 01:03:47.43 Matt Storm Yeah, I don't even feel the pressure to play stuff that I've bought because at this point there's so many of those that I haven't played. By the way, for the record, my only backlog, it's two hundred and nineteen days and 13 hours to beat all the games in my backlog. 01:04:00.52 Matt Storm So, you know, somewhat accomplishable, I guess. 01:04:02.95 Dave You can do it by the end of 2025. 01:04:05.40 Matt Storm ah Exactly. um But I will say that, like, I get that same feeling like, but what gets me like it's all psychology, right? um I got it. 01:04:16.40 Matt Storm several games at the end of last year is Hanukkah Presents because my spouse loves me very much and pays attention to the things that I wish list, but I have an unopened copy of Armored Core and I'm an Armored Core sicko that has gone unplayed because I keep going, well, Armored Core is a long game and there's a lot to it and it takes like multiple, you know, it's like a Souls game in the sense that it takes trial and error to get through these bosses. 01:04:37.98 Matt Storm So I'll get to it. And then I kept pushing it off and pushing it off. And now we're almost, we're more than halfway through the following year and I still haven't touched it. Um, Pikmin one and two, I asked for, I've never played the Pikmin franchise. I've always wanted to try it. It's been sitting in my switch carrying case for ages. I've not even booted it up once. Like, uh, I bought at the end of 2022, I think it was when they came out, like a bunch of RPGs or something like. 01:05:01.88 Matt Storm RPG style games that I was like, oh, I'll get to like Triangle Strategy and Shin Megami 5, Tensai 5. And I was like, oh, I'll play them and still haven't touched them. The new version, Vengeance of Five is out and I don't have that. like I just kept ah just bought a copy of Golden, a 40 hour game, when am I going to play it? It's like, I do feel bad, but only so far. And then my brain eventually just falls out because I literally can't. I have so many games. I was given a copy of the new Rugrats game, which I'm so stoked for. When am I going to play it? Now, thankfully, that game is probably like six hours long, right? um i ah you know I got a code for another game that, well, I guess by the time folks hear this will be out, Yars Rising, which I was really excited for, for ah 01:05:49.42 Matt Storm about From Atari and Limited Run and like it heard good things, still haven't touched it as of when we're recording. It's just one of those things that I like, I don't know that the word backlog makes me feel guilty more than looking at my gigantic library and all the really classic indie games. like ah have like Now I'm just just seeing what I can remember. I have Neon ah neon White on Switch. I have Ollie Ollie World on Switch. Haven't touched those. And these are all games that I buy in bulk at the end of the year that are on sale for some big sale. you know Every time there's a Steam sale at this point, my spouse Sarah just asks, so what'd you buy? Not like, how could you buy all those games you have no time to play? It's just, well, what'd you buy? 01:06:29.65 Matt Storm Because it's just an inevitability. 01:06:29.93 Marcus accepted her fate 01:06:31.62 Dave Yeah, part of it too is ah like, so there's a little bit of guilt about that. I feel like I spent money on this and I have not touched it. 01:06:41.88 Matt Storm Yeah. 01:06:43.44 Dave Part of it too, and I think the bigger part of this, like the feeling that I want to play these and like the feeling that I am not okay with the idea that I can't play all of these things is that the experiences that you are missing out on by not playing them. 01:06:54.31 Marcus Just accepted her fate. 01:07:01.10 Matt Storm Right. 01:07:01.18 Dave And it's not to say that you're not getting great experiences from the things that you are playing, but I look at the backlog list and just pull a random game, Metal Gear Solid 5. I know I'm gonna enjoy playing Metal Gear Solid 5, but like when am I gonna find the 70 hours to play that game or however long it takes? Like I could carve out that, but that would be at the expense of other experiences. And so you get into this never ending thing of trying to, you know, schedule things out in advance, which is a bad idea for me too. I don't like doing that. Uh, so the, the bigger feeling and like the, the bigger pressure I feel would be like to look at the list and be like, man, I'd really love to play max pain, but I'm playing five games right now. I can't start playing max pain without kicking something else out that I want to play. And it's this never ending battle. 01:07:53.19 Marcus Do you guys, um, are you guys big into replaying games? Cause I feel like that can be a factor too for like how quickly you get, cause I am not a big replay games guy. 01:07:58.39 Dave Also a factor. 01:07:59.46 Matt Storm Yeah. 01:08:02.39 Marcus Like I, I treat kind of games almost like books where it's like, I, I am far more excited by the idea of jumping into a new world, a new adventure than going back to something. Even if it's like some of my favorite games of all time, I've only played once by and large and. 01:08:16.28 Dave Mm hmm. 01:08:17.83 Marcus Like even then, you still have to work on finding time to fit everything in. But I've always, when I have like friends and and peers that are like, oh yeah, I've replayed this game or these couple of games like once a year, when and I'll like, 01:08:32.84 Marcus That's awesome. I just don't have that in me. 01:08:34.05 Dave Yeah. 01:08:35.68 Marcus And I always wonder, like, is that bad? or Like, am I depriving myself or like, am I just like someone that's just like, oh, that's cool, but it just doesn't do it for me the same way. Like, I'd rather just if you put something new in front of me, I'd rather just try the new thing. 01:08:50.09 Matt Storm Yeah, for me, it's very game specific. I do like to replay games, but it depends on what it is. I used to play Chrono Trigger every year for a long time. This is my favorite game of all time. But I guess in our podcast this year we talked about it and didn't replay it, I replayed some of it, but like I didn't finish it because I just didn't have the time. It's like, but then Metroid Fusion gets released on another platform and I replay it because it's one of my favorite games ever made. 01:09:15.27 Matt Storm and it's like five hours long. So I think it's lengthwise. Like I said, I think I told Dave this, Persona 5 Royal is my favorite RPG that I'll never play again. 01:09:18.45 Marcus Sure. 01:09:24.64 Matt Storm It is by far one of the best RPGs I've ever played, but I will never spend 169 nice hours again playing that game. I just won't do it. I just don't have that kind of time. But like then again, I replayed next to Wolverine's Revenge, a game from my childhood that I loved because it was for a purpose. 01:09:41.89 Matt Storm I think most of my replaying lately has been, say, to replay games for a certain tournament, celebrating a certain kind of game. 01:09:48.95 Marcus right same for me like you know i mean we had a show literally called replay so it's like yeah i'm gonna i got to replay the mortal combat nine campaign which i loved but i have not touched since it came out so this is a great excuse to to do that but yeah outside of like i guess obligations right yeah it's 01:09:49.73 Matt Storm And that brings me to it, like I replayed Sonic Adventure this year and loved it because I love that game. But I don't know that I would have replayed it if I weren't playing it for the purposes of Capital C content. 01:10:12.71 Matt Storm Yeah. 01:10:15.50 Matt Storm Yeah, I mean, but that said, if the hifi if the physical copy of Hi-Fi Rush, it will drop eventually, so I'm told. 01:10:15.98 Dave Yeah. 01:10:22.07 Matt Storm When that comes out and I receive it, I will play it on my PlayStation 5, because I love that game, and it's become one of my favorites. But like not every game that I want to replay has that hold. like I started a replay of Mario and Luigi, Superstar Saga, because it came to the Switch, and I was like, I love this game. 01:10:37.85 Matt Storm And then after like an hour, I was like, yeah, but some of these platforming puzzles suck, and I think I'm good. I'll just watch a recap. 01:10:43.26 Marcus It's like, yeah, you kind of got your fix of like, oh yeah, it's still that game. 01:10:46.76 Dave Yeah. 01:10:48.06 Matt Storm And then I went, oh, but I can play the new one that comes out in three months. 01:10:48.41 Dave Yeah. 01:10:48.68 Marcus Cool. yeah 01:10:51.20 Matt Storm So, you know. 01:10:51.78 Dave Right. Yeah. I don't replay games very often either. And it's partly because I'm always after new experiences. And now that you know I have the podcast that is like, it is the end result of most of the games that I play if they end up in a podcast episode. 01:11:09.09 Dave So if it's a game that I haven't done on the podcast yet, I'm open to replaying it to do like the critical analysis of it. And often that benefits from replaying something because you're not shocked by the shocking things anymore. 01:11:20.04 Marcus Right. 01:11:23.60 Dave You're more keyed into everything that's going on. But I don't do that for everything. um And every time I replay a game, there's an opportunity cost. I feel like I would love to replay The Witcher 3, but the opportunity cost of replaying The Witcher 3 would be like seven other games I could play with that time. 01:11:43.83 Matt Storm Absolutely. 