Steam Gaming Goals Mid-Year Update

Posted on August 13, 2024 by Aywren

Back in January, I set out with a few goals for 2024, which included two for my Steam backlog:

• Play games I already own to lower my backlog percentage
• Only buy games that I really want to play immediately

Sound like it would be pretty simple, doesn’t it? The second goal was put there to prevent what I did in 2023, which was buy into a bunch of well-priced bundles for games that just ended up padding my backlog even more. Yes, I do want to play those games, but no, they were not immediate plays. They were just games I was interested in at a good price at the time.

So, how have I done reaching my goals this year?

Play Games I Own

I wanted to do better on this goal than I have. But, honestly, I’ve somewhat adopted last year’s Don’t Care attitude to the whole thing again this year.

I’ve been playing what interests me and what I want to play. This year, a slew of good sandboxes has been taking up my time including:

• Enshrouded
• Smalland
• Palworld
• 7D2D 1.0
• No Man’s Sky

And anyone who plays any of these games know that they suck you in and you pump hours into them. Add to that the new FFXIV Dawntrail expansion, and my time and desire for the little solo games just hasn’t been there.

Despite that, I have moved the needle a little bit on my backlog percentage, based on the graph provided by Steam Completionist. In my goals post in January, I started out with 67.1% games played this year. Despite buying new games and sinking time into sandboxes, this is where I stand right now:

I so do want to get this up to 70% by the end of the year, so maybe writing this post, and having Blaugust, will help motivate me to check out some of the smaller games I keep meaning to try.

Play the Games I Buy

I’ve done a pretty good job in playing games I buy and only buying games I want to play this year. Looking over my Steam license page, I see that I have:

• Bought - 9 New Games
• Was Gifted - 