Looking Back at 2021 Gaming Goals

It’s the last day of 2021 – where did this year go? And that means it’s time to look back at the goals I made at the start of the year to see how well I did in sticking to them!

I didn’t keep monthly gaming goals after a certain point in the year, but I still feel like I made progress where I wanted to despite that. I’m not sure if I’ll go back to monthly gaming goals or not next year. I’ll just play it by ear.

Spend Less on Games

Goal 1 is broken into two parts:

spend less on buying new games
spend less on in game purchases

So did I do this? Yes and no.

On Steam, I only bought about 9 games this year:

The two I bought in May were from a birthday gift card, so they don’t count. I also did well in playing the games I bought. The only one of these I haven’t tried yet is Green Hell.

However, this isn’t including the games I bought on Switch – I know I picked up at least Monster Hunter Rise and the DLC for Animal Crossing. I can’t remember if there was anything else.

My hopes that PC Game Pass would help curb game purchases did happen – but I’ll talk about that later in this post.

As for spending less on in-game purchases, I could have done a lot better in this area. But there were FFIV minions to buy and new bunny fellows to fantasia to. Also, before the expansion, boosts and story skips are cheap in FFXIV so… yeah.

I need to do better next year.

Obtained: Yes/No

FFXIV Progress

I made this goal before we had any news of Endwalker release. I just wanted my Amaro mount on my main – and I did finish this!

I also went through and did a lot of content that I’d skipped on my main – things like trials and raids – before Endwalker dropped. Overall, I’m happy with where my main is sitting in the game.

I also got most of my alts in a good place for the expansion – either they completed Shadowbringers or they’re just starting Shadowbringers due to a job change I want to make. I’m not sure how many will get all the way through Endwalker, but so far, I’ve made it through twice and am pushing my third character through.

Obtained: Yes

Steam Backlog – Get to 60% Played

I’m so excited to have achieved this back in September!

Here’s where I stand now:

This is far better than I could have hoped, and MUCH better than my backlog has been in years.

Much of this was done through playing some of the games I know that I’m just never going to get into just to mark them off the list – I call these the CLEAR games. I still have a handful of games on the CLEAR list, but nowhere as many as I used to. Once those are gone, well, I’ll actually have to play games I want to play to make progress.

Much of this was also a matter of playing the games I got when they were still new. I did a great job at that this year, in fact.

I put a lot of quality of time into new games such as Valheim, Wildermyth and the Hobo game. I feel pretty good about the time I spent on all of them – not to mention going back and putting time into games like No Man’s Sky, which is a title I’ve wanted to explore more for many years.

Here are my top played Steam games as of today:

Obtained: A big yes!

Get My Switch Backlog Under Control

It’s scary when your console has a backlog. I’ve maintained information about my Switch backlog on Deku Deals consistently since I found the site. And that’s a HUGE help. But I haven’t been doing as well as I’d like in playing Switch games.

I wanted that to change this year, and I did make and effort towards it at the start of the year. But as my year in review shows, I floundered as the year wore on. It’s a shame because I have a lot of fun with my Switch! It’s just my PC consumes so much time.

A new year is coming, and I once again want to tackle this goal. During December, No Gravity Games was giving away a number of little games for free, which I picked up. I’m not sure that most of them are something I’ll enjoy, so I will be treating them like a CLEAR list on Switch.

This year, I also want to put time into some of the active games – like Ring Fit, Boxing, Just Dance – to try to get myself moving more. I have a bunch of them, and I need to start using them!

Obtained: No.

Utilize Xbox Game Pass

This has been recently renamed to PC Game Pass, which is much nicer, IMHO.

I can’t say enough good things about PC Game Pass. In terms of having games I want to try, some of them brand new, it has been a treasure trove.

Has it saved me money and backlog? Yes, it has.

I can think of about 10 or so games that I tried or want to try on PC Game Pass rather than purchased on something like Steam. One of those games ranged in the $50 price point, and I decided after putting time and effort into it, it just wasn’t for me. But I needed a lot more than just a few hours of time spent to know that.

Overall, this has been a money saver and I’m excited to see what titles are coming for the new year! Definitely a keeper.

Obtained: Yes!

Do More Gaming Blogging

I recognized that over the past few years, my attention has been divided between online projects. It still is, to be honest, but I’m putting more effort into writing more content here on this blog again. Here’s the proof!

Still not up there with years like 2015 and 2016, but much better than in 2020 when my blogging dropped to a real low. Note: the content in this blog was migrated from a previous self-hosted blog in 2016, so that’s why there’s weird numbers of likes for the first few years.

There’s always room for improvement, however. At this point, while I have lots of smaller web projects going on, I’m focusing on this as my one main blog again. I hope this means I’ll write a lot more next year – it’s time to at least get back into posting in the 200s again!