01:11:43.89 Marcus Yeah, that's your retirement plan. 01:11:44.06 Dave So 01:11:46.06 Matt Storm yeah Yeah, that's like when you have nothing better to do. 01:11:46.22 Dave Yeah, yeah, that Yeah, replaying that or like, you know, I would love to do another playthrough of Elden Ring in a couple years. But you know, if I do that, then what does that mean for how else I'm spending my time? 01:12:00.70 Dave um The 01:12:01.92 Marcus Do you guys feel ah compelled to when it's something like Persona 5, like Matt mentioned, where you play Persona 5 and you're like, man, this is great. And then they release Royal with like a bunch of new stuff. And you're like, crap. 01:12:13.20 Marcus do i like If it's something like we re-release this and it's better and has new stuff, are you more willing to like, well, I gotta replay that. 01:12:18.65 Dave Ugh. 01:12:21.26 Marcus It's already my favorite game. 01:12:23.17 Matt Storm Yeah, I mean for me like I've been the best example of that is see if stars is getting DLC and I love to see if stars last year. 01:12:28.91 Marcus It is interesting. yeah 01:12:31.17 Matt Storm Yeah, and like it's a separate story right as far as I can tell the DLC is not taking place during the campaign. It's like off to the side. but I don't own a Switch copy of that game. I got code for it, which I was grateful to get and thankful for, but I've never given it the money for it. So now my brain is like, well, I could buy the Switch version and then replay it. Do I have the time to replay it? No, but yeah, I mean, DLC and like expansions, like I haven't done it for the Pokemon games that did that. And now it's mostly relegated to DLC, but like I never bought the Pokemon version, the new Pokemon version. I usually just played the old one. And now they mostly release those new versions as DLC. 01:13:09.71 Dave I haven't considered this possibility because I was always super late to the Persona games. ah i I hope not. like I hope I don't get roiled with ah you know a big long game. 01:13:19.80 Matt Storm but 01:13:20.96 Dave like I don't know. Let's just say for the sake of argument Xenoblade Chronicles 3 comes out with a new version with a new story that's intertwined with the main. Do you have to replay it like Persona 5 Royal? 01:13:34.03 Dave Like I hope not. That would be a really hard decision. DLC is already really hard for me because I've 01:13:40.60 Matt Storm Yeah. 01:13:41.28 Dave When I finish a game, I close the door on it. Like the book is closed. 01:13:45.74 Marcus Same. 01:13:45.77 Dave So it's really hard for me to, you know, pick up DLC for control six months after I finished playing control and then feel motivated to play more control. 01:13:55.82 Dave Like I felt like I was done with it when that DLC came out. 01:13:56.74 Marcus Yeah. 01:13:57.78 Matt Storm yeah 01:13:59.37 Marcus It's wild too, because on paper you're like, oh, you made new content for this thing that I love? You should be doing cartwheels, right? 01:14:04.62 Dave Yeah. 01:14:07.93 Matt Storm Yeah. 01:14:08.15 Dave if you know, I wonder if that stems from this mindset of like there are so many things to play and I feel like I want to experience as much as possible. 01:14:08.29 Marcus but yeah 01:14:19.21 Dave So when I finish something, like that that book closing in my head is related to the idea that like now control is over now I can play something else and then like six months later they're like hey you want more control they're like uh no i'm I'm done with control i'm I'm on this other thing now I wonder if it is related to the idea of like wanting to get as many of these experiences as I can yeah yeah 01:14:30.87 Marcus Yeah. 01:14:44.44 Matt Storm Yeah. 01:14:44.58 Marcus Yeah, thankfully, at least DLCs are typically shorter, like manageable things where you're like, I've got I've been hit and miss with DLCs in terms of like, if I'll play them like there's some great DLCs that I've never played. 01:14:48.85 Matt Storm Yeah. 01:14:56.96 Marcus And at least this year, I feel like I've gotten maybe better at doing that. Like, I mean, Elden Ring aside, I had to review Shadow of the Urchery, so that was going to play no matter what. But I was going to be one of the few who were like, oh, that's they won, just because Elden Ring is like a maybe top three favorite game of all time. 01:15:12.00 Marcus So I was like, yes, please give me that. um But like, you know, I played that Alan Wink DLC this year and I didn't play any of the DLC for one. 01:15:22.04 Matt Storm Yeah. 01:15:22.22 Marcus And even though I've heard good things about it, like but like, I guess it was like Maybe it was a bit of like, I think I understand my time better. 01:15:33.02 Marcus So it was like, I, I'm willing to make time for this because I like this game so much and I like it, and I want to see more of it. 01:15:41.05 Dave Yeah. 01:15:43.04 Marcus And it's sort of like my investment in this universe is high enough to where I, yes, please, I would like to get more stories to wherever this is going to go. You know? 01:15:52.31 Matt Storm Yeah, I think it's dependent on the game. 01:15:52.79 Dave Yeah. 01:15:54.36 Matt Storm I was so obsessed with Control and Alan Wake, because I played Alan Wake the first one after Control, that when the Alan Wake DLC came out for Control, I played it day one. But I didn't play the Foundation until I replayed Control a few years later, because I got the PS5 and the PS5 version of the Complete Edition was included. 01:16:12.41 Matt Storm And I was like, well, now it'll run well, because I played it on my old PS4, where it did not. Uh, and it was worth it and I love control. It was probably in my top 10 games of all time, but like same thing with Alan Wake, I forgot the DLC was coming out and then I downloaded it and I enjoyed it, but it was really quick and I was like, all right, well, I'm really excited for the lake house that comes out in November, but like also will I actively played it in November when I'll be playing the veil guard Mario and Luigi and like four other games, right? 01:16:39.90 Matt Storm I think DLC can kind of fall into that. 01:16:40.20 Marcus Hmm. 01:16:42.28 Matt Storm and like I never played the Kingdom Hearts 3 DLC, which was supposed to be a huge part of the story to sum up that game. 01:16:47.35 Marcus Oh yeah, I don't think I did either. 01:16:48.81 Matt Storm Never touched it because, like Dave was saying, when I finished Kingdom Hearts 3, which I enjoyed, one of the few I feel like who enjoyed it, I closed the book on it. I was like, all right, well, I'll see you again at Kingdom Hearts 4 30 years from now. 01:17:00.72 Matt Storm That's fine. And then never went back and played that DLC. So I think it's a case by case. But like I said earlier, Sea of Stars are already planning another purchase I don't need to make. just to play that one. 01:17:10.73 Matt Storm So I think it it it's case by case for me. 01:17:11.84 Marcus Yeah. 01:17:14.25 Matt Storm But ah but there are things that will make me go back and play a game in lieu of I think also DLC has gotten me to play a game that I've never played. Like I find out that a version is going to have like, like there's a it I guess it leads into your like persona five royal thing. 01:17:28.60 Matt Storm Like if I find out that an ultimate special version of a game I never got to play comes out, I might pick up that version. so I'm like, well, this is the ultimate version. If I'm going to play a version of it, it's got to be this version. 01:17:38.33 Marcus I have that um and then they would like to go back to but maybe the sunk cost fallacy of like spending money on things, but not playing them. Like I had that where persona five were like, Oh, I bought this on sale. It's like everyone's, this is good. I've never played a personal game from start to finish. 01:17:49.93 Marcus I guess I'm starting with this one, and sat in my backlog for years and did Royal happen? And then everyone I talked to was like, Oh, you've never played it. You should just play Royal. Like why we don't play debate. It's just, it's better in every way. 01:18:01.09 Marcus like But I already spent money on the base. So it feels weird to like I bought this and then immediately say nah and then go buy royal but it's like I Everything I hear like no one has a good reason to not play royal over the original version 01:18:03.95 Matt Storm definite 01:18:15.75 Dave Yeah, and that's part of the ah solution for FOMO 2 and like things to keep in mind is that the best version of a game is not the one that's coming out the first day that it comes out most of the time, whether it's like for 01:18:26.98 Matt Storm Yeah. 01:18:30.76 Dave performance reasons or, you know, if you wait a year and a half, you'll get all the DLC bundled in. um So like, I don't know, I've often felt like FOMO about a game and then like, you know, seeing people showing like, oh, it has a bunch of crashes or the frame rate is awful. And then I'm like, oh, okay, like, let me lift that burden off of myself and I'm cool to wait. 01:18:53.79 Dave you know, until this is all patched up. And then by the time that FOMO passes, then I'm back into my normal mode where it's like, I'm cool to wait years to play this now. Like I'm once I get past those first few days, I'm cool. Like now that the main crest of Astro Bot FOMO is finished. I'm cool until it goes on PS Plus, because it will at some point, and I'll be there when it does, but I'm probably not going to play it until then. ah Just because if you ride out that first wave and then your cooler head prevails. 01:19:28.95 Matt Storm No. 01:19:29.15 Marcus it's a Does, does Godi discussions, does that ever bring it back? Cause that's like the peak of like everyone revisiting stuff that you've now decided to put on the back burner ah and re-talking about how great it is. 01:19:37.32 Dave Yeah. 01:19:42.26 Marcus And you're just like, yeah, that does sound fun, huh? 01:19:44.95 Dave Yeah, but I'm usually overwhelmed by like, you know, I'll read like the polygon, the huge polygon game of the year list and be like, shit, they have like 35 things on here that sound great. 01:19:44.98 Matt Storm Yeah, yeah. 01:19:57.70 Dave So it's too, it's too many games of the year for me to feel overwhelmed by like one specific game. 01:20:05.43 Marcus Sure. 01:20:05.60 Dave coming back into the conversation. 01:20:07.51 Matt Storm Yeah. 01:20:07.63 Dave Although I play my part with, you know, my game of the year stuff, hoping to get like all those people that didn't play a thousand times resist, I'm going to make that final push this year to get people to play that. 01:20:16.58 Matt Storm Yeah. 01:20:17.19 Marcus Yeah, I still got a plate. 01:20:18.27 Matt Storm Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's how I ended up playing Resident Evil 4 remake last year. Not that I wasn't going to ever because I loved the original Resident Evil 4. But then, like, as Game of the Year lists were starting to come out towards the end of the year, I was like, I didn't play it and I should. 01:20:33.24 Dave Yeah. 01:20:33.55 Matt Storm And of course I loved it when I played it. But like, yeah, that happens often. I mean, look, to speak to that crest and like that, it'll eventually pass. I didn't play Mass Effect Andromeda until I covered it for my podcast a few years ago. 01:20:46.85 Matt Storm And like, I am the internet's biggest Mass Effect fan, except for maybe if you're correct. 01:20:50.64 Dave You're wearing an N7 hat right now. 01:20:53.46 Matt Storm ah But it came out the same year as the Switch. 01:20:53.89 Marcus Hehehe. 01:20:57.00 Matt Storm It had horrible bugs and people were bashing it. Breath of the Wild was celebrated universally. So I went with that. And then I never went back to it because after a few years, I was like, oh, I'll play it eventually. I love the trilogy, but this is different. 01:21:08.25 Matt Storm It's not the same game. And then I played it a few years ago and loved it because I was so separate from all the nonsense also. like Was it perfect? No, it was definitely flawed. But like I didn't hate the experience because I wasn't listening to the Chuds on Twitter complaining about it. I got to just enjoy the game for what it was. 01:21:26.08 Dave That's the other side. Like that's the inverse of FOMO when you get to just ignore the discourse and come to a game late. 01:21:31.72 Matt Storm Yeah. 01:21:33.31 Dave Like I played The Last of Us Part II for the first time last year. So I was not part of any of the discourse about that game and I just gotta play it and experience it. And that was nice. 01:21:43.81 Matt Storm Yeah, there's a bright side to the backlog. 01:21:43.80 Marcus Yeah. 01:21:46.35 Dave Yeah, for sure. ah So we have community responses for the topic of ah feeling pressure and feeling like you have to play ah the things in your backlog. So I will start once again with Mikey tabletop, ah right to the point with Mikey. Mikey says, life's too short to waste your time on games you're not enjoying. There's no worries in not finishing a game. And then Mikey says, actually, life is too short to play any video games, go see a musical or throw a Frisbee or something. 01:22:16.13 Matt Storm I mean, Mikey's right. 01:22:16.13 Dave Thank you, Mikey. 01:22:17.96 Matt Storm There's definitely no way in which we will play all the games that we ever want to play in our life. And when you do the math, it's actually really kind of sad. So, you know, chew on that. 01:22:26.49 Marcus Yeah, I do think that taking those breaks to do anything that is not playing a game just makes it feel better to get back to games. 01:22:34.10 Matt Storm Yeah. 01:22:34.26 Dave yeah 01:22:34.35 Marcus ah yeah you Like as much as you love games or love anything, you need a break from it. You know, you need to recharge the battery. 01:22:38.45 Matt Storm Yeah. 01:22:40.33 Marcus So yeah, I think that's great advice. I apply that. like I'm just going to go for a walk or something, you know. 01:22:45.26 Dave yeah 01:22:45.92 Matt Storm Yeah, yeah. ah Being a dog owner is helpful for that because sometimes the ah whether you're going for a walk or not is not up to you anymore. 01:22:53.10 Dave that's right 01:22:54.85 Matt Storm Up next is Dischimera from the Game Over Hell YouTube channel. ah Pressure may be only because of video creation again. If there's a game I know I'll really enjoy, I feel pressure to set everything aside for it. 01:23:08.01 Matt Storm With the endless choice, I usually use a picker wheel online. That's actually a really good idea for like, if you can't decide what to play to just use one of those picker wheels. ah That said, for every 10 games that get announced, I usually usually one that I feel any pressure to play. 01:23:17.78 Dave That's right. 01:23:22.86 Matt Storm I have way too many retro classic games and series I never played to go through. Yeah, that's legit. I mean, I have put it to chance the last time I streamed. And the reason I actually played Chance of Sinard this year, which I still need to finish, is because I put it into it. There's an app that literally just picks games from your Steam library at random. And when I didn't know what to stream, I used that and I picked Chance of Sinard and went, oh, yeah, I got that as a gift. I wanted to play that. So like that is a pretty good way to like take the power out of the backlog a little bit and just kind of play whatever. 01:23:56.65 Marcus Let's see, we got Artful Scruff here, a little, usually because I want to finish one thing so I can start another or so I'm ready for whatever or whatever the next new release I want to play is. 01:24:09.50 Marcus Okay, so ah yeah, it's... 01:24:10.68 Dave Yeah. 01:24:13.27 Marcus it is that sort of like if you're trying to keep pace with releases it's like if i don't start this now then you fall behind and then everything starts to fall behind if you're someone that's very strict about like i need to get this done before this comes out and i need to get that done before the next thing comes out and i i feel like if If you are not actively working in this industry where it requires you to keep up releases, I'd say don't feel obligated to do it. 01:24:27.77 Dave Yeah. 01:24:40.49 Marcus like i have had to like I have a professional reason for trying my best to keep up with that. But I would say it can be its own sort of prison a bit. 01:24:51.35 Marcus um So I'd say like unless i mean you know do what you want, of course. But like if you're not truly obligated to do it, don't put yourself in that box. you know 01:24:59.92 Dave Yeah, I don't. I don't do that for every new game that I wanna play, but maybe once or twice a year, there'll be something coming out where ah I'm like, I wanna clear the decks for when this comes out. 01:25:11.45 Dave Like when Elden Ring came out, I purposely finished everything I was playing before Elden Ring came out. 01:25:11.77 Marcus Right. 01:25:18.15 Dave I didn't start any new games. If I had extra time, I did something else. I didn't wanna start anything else. So I definitely get that. um Yeah. Next up is Randall again, one of our patrons. Thank you, Randall. Randall says, at this point, I feel I play what I feel like playing. Sometimes I fall into my comfort rut of switching between two or three games that I've played over and over. But that's not an issue as long as I'm enjoying it. That's what this hobby is about, having fun. And I agree like you shouldn't feel bad for going back and playing that game that you really love, like, 01:25:53.38 Dave I'll replay Bloodborne every now and then because I really love that game or I'll play half of it or something like that. And I don't feel like that's wasted time that I should be spending on something else because I love Bloodborne and no one's going to take that experience away from me. 01:26:09.01 Marcus Yeah, I feel like live service or multiplayer games are the biggest sort of like, like, cause you can just keep going back to those games or like anything that I feel like you have like a comfort food game. 01:26:15.33 Matt Storm Yep. 01:26:15.51 Dave Yeah. 01:26:17.87 Matt Storm Yep. 01:26:18.44 Marcus Like, like mine is Yu-Gi-Oh! 01:26:18.76 Dave Mm hmm. 01:26:19.95 Marcus Master Duel. Where it's like, that is my, I just want to play something and I haven't decided what, I'll fire up some Yu-Gi-Oh! 01:26:22.04 Dave Hell yeah. 01:26:26.17 Marcus But then sometimes I'll spend so much time with it that you almost feel guilty, like, I could be playing something new, but I'm playing this thing that I already have like well over 300 hours. You know? 01:26:35.10 Matt Storm Yeah, I use Fortnite for that, and I'm anticipating the release of Marvel Rivals this December to become that for me. Because Overwatch used to be that game for me. We're like, oh, I don't know what to do. Well, I'll just queue up for a couple matches with some friends. 01:26:46.85 Matt Storm Now I'll have Marvel Rivals to do that with, and provided I enjoyed as much as I did in the closed beta, I'll be my brain off, play a game. That's not my backlog. But to that same effect, it's like, oh, I'm going to play this for a few hours. 01:26:58.31 Matt Storm Four hours later, it's 2 AM. I guess I could have been playing something else if I was going to play it this long, you know kind of a thing. 01:27:03.63 Dave Yeah, 01:27:04.28 Marcus especially when you tell yourself, like, I can't play this RPG. That's like 50 hours. And then you spend the same amount of time doing something else. And you're like, that was a lie that I told myself. 01:27:11.88 Dave right. 01:27:14.13 Matt Storm Yeah, basically. Up next is Snacktaku, a patron who just says pressure is for tires. 01:27:20.77 Dave Well said. 01:27:21.42 Matt Storm Well said. 01:27:23.03 Marcus I like that. Let's see. DC a Senior Bracer FRank Patron says, I don't call it a backlog. I call it a library, like we talked about before. I picked that up from Burger Champ, I believe. 01:27:35.46 Marcus To build on that, just like a person who collects too many books but never finishes or even opens them, with some books strewn about, half-read, maybe abandoned, but ready to pick up again at any time. 01:27:46.42 Marcus That's how I view my video game library. 01:27:49.00 Matt Storm I mean, you sound very mentally healthy and someone who is stable and not a content creator. 01:27:49.08 Marcus You know, I... 01:27:53.92 Marcus You know, for for like, are video games the only thing that you... exclusively have a backlog for because I feel like like I love reading but I don't buy books the same way I buy games like I will buy I don't buy a new book until I finish what I'm reading like I have that under control even the one and it's funny how like you think like oh I should be able to do that with games right or how or vice versa like how have I not gotten like obsessive with books in the same way we have a shelf full of books I haven't read uh yeah 01:28:06.29 Dave No. 01:28:11.41 Dave Me too. 01:28:16.05 Dave yeah 01:28:21.61 Matt Storm right 01:28:21.70 Dave I, yeah, and I do have a shelf full of books that I haven't read, but I don't have the same thoughts about like, you know, I spent money on this, I need to read it, or like, even the thought that I'm missing out on some experiences, even though I know that I'm gonna enjoy them. 01:28:37.95 Dave It's, you're right, it's weird that I think about them differently. And it's not like it's more difficult to buy books. It's just as easy to go on Amazon and buy books as it is to go on Steam and buy games. 01:28:44.66 Matt Storm Right. 01:28:50.36 Matt Storm Yeah. 01:28:50.46 Dave It's weird how, yeah, it's weird how that happens. I guess no one's just coming up to my door and giving me three free books every single week that I might or might not like. 01:28:59.96 Marcus Yeah, bars and nobles that have a game pass equivalent. 01:29:00.03 Dave That's the only difference. 01:29:00.21 Matt Storm That's true. 01:29:03.90 Dave Yeah. 01:29:04.00 Matt Storm ah Yes, it's basically the library. 01:29:04.62 Marcus Well, I guess that's the library, actually. I think that's just a library card. 01:29:06.66 Dave That's the library. Yeah. And it's, and it's free and it's incredible. 01:29:08.43 Matt Storm ah 01:29:08.60 Marcus Yeah. 01:29:10.39 Dave Yeah. 01:29:10.87 Marcus yeah 01:29:12.47 Dave All right. We just invented libraries. Good job guys. 01:29:15.14 Marcus We did it. 01:29:15.31 Matt Storm Yeah, nice. 01:29:17.33 Dave Uh, next one is from Nick, a patron from Friday night gamecast. Nick says learning when or when not to put a game on the backlog is important. We're all guilty of owning plenty of software. 01:29:28.21 Dave We'll never touch, but as we move forward, we have to be mindful of making sure we're putting our money down on games. We know with absolute certainty that we'll play. Just remember that you need to have fun. Don't let an idea or concept of playing shit you think is important. 01:29:41.88 Dave Take the fun away from what you're doing right now. 01:29:44.28 Marcus Yeah. Well said. 01:29:44.85 Matt Storm Yeah, yeah, legit. 01:29:45.58 Dave Yeah. 01:29:46.41 Matt Storm I mean, it's funny, I was slogging through the Robocop game, which I was mostly having fun with. But like, I hit a point of minimal return, where it was like, oh, this is fun to play, but I'm not really getting any of the story. 01:29:57.11 Matt Storm And then when I retired it on my backlog list and went, oh, yeah, I guess I don't have to play that anymore. It felt like a weight was lifted. 01:30:03.59 Dave Yeah. 01:30:03.69 Matt Storm And like, no one was making me play that game. 01:30:03.78 Marcus A robo weight. 01:30:05.94 Matt Storm But like, I just was glad to not be playing it anymore, which meant I probably didn't like it as much as I was telling myself I did. 01:30:12.66 Marcus If it makes you feel better as someone that reviewed that game, it's longer than you think it is. 01:30:16.78 Matt Storm Yeah, well that's what I looked up the how long to beat and went, oh wait, I have how many more hours? I'm good. 01:30:21.82 Marcus so bright I like the game, but it's longer than it needs to be. 01:30:21.97 Matt Storm I've got the gist. 01:30:27.51 Matt Storm Up next is Adam from Backlog Bloggery. ah Not a lot of pressure to play games. If I own them, they will always be there. if a game Well, that's not necessarily true anymore. 01:30:38.51 Matt Storm ah If a game is leaving a service like Game Pass, I do feel a bit of pressure to finish it ah if it was one that I wanted to play but haven't gotten around to yet. 01:30:48.60 Matt Storm When dealing with ah approaches, I haven't found something that works yet. Ah, preach. We're all in that place. I try by order. I bought a console generation that belongs to an alphabetical random number generator, but nothing is really so bad that I can stay consistent just yet so I can play what I want. It is super important to play ah games we want, not the ones we feel obligated in life ah obligated to, life is too short and backlogs are too long to be really hung up on it. 01:31:23.22 Marcus You ever... ah Yeah, ah the from the ideas of ah trying to find ways to filter it, have you guys ever done by seasons? 01:31:23.80 Dave There's a certain point you just gotta let go, right? 01:31:25.84 Matt Storm Yeah. 01:31:25.99 Dave You just have to just, just accept that, you know, I look at that steam library and I look at some of the stuff in there. I'm just like, I'm never going to play that. And I have to be cool with that. 01:31:35.14 Matt Storm Yeah. 01:31:42.36 Marcus Like I said as we're getting into Halloween season, we're like, I feel like that's a good filter. 01:31:42.56 Matt Storm I have yeah. 01:31:44.57 Dave I have. 01:31:46.36 Matt Storm Spooky games. 01:31:46.36 Marcus We're like, I mean I'm gonna play my, what's the spooky games I have in my backlogs? 01:31:50.09 Dave Yeah. 01:31:50.20 Marcus And that narrows the field a bit, you know? 01:31:50.50 Matt Storm Yeah. 01:31:52.10 Dave I actually did, ah so this episode is gonna come out first in November. And then the rest of you know November, the stuff, it's not actually gonna work out this way, but the stuff I was playing around this time is all fall games, like Night in the Woods and Pathologic and you know fall stuff. 01:32:06.50 Marcus Hmm. 01:32:10.50 Marcus The pumpkin spice flavored games. 01:32:12.48 Dave Yeah, exactly. 01:32:12.84 Matt Storm Yeah, exactly. 01:32:13.24 Dave Yeah. So a pathologic is extremely pumpkin spice flavored. Yeah. But yeah, I do kind of have those themes sometimes. Maybe I do look forward to the Halloween season more because I know exactly what kind of thing I want to play. 01:32:30.98 Dave So it's easier to pick what to do during something like that. 01:32:33.23 Matt Storm Yeah. 01:32:36.20 Marcus Let's see, we have Thrak from the 3DO Experience podcast. I always feel pressure to play games so I can get the experiences out of them. The problem is I have so much choice, I don't know where to start, and when I'm playing something, I tend to feel like I'm missing out on what I'm not playing. I have to sort sort of turn on blinders and just play the game I'm playing, but it's a struggle. 01:32:59.55 Marcus If you don't think about it as a backlog and more as a library, it does tend to calm you down. Collecting and playing games are two separate hobbies, but if you can find a balance, you'll do all right. Play the games you want to play and try your best to enjoy them. That is my number one mantra for backlog. And I told my best friend that I mentioned before, because he always has that conundrum of like, I have all these games, but I just never know what I want to play next because you're like paralyzed by choice. And I was just saying, just play what you feel like. Don't feel like Because he has big stuff, you know, he's like, oh, I almost feel ob obligated. 01:33:32.06 Marcus This is a really big game I should play. Like he has like Marvel's Spider-Man hasn't played it or like God of War like the 2018 one. 01:33:35.70 Matt Storm Yeah. 01:33:38.90 Marcus He's like, oh, these are culturally significant whenever you want to call it. I should play that next, even if maybe like, but are you actually in the mood for that style of game? um Like just, you know, it's like the corny thing to say, but like, you know, trust your heart. 01:33:53.73 Marcus Like, what are you really in the mood for right now? 01:33:54.03 Matt Storm Yeah. 01:33:54.04 Dave Yeah. 01:33:56.83 Matt Storm Yeah, but I trusted my heart and played Astro Bot and Astro Bot reminded me that I still haven't. I've barely started God of War Ragnarok. So like, 01:34:04.79 Dave Oh, yeah. 01:34:05.20 Marcus Well, that game's a reminder. 01:34:06.75 Marcus My game is always PlayStation franchises. 01:34:07.21 Matt Storm yeah Like it's literally throwing in my face all the games that I haven't played yet and so like kind of counterintuitive 01:34:12.22 Dave Yeah, that's a betrayal for sure. I'm glad. I just want to say I'm glad that we have as many people writing in and basically like admitting that it's a struggle and that they feel pressure and that they feel FOMO and things like that. Because again, I think it's like A lot of people I think want to act like, ah ah no, this doesn't bother me. I'm perfectly fine with it when it's perfectly normal. And the three of us have you know agreed to some extent that this is something that you know it's it's psychology and um normal to feel like you know i'm putting a lot of time into this game and i'm having fun with this but the people in the discord server are all playing this other game and i got a little bit of star wars outlaw fomo because people were having fun playing outlaws and i i didn't want to play that like i let the i let release day pass me by no problem with that game and then people in discord were like hey this is actually pretty fun and it's really pretty and it's cool to be in the star wars world and i was like shit should i play 01:35:13.20 Dave Should I drop everything? No, I can't. And then you know it passes over. But like these are real feelings. So I'm glad that people are actually like sharing that this is not just you know me, basically. 01:35:26.59 Marcus Right. 01:35:27.48 Dave um The final one for this is from Steve from IndieQuest Podcast. ah Not feeling serious pressure. No, I already put a lot of time into gaming as a hobby. So I don't really hold any guilt or feelings of pressure around the games I'm not playing. 01:35:42.43 Dave I'm aware that games come out faster than any one person can keep up with. I do maintain a playful ignorance that someday I'll complete my backlog, but I know deep down I won't. And I also don't think that's the point of having one. In my experience, it feels like there's a bit of pushback on the idea of a backlog right now. People suggest that it's unhealthy to focus on and you should just live in the moment. But like most things, I think backlogs can be enjoyed in a healthy way. 01:36:09.69 Marcus Yeah. Do you guys have that um that? 01:36:10.47 Dave and one 01:36:12.13 Marcus Have you had that conversation with yourself where? You paint that dream scenario of like the day I finished my backlog or the situation in life or like I'm retired and I have all this free time. I'm going to finish my backlog. 01:36:23.66 Marcus And I always feel like if I had unlimited time and money, I would not because there's other things I want to do. 01:36:24.15 Dave Yeah, 01:36:30.62 Marcus Like it's like I like traveling and seeing like going out and seeing stuff. 01:36:30.86 Matt Storm Right. 01:36:30.85 Dave right 01:36:35.87 Marcus And that eats up time. So like, even if I was in the most ideal situation to finish my backlog, I won't because there are other things in my life that I like to vote for. to your backlog farm. 01:36:45.34 Dave Yeah. Like the idea that I'm going to sit down like Thanos and just kind of like just bask in everything being complete. The plan is finished and now I can, now I can live. 01:36:55.44 Dave Yeah. On the, on the backlog farm. 01:36:56.02 Matt Storm Yeah. 01:36:56.12 Marcus yeah 01:36:57.53 Dave Yeah. 01:36:59.04 Matt Storm Yeah, it's like life happens so often. It's like I just talked about going to PAX West, which was a blast and I had a great time. But I bring three portable consoles with me, played one of them on the flight out there and never touched the rest of it. 01:37:11.13 Matt Storm I mean, to be fair, I got motion sick on my flight back at the beginning of the flight, so I couldn't play. But like I always go with this idea that like, oh, yeah, have downtime and then I'll play all these portable consoles while I'm out there. 01:37:22.18 Matt Storm And then I never touch a damn thing. 01:37:23.56 Marcus Yeah, you're like, oh, I'm going out with friends. 01:37:23.89 Dave Yeah. 01:37:23.92 Matt Storm And yet I. 01:37:25.28 Marcus like We're going to go grab dinner or something like that. 01:37:25.62 Matt Storm Yeah. Yeah. yeah 01:37:27.56 Marcus I'm not in my hotel room playing my Switch. 01:37:29.52 Matt Storm No, absolutely not. 01:37:30.02 Dave Yeah. Yeah. Even when I took, you know, took an entire day off when I was at PAX East, I didn't go to the convention. I barely did anything during the day. I still wasn't playing games in the hotel room or anything like that. 01:37:40.43 Matt Storm No. 01:37:41.89 Dave I was taking a nap. So yeah. 01:37:44.25 Marcus Yeah, it's wild how we keep telling ourselves that because even I usually bring just my switch and even on the plane, I'm like, yeah, I'm going to finish this game on the plane. And then odds are like I'm sleeping or it's like, oh, they got this movie I've been wanting to check out. 01:37:57.08 Marcus I'll watch that. 01:37:57.17 Matt Storm exactly 01:37:57.86 Marcus And then like a third of the flight is actually playing games. 01:38:01.78 Matt Storm Exactly. 01:38:01.80 Dave Yeah. So those are the ah community thoughts about the idea that we feel pressure or an obligation to play them or stress about the idea that you'll never play everything on your list. 01:38:14.58 Dave And if people heard that and they're interested in another tactic toward tackling the backlog, I just want to give a quick plug for an episode that's going to come out at the beginning of 2025. 01:38:26.08 Dave The plan is it will be the first, now second episode in 2025, which is the episode about our backlog resolutions challenge with you one year in the books. So this year, 2024, a bunch of people in my Discord server, including Matt here, made a list of games that you resolved, that we resolved. We were going to finally play this year. 01:38:48.15 Dave from the backlog. ah Two varying degrees of success so far. We've got a couple months left in the year ah to work on it. Some people have done really well and completed their list. ah Some people that are named Dave Jackson wrote way too many games on the list and I'm never gonna finish them. um But we're gonna do a whole episode talking about that experience of one way that we decided like, 01:39:13.21 Dave This is going to be the way that I finally get this game out. Like for me, this is how I finally forced myself to play Mother 3. And then I played it and I really enjoyed it. If I didn't do this, it might still just be sitting back there unplayed. Not that I wouldn't have played something else, you know, worth my time, but that's how that went. So. 01:39:32.41 Dave um That'll be a completely different episode, but ah you know everyone stay tuned if that sounds interesting and then join in with us in 2025 if that sounds cool. ah Marcus, have you ever tried a backlog resolutions challenge before? 01:39:47.79 Marcus Not a formal one. I've had conversations with myself. Actually, persona five is probably the one that I've had every year since I've had it. I'm like, I think this is going to be the year I play it. 01:39:58.69 Dave This is the year. 01:39:59.16 Marcus And then. 01:39:59.38 Matt Storm Yeah, this is the year I do it. Yeah, I am proud to be a part of this challenge. 01:40:02.08 Dave Uh. 01:40:02.12 Marcus Yeah. 01:40:04.35 Matt Storm I will say that I am at a cool 50% completed for my list. 01:40:06.02 Dave Hey. 01:40:07.75 Matt Storm But I only played 22 games, and I've started 16 of them. so kind of And a lot of them were like, like I have a few. are like Persona 5 Golden is on there. 01:40:16.73 Marcus Okay. 01:40:17.98 Matt Storm Persona 4 Golden. But like also, there was like To the Moon, and Cocoon, and like all these much shorter games. 01:40:25.44 Dave See, that's the way to do it. Yeah, not me with my fucking Octopath Traveler 2 on my resolutions list, yeah. 01:40:26.70 Matt Storm Yeah. 01:40:31.03 Matt Storm Yeah, but like I have Earthbound on here and I don't, I started it. 01:40:31.82 Dave um 01:40:34.05 Matt Storm I don't think I'm going to finish that this year. 01:40:34.92 Marcus I was like, do you have to finish it? Is it enough to just say you started it at least? 01:40:38.44 Dave No, you can play until you feel like you're done. 01:40:38.85 Matt Storm No. so 01:40:42.48 Matt Storm Yeah. 01:40:42.50 Marcus OK, so that's that. 01:40:43.37 Dave The point is to try these games, yeah. 01:40:43.47 Matt Storm Yeah. Yeah. 01:40:45.44 Marcus Right. 01:40:46.56 Dave So anyway, uh, future episode, everyone stay tuned. And again, if that sounds cool, um, we're going to be starting again in 2025 with all the lessons that we've learned along the way. 01:40:58.07 Matt Storm And wait, so I have a question for you, Dave, before we move on. 01:40:58.48 Dave So yeah. 01:41:00.81 Matt Storm Do you roll over the games you didn't finish to the next year's list or do you start fresh? 01:41:04.26 Marcus Oh, 01:41:04.65 Dave I'm not going to, because if i didn't play it this if I didn't play it this year, why would I force myself to do it next year? 01:41:05.76 Matt Storm No, you're just flushing them? 01:41:09.84 Marcus yeah. These games are dead to you now. 01:41:10.47 Matt Storm That's fair. 01:41:10.85 Dave Unless I really want to, yeah. um All right, so we have ah bonus thoughts from the community. And um in this list, we have some people that haven't contributed to the other sections of the discussion. 01:41:22.95 Dave So I do want to get through the rest of the thoughts from the community. And we can bounce off those and then bring this discussion to a close. So I'll start with Pieboy who says, I don't really keep a formal backlog. I just have games I know I wanna play. And like everyone, that list only grows. I accepted that I won't reach everything and I don't have a plan to tackle it all. I'm more of a creature of whim. Just play whatever looks good at the moment. And in parentheses, this is not helpful for finishing games. 01:41:53.82 Dave ah If that whim includes new games, then I'll play them, but usually games tend to be years old when I reach them, and that's okay. I would love to be a creature of whim just floating on the wind, trying whatever catches my eye that day. 01:42:04.84 Matt Storm and Right? I can't even imagine what that's like. I mean also part of it is I put some pressure on myself to finish everything I start. 01:42:11.11 Dave yeah Most of this is self-created on our parts of that. 01:42:13.19 Matt Storm Yeah, yeah, yeah, but like I think I like seeing the number go up on my completed games list and my thread on Twitter and so like I want to finish everything I start but I am trying like Marcus to like if I'm really not enjoying myself to let it go and also understand if I am playing five or six games at once that a few of them may fall to the wayside. The big fear is that if I don't play a game long enough and then come back to it and look at the Stat, the you know, the main status screen, my character standing there and I go, wait, how the hell do I play this thing? 01:42:43.64 Dave Who is this person? 01:42:44.61 Matt Storm Yeah. 01:42:44.81 Dave Yeah. 01:42:45.01 Matt Storm Like, what do I do now? 01:42:45.02 Marcus Right. 01:42:46.09 Matt Storm And that's always my biggest fear is I'm going to go back to a game and I have no idea what I was doing. 01:42:49.95 Marcus Like, why did I save here? This is like the worst spot to stop. 01:42:53.49 Dave Yeah. 01:42:53.65 Marcus It's just in the middle of something popping off. ah Do you guys know the um do you do you guys know the most games like the the highest number of games you've completed in a given year? 01:43:04.94 Dave um Last year I was above 70, I think. 01:43:08.55 Marcus Oh, nice. 01:43:09.49 Matt Storm Yeah. Last year I was like 50 something. I don't think it was my highest. I mean, also there are some years where I play a five minute game or like some micro games and they add to the list. 01:43:17.52 Marcus Yeah, the game's a game. 01:43:18.46 Matt Storm They all count. But um yeah, I don't know what my highest number is, but I think last year it was like 50 something. And this year I'm trending right now somewhere around 30 something, which seemed like a lot two months ago and now slowly feels like not as much. 01:43:32.35 Marcus Yeah, I feel like prior to working in professional games, I think my average was around 70 and my highest was like 80 something. But that has plummeted as I've, you know, you can tell that you get older when you look at like, oh, it has dramatically decreased because of time. 01:43:48.79 Marcus And then also, ironically, working in games means you don't finish as many games because you're playing too many games that it's hard to finish. 01:43:56.41 Dave Yeah. 01:43:56.88 Matt Storm Yeah. 01:43:59.19 Marcus It's harder to finish stuff because you're, you know, Uh, it's funny how that works. 01:44:05.65 Dave Yeah, I mean, I fit so last year I finished 74 games and it's, it's just because I don't have kids. I have so much free time and this is what I spend my free time doing. 01:44:16.07 Dave So like, I am lucky to be in this situation, like to be able to play that many games. 01:44:16.79 Marcus Same. 01:44:22.35 Dave There are, you know, lucky reasons why I can do that. So, uh, I know that most people my age probably are not going to finish 74 games in a year and I probably won't get there this year. 01:44:33.54 Dave So just the way it goes. 01:44:33.96 Matt Storm yeah Yeah, it was 42 games for me last year. And this year I'm trending at 35. So I'm almost at that same point. But I feel like as more AAA games come out at the end of this year, that's going to slow down to a crawl. But I guess we'll see. All right, up next we have Nomad from the Retro Wildlands podcast. As a 40-year-old stepfather of two teenagers, a husband whose priority is this family in his home, someone who works 45 plus hours a week at a salary job, and someone who tries to make tries like hell to put health and well-being first, it's pretty apparent that I don't have a ton of free time for gaming. And that makes gaming one of my ah the biggest stressors in my life right now. Don't get me wrong, I love this hobby. Gaming is in my DNA. But with so little time and a backlog that just keeps growing, I've had to come to the sad realization that I will never have time for it all. 01:45:28.00 Matt Storm FOMO is real for me because I want to enjoy new things with other people, but sadly, all that tends to do is increase my backlog. I do feel pressure to complete games, I've already started, ah and the increase of my backlog, and only Sorry, I lost that sentence. so I do feel pressure to complete games I've already started and the only way I've been able to combat that is by sheer discipline. I force myself to finish a game unless it's awful. I won't put myself through that. 01:45:59.30 Matt Storm I will say, seeing something to completion is its own dopamine hit, but when it comes to the endless choice, while I do want to play what others are, I tend to just let my heart guide me and that seems to work pretty well. I love the fact that we have so much to play and accessibility is better than ever is better than it's ever been. 01:46:21.86 Matt Storm but it honestly makes me worried for the industry as a whole going forward. I'm really excited. I'm rarely excited to play the next AAA blockbuster or even the next indie gem, mainly because I don't know how much time I'll have. And that makes me sad. 01:46:39.41 Marcus Yeah, I mean, gaming is such a unique medium in that it's so it's more time consuming than any other form of art. 01:46:47.52 Dave Mm hmm. 01:46:47.98 Marcus Like, you know, a movie at most on average is like two and a half hours, TV shows, you know? I mean, you know, they can go on for years, but it's like, if you're following it, it's like, oh, you know, watch it once a week when it drops new episodes or you binge it. But like games, like you said, like, it's like, oh, you're dedicating a dozen hours or more to this one thing. Where do you find the time? It's, it's, it's more to, it's such a, you're at the mercy of it more than I feel like other forms of media. 01:47:14.86 Dave Yeah. 01:47:15.10 Marcus Uh, I always wonder though, I don't have kids either. I always wonder, like in his case of having two teenagers. If you have kids that are into games, that's almost like another method of keeping up with games is through your kids. 01:47:31.16 Marcus You know, if that helps at all, because then you're playing something with them or even just watching them play something they're into. And then you're like, oh, you're almost like living vicariously through them. If that helps if for any other parents out there, I would love to hear them chime in about that. 01:47:45.63 Marcus um But yeah, that is something I think about, like if and when I ever have kids, like how that affects your gaming time. I mean, obviously, we'll take a gigantic hit and because that's just how life works. 01:47:54.54 Dave Yeah. 01:47:56.25 Marcus um But. 01:47:56.60 Dave Yeah. I think that like, and even if you do have kids that like games, like their interests might not align with what you would want to play like your own interests as a gamer too. 01:48:07.35 Dave So if it does, then that's really cool. But if it doesn't, then you start to get into that situation where like, I don't know, seems like things come out and they just kind of like they pass you by or you buy them, but they go in the backlog because you don't have a ton of time to play them. 01:48:23.91 Dave um And yeah, that all it all sounds very real. What Nomad's talking about. 01:48:29.13 Marcus Yeah. 01:48:30.17 Dave ah Next up is Alia C from the Discord server. 01:48:30.28 Marcus is and 01:48:34.03 Dave So they say, think of your stack of unplayed games as the hump of a camel. It is not shameful to have them. It means you have fresh stuff to play when the new game releases seem unappealing. 01:48:45.82 Dave That's a good ah first of all, never heard that metaphor before. That's good. And um I think that this and I think it was ah Dave see talking about the thinking of it as a library and rather than a a backlog of 01:49:00.95 Matt Storm Yeah. 01:49:01.47 Dave you know ah tasks awaiting you to be completed. And thinking of your Steam library as a collection of experiences that you could pull out, like, I'm in the mood for a roguelike. 01:49:13.74 Dave Let me look through and see what I've got that could scratch that itch. Or I'm in the mood for a horror game. Let's see if I've got one in my Steam library. Or let's look through Game Pass and see what's on there. 01:49:24.45 Marcus Yeah. 01:49:24.88 Dave Approaching it that way is a really healthy way to look at it. 01:49:28.09 Marcus I actually had that with Alien Isolation, because I've never played it, but I owned it for years, and then I saw Romulus, and I've been in an Alien mood since then, and like, because I've rewatched Aliens before, and it's like, that movie still kicks ass, and then Romulus, man, this is great, and I was like, man, I want more Alien, wait, I should play that Isolation game that I've had forever, and then spent like an evening going through that, and that was an example, of like, I'm not playing this out of like an obligation, like, I need to check this off a list, it's just like, man, I i have an experience, 01:49:35.21 Dave Yeah. 01:49:35.72 Matt Storm Yeah. 01:49:41.80 Dave Mm-hmm. 01:49:55.99 Marcus at the ready that is like going to scratch this itch that this very specific issue that I have right now. And that felt really nice because it was like, I don't even know if I'll stick with this or finish it. But for now, tonight, this is exactly what I want to be doing. 01:50:09.51 Dave Yeah, I did the same with the Mad Max game after I saw Furiosa. I was like, I have that on Steam. 01:50:14.31 Dave I bought it a year ago. 01:50:15.99 Marcus I thought about that, too, when I saw Furios. 01:50:19.00 Matt Storm Yeah, and then I saw Wolverine and Deadpool Wolverine and played a like 20 year old Wolverine game totally the same thing oh My god, I played that when it came out and like it was fine I wanted to like I wanted to like that more than it it was but yeah 01:50:24.35 Dave Yeah, absolutely. 01:50:24.47 Marcus Hmm. You didn't play that Deadpool game from a decade ago? 01:50:31.68 Marcus It's okay. 01:50:34.91 Marcus saying Let's see, Control Alt Noob says, on one hand, having so much choice forces me to prioritize the games that I really want to play or don't want to miss out on if they are timed. On the other hand, I often miss out on the games that I want to play at the moment because I can't justify buying them when I have so many others already there. 01:50:56.55 Marcus Ultimately, the pros of a backlog far outweigh the cons. For me, it's an insanely fortunate problem that I am grateful to have. I have accepted that I am not going to get to play all the games that I wish to play in my lifetime, and that thought helps me move on from games that I may not be enjoying to the fullest. Onto the next. Although I am still admittedly trying to kick that childhood habit of milking a game for all it's worth when games were fewer and further between. I think the, um... 01:51:25.52 Marcus Yeah, like the idea of framing it, like ultimately the complaint, quote unquote, of, oh, I have so many video games. What a, oh, woe with me. 01:51:35.42 Dave Yeah. 01:51:35.59 Matt Storm Yeah. 01:51:37.21 Marcus It's like, that is like the happiest problem to have, right? It's like, I have all these experiences and the medium that I love so much. 01:51:40.43 Dave Yeah. 01:51:44.63 Marcus I'm just like drowning them in, like I have a Scrooge McDuck vault, like a caliber of unplayed games to swim in. 01:51:49.51 Dave Yep. 01:51:53.03 Marcus Is that but like is that just the ultimate like first world problem? Darn it, I have too many video games to play. 01:52:00.44 Dave Yeah, it's an insane position of privilege to even consider that an issue or a source of stress like we've talked about throughout this. 01:52:08.24 Matt Storm Yeah. 01:52:09.12 Marcus Right. And I think this is the moment when you realize it's actually like physically stressing you out. That's when you kind of have to reexamine your relationship with your backlog and with gaming in general, because it's like this is supposed to be fun. 01:52:22.76 Marcus You know, this is supposed to be like a leisure activity, right? 01:52:23.40 Matt Storm yeah 01:52:26.35 Marcus It's entertainment. So like, why am I like staring at the ceiling late at night wondering how am I going to squeeze in all these games before I die? 01:52:27.70 Dave Yeah. 01:52:35.81 Dave Yeah. 01:52:36.34 Marcus you know 01:52:37.62 Dave When am I going to play Max Payne? ah We have ah someone who wrote something along those lines, so I'm going to jump the line here and read what Randall said. ah So Randall says, my closing thoughts on this are that one should always play games to have fun and not complete them only to achieve completion. 01:52:56.83 Dave It's okay to drop a game. It's okay to play the same game over and over. It's a hobby. It's an outlet for stress. If you find yourself hating that your backlog is growing and it's causing you stress, then you may need to reevaluate your hobby to make it healthier. 01:53:10.59 Marcus Yeah, is it? 01:53:10.73 Dave So right, as you said. 01:53:12.51 Marcus Is that like getting stressed out or angry that your bank account is growing? Like, oh man, more money keeps coming and dang it. 01:53:17.07 Dave Yeah. What am I going to do with all this money? 01:53:20.46 Matt Storm How can I hold all these potatoes? Or whatever the quote is. 01:53:24.21 Marcus and Too many lives. 01:53:25.52 Matt Storm Too many lives. 01:53:26.92 Dave Yeah. 01:53:27.44 Matt Storm Yeah, no, I think that it's really a privileged place to be to complain about having too many games to play. And like the fact that I could not buy a new video game probably for four years and still not run out of games ah says something about how lucky I am to have the amount of games that I have. 01:53:44.95 Marcus See, when you say it like that, does it feel better to buy something that you don't play immediately? 01:53:45.34 Dave Yeah. 01:53:49.14 Marcus Because it's an investment now. 01:53:50.63 Matt Storm Exactly. It's an investment in my future. 01:53:51.74 Marcus It's like, this is an investment in my future. Exactly. 01:53:53.77 Matt Storm Exactly. 01:53:55.30 Marcus This is like coming handy down the line. It's like the dad that keeps a bin of junk or random things. They're like, well, I can't, I might need this weirdly shaped board for something. 01:54:03.53 Matt Storm You never know. 01:54:04.15 Dave Oh yeah. 01:54:04.21 Matt Storm I might need it. 01:54:05.71 Dave Yep. ah so I don't know what this screw goes to, but I'm going to need it someday. 01:54:06.56 Matt Storm Exactly. 01:54:10.16 Marcus Exactly. 01:54:10.21 Matt Storm Exactly. 01:54:10.73 Marcus I might need alien isolation. 01:54:13.28 Dave Yeah. 01:54:13.34 Matt Storm Yeah, you never know. 01:54:13.46 Marcus And there you go. 01:54:15.56 Matt Storm All right to go back to where we were in the order DC senior bracer F-rank a patron I approach the endless choice of games to play by usually two methods One I ignore that feeling and keep keeping away at the longer games I'm playing healthy or to go back to the game. I've already played to comfort replay So what you're saying is you don't play any new games you either keep playing the long thing you've been working on or You just ignore everything and go back and play an old game, which honestly sounds like a blast 01:54:46.22 Dave Yeah. 01:54:47.51 Marcus Why not? Let's see. Discomera from Game Over Hell on YouTube says, I've said this before and I'll say it again. Anyone who says there aren't more than a handful of games per generation that's still fun to play and discover nowadays don't know what they're talking about. For passionate games fans, there was so much to discover in previous ones that content discovery algorithm aside, I don't think there's any need for the urgency and focus on only what's coming hot. 01:55:16.14 Marcus And of course, being stuck in the past and saying only retro stuff is good is also kind of sad. This goes for all kinds of entertainment media. 01:55:24.75 Matt Storm Agreed. 01:55:25.37 Dave Yeah, this whole conversation spun out of the idea that we're just blessed with an incredible number of games to play all the time. And whether you keep up on new releases or whether you're rediscovering games from the Super Nintendo like I am, 01:55:42.51 Dave Um, there's still so much and that's all. Well, I wouldn't say it's all more available than it's ever been before, but like there are more games at your fingertips right now than there have ever been before. And tomorrow that number is going to be bigger. So, uh, trying to. 01:56:02.51 Dave Like, kind of just reset and kind of just take in the situation and, you know, realize like, okay, what if I, what if I do finish my backlog? Well, there's still a bunch of PlayStation 2 games I'd like to play. 01:56:14.91 Dave Am I going to get stressed about that? 01:56:15.05 Matt Storm Right. 01:56:16.35 Dave Like, you know trying to to refocus and ah maybe not be floating in the wind, as as Pie Boy said, a creature of whim. 01:56:27.02 Dave I don't think I can do that, but kind of refocusing and just kind of viewing it as like, hey, I just saw a Mad Max movie. It'd be really cool. I have a Mad Max game on Steam. 01:56:37.50 Dave I should just check that out, like ah following those ideas, even if you're not gonna 01:56:39.15 Matt Storm Yeah. 01:56:43.54 Dave yeah Like the way I consume things, I'm not going to play the Mad Max game for two hours and then never touch it again. I'm probably going to finish it and do a podcast about it because that's what I like to do with this hobby. 01:56:55.51 Matt Storm Yeah. 01:56:55.52 Dave So ah whatever it does for you. 01:56:57.86 Matt Storm Yeah. I think like there's always going to be games that shut you down that like, as soon as it comes out, it's the priority. For me this year, that's the veil guard, right? Still the dumbest name for a video game ever, but I love the Dragon Age franchise and I love BioWare and mostly, and I have had a few friends who say say this, as much as I'm sad at the state of BioWare lately, 01:57:18.07 Matt Storm I also am a fan first and want to win for that company so badly. And so I'm going to drop everything to play that game because I love Dragon Age and I love Mass Effect. I want to see what that team is doing. But not every game has to be that game. Like I say, I'll do that for Mario Luigi and I say I'll do that for Zelda. But it's just as likely that those games may come and I may buy them, but I may not play them. And I think that's OK. 01:57:39.49 Matt Storm Letting go in that way maybe having one like a drag dragons dog with two is that earlier in the year? Like having a couple of those games a year that are like your end all be all that you'll drop everything for I think it's healthy and fun and exciting but making every new game that game Less so and I think maybe knowing that distinction is helpful and also having those couple of goal post games Let's you let the other ones fall to the wayside a little easier like and get to those when you get to them Right, of course 01:58:04.84 Marcus right unless you're rich and you can afford to buy everything as soon as day want and i guess 01:58:07.29 Dave yeah well it's it's a good point it's like part of the reason i'm not super you know freaked out about like i'm not going to play that zelda game when it comes out even though i like zelda i'm not going to play it because metaphor comes out like two weeks after that and that's the one i'm shutting everything down to play so like i'm okay with the fact that i'm going to miss 01:58:23.27 Matt Storm Right. 01:58:27.09 Dave The Zelda game, there's another one at the end of September that I'm not going to have time to play and I'm going to have to finish the plucky squire before that comes out so that I can, you know, dedicate because I, that metaphor is going to be really fucking long. I already know it. So I'm going to have to set aside the time to do that. So I did that for the Elden Ring DLC earlier this year. It's the only two games that I've really cleared the decks for like that. So, uh, it's good too. 01:58:55.63 Dave kind of prioritize a couple rather than I can't even imagine like trying to stay up on every single new thing that comes out, especially if it's not your job. 01:59:05.46 Marcus Yeah, and even as someone that it was my job for a long time, it is still an impossible task. 01:59:11.44 Dave Yeah, yeah, yeah, it is. 01:59:11.68 Matt Storm yeah 01:59:14.55 Dave So, um, any, any closing thoughts on the topic of, uh, the backlog here and the idea that, you know, we have endless choice now, you know, the three of us and, you know, especially gaming on PC or taking in the sales, or if you have game pass or PS plus, you're just going to collect a lot of stuff. 01:59:33.67 Dave Uh, any closing thoughts on the approach or how we think about this? 01:59:36.10 Matt Storm Ha 01:59:38.36 Marcus ah Yeah, I mean, I think that one of the last questions helped frame it up just like I think it ultimately comes down to your mindset on it, right? 01:59:39.78 Matt Storm ha ha. 01:59:45.71 Marcus It's like if you want to view it as like this weird anchor, then it can become that and become the source of stress. But the moment you sort of flip the script and and think about like, no, no, no, actually, this is like. 01:59:57.71 Marcus This is an incredibly like happy reality to be in and like a privileged reality that suddenly... 02:00:02.38 Matt Storm Yeah. 02:00:05.30 Marcus like I have so many options to engage with this hobby that I love so much. That's great. So like don't let it... like don't let it slip into that situation when it comes to problems. 02:00:17.11 Marcus I think once you get into that more positive mindset, then I think everything else will kind of start to fall into place in terms of how you manage your time and um you know and how you engage with games. 02:00:25.18 Dave Mm hmm. 02:00:28.94 Marcus like if you Maybe you don't feel like you need to force yourself to finish everything. You know, like Just focus on tackling it in the way that makes you the most happy. like That's really what it should come down to, right? 02:00:38.00 Dave Yeah. 02:00:39.89 Marcus And not out of any other sort of obligation or peer pressure or whatever it may be, like just hit it hit it the way it's going to be there no matter what. So just take your time and play it the way that makes the most sense and is the most fun for you. 02:00:55.25 Dave Mmhmm. 02:00:55.61 Matt Storm Yeah, I mean, I kept cracking jokes about how I blacked out and bought Astrobot. The reality was, like, I was putting this pressure on myself to finish Outlaws first because, like, I have to. I started it. I want to write an article about it. But then I went, I didn't , I didn't have to do anything. Like, I'm an indie podcaster. I control the flow of our work. I can write an article whenever I want. 02:01:14.43 Matt Storm like we're not I'm not doing it for ad dollars or anything else. Buy Astro Bot, enjoy it, enjoy the game. And I did, I played it almost all day Saturday and had a blast. And like that should be the priority for gaming is not the backlog, not what you need to get done and when you need to get it done for. Those things will still be there whenever you get to them. Just play what you want and have fun and let the backlog be a library. Let it be a catalog of the things that you will eventually get to play. 02:01:42.80 Dave Or not. 02:01:43.46 Matt Storm or not. 02:01:43.67 Dave you'll ah It'll be the things that you will be able to select from depending on what's catching your eye at the time. 02:01:52.70 Matt Storm Yeah. 02:01:52.75 Marcus We'll pass it down to our children. They'll finish it for us. 02:01:55.42 Matt Storm Exactly. 02:01:55.63 Dave That's right, yeah. 02:01:56.06 Matt Storm It's a video game debt library. 02:01:56.36 Marcus that 02:01:58.12 Dave ah 02:01:58.19 Marcus Exactly. It's like, son, do what I could not. 02:02:01.24 Dave Yeah. 02:02:04.27 Dave ah Well, this has been a really good conversation and what I hoped to to dig into with this topic. And you know being that the name of the podcast is Tales from the Backlog, I figured it was time to do a discussion about how we approach the backlog and things like that. So I thank the both of you for coming on here and you know having this conversation with me. Matt, it's great to have you back. Marcus, it's great to meet you and have you on for the first time. So thank you both. 02:02:32.12 Matt Storm Thank you. I'm glad to be back. I had a blast chatting. This was a fun conversation. 02:02:37.27 Marcus Same. This was awesome. I never really had a deep dive discussion about backlogs. This was a lot of fun. ah And yeah, love to come back anytime you let me. 02:02:42.80 Dave There we go. 02:02:46.06 Dave Awesome. Sounds great. Now I'm not going to get out of here before letting you plug the things that you do and where people can find you. So I know Matt has an entire speech prepared here, so I'm going to kick it to you first, Marcus. ah Tell people about what you do and where people can find you. 02:03:03.06 Marcus Yeah, um until recently, I was an associate editor at Game Informer magazine, so still very much active in the space. I love, you know, professional games writer, podcaster, streamer, personality. You can find me in my ah goings-on on Twitter. I'm at MarcusStewart7, which is number seven. ah You can follow my Twitch channel, which is Marcus Streams Games. And yeah, I am ah freelancing, but also, 02:03:28.79 Marcus um actively looking for a full-time gig. So if yeah you work in an outlet, PR, comms, I don't know, consulting, mock reviews, whatever. If you got a need for this face and this brain filled with game knowledge, ah hit me up. DMs are always open. 02:03:46.29 Dave Yeah. I recently started watching some of your streams from time to time. They're fun streams. And of course, as we said at the beginning, happy to see you working with the Indian former. um you know Jill's a good friend of the podcast and a great person. So happy to see you join me over there. And I've been enjoying the write-ups that you've been doing for them too. 02:04:07.05 Marcus Yes. 02:04:07.14 Dave so Yeah, if anyone wants to find the stuff that Marcus does, there'll be links down in the show notes so you can easily find them. And um yeah, ah if there is anyone out there who is looking to hire Marcus, please consider doing that. 02:04:21.81 Dave ah That would be very helpful. um Matt, tell people about all the things that I tease you. 02:04:25.04 Matt Storm Yes. 02:04:27.70 Dave I know that things have dropped off in the recent past, but ah we still have a lot going on. So tell people where they can find you. 02:04:34.45 Matt Storm Yeah, sure. I mean, I also second Marcus. Marcus is awesome. Marcus is always a blast to chat with both on my podcast and other podcasts. I am the former freelance editor for the Game Informer show, which Marcus was on, which was a blast to do but is no longer active, though there are still plenty of episodes you can go back and listen to if you'd like. 02:04:45.79 Marcus Yes? 02:04:52.54 Matt Storm I think they're still up at least. ah Last I checked anyway. And but yeah, I have two podcasts that I do um I have the fun and games podcast that I do with the incredible Jeff Moonan It is mostly a topic based podcast um Jeff um Is my co-host and we recently went to as of when recording packs West and have a whole special coming out about that But if you want other jumping-off points from folks here Marcus joined us on a retrospective all about spider-man in honor of spider-man 2 coming out which is a really fun chat talking about the the Neversoft Spider-Man game, which Marcus at the time had really recently replayed and is like the weirdest Spider-Man game. It's really good, but like Venom is so unhinged in it in a way that like, honestly, it was a foretelling of the Tom Hardy movies, I'm convinced, because like pretty much the same level of unhinged. um And then ah Dave was most recently on for a retrospective on the Xbox 360. We do tons of retrospectives, we interview game devs, composers, we talk about signposting in games, all sorts of other different topics. 02:05:52.62 Matt Storm It's really a blast. And then we also have a sub-series in the feed called SideQuest, where each episode a different host talks about a game they love and why they love it. Marcus did an incredible episode on Final Fantasy X. Dave has done way too many episodes to list at this point. 02:06:03.61 Dave Ooh. Uh-huh. 02:06:06.87 Matt Storm um But I think the most recent one as of this recording is Rain World? Is that correct? I think so. 02:06:12.17 Dave I did do one on Rain World, yeah. 02:06:13.52 Matt Storm Oh, no, you did one on Picross 3D. It is the most recent one. 02:06:15.87 Dave That's right, yeah. 02:06:16.28 Matt Storm That's right. That's right. um And then also my other podcasted reignite. I alluded to it earlier. It started as a Mass Effect podcast where me and my co-host Frankie Bradley the Strange went through Shepard stories. 02:06:27.40 Matt Storm If we were Shepard and discussing the choices we make, we then went on to Andromeda and then Dragon Age Origins. And we are now, as of this recording, playing Dragon Age II. But for the first time in the history of the podcast, we're also current with the news cycle because there is a new Dragon Age coming out by the time you're hearing this, probably almost out. 02:06:44.11 Matt Storm And it is, so we are doing news updates about that game and we'll, at the end of the year, at some point, probably talk about that game in a shorter format before we cover it in a long format in chronological order for the series. 02:06:56.47 Matt Storm So you should definitely go check that out as well. I'm on all social media platforms as DJ underscore Stormageddon. You can go to DJStormageddon.com to find all of the podcasts I just mentioned and more. um I've also been on Tales from the Backlog, but you know that already. 02:07:09.29 Matt Storm I've done how many episodes now, Dave? like five Yeah, just too many. 02:07:11.50 Dave Too many. 02:07:13.79 Matt Storm um if i had to Yeah, I'm done. 02:07:13.97 Dave Yeah. I'm not counting anymore. 02:07:16.75 Matt Storm If I had to recommend one though, I think folks should go back if they missed it and listen to our Yakuza chat because I got to choose a topic and I said, let's just talk about the entire Yakuza franchise for an hour. 02:07:25.03 Dave That's right. Yeah. And then you were here for, uh, like a dragon guide in, uh, for that, for that episode. 02:07:28.36 Matt Storm I was. 02:07:30.03 Dave Yeah. Yeah. 02:07:30.43 Matt Storm Yeah. 02:07:30.67 Dave You've been here, uh, many times before and we have another one, uh, in a couple months too. 02:07:35.65 Matt Storm Yeah. 02:07:36.06 Dave So yeah. 02:07:37.20 Matt Storm Can't get rid of me that easily. 02:07:38.60 Dave Yeah. All right. Well, uh, high recommendations for everyone listening to check out everything that Matt is doing as well. Down in the show notes, there'd be a bunch of links because we're a bunch of busy people on the podcast here, but, uh, definitely appreciate the both of you coming on and taking two hours to talk about this. 02:07:55.76 Dave It wouldn't be Tales from the Backlog if it wasn't two hours long, so here we are. um But this has been great. If people would like to support this show, ratings and reviews are really helpful, especially on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Likes and comments on YouTube are helpful if people like to listen to the show on YouTube. 02:08:14.59 Dave You can join the Discord server and join the Backlog resolutions challenge. You can get in a little bit ahead of when the 2025 challenge begins. Otherwise, just talk about the games you're playing. We have a great community there and there's an invite link down in the show notes. And last but not least, if you'd like to support monetarily, that's at patreon dot.com slash real Dave Jackson. 02:08:38.52 Dave Lots of cool stuff going on on Patreon. You can pick games from my backlog to put in polls at the highest tier, but every tier gets to vote in those polls, so you get to choose what from the backlog am I going to play. And help me on the Sisyphian task of making a dent in the backlog. It just keeps getting bigger. We're not making any dents. It's negative dents. I don't know what the word is. It's expanding. It's growing. It makes me hungry. So thanks everybody for listening and tuning in next week for the next game to come out of the backlog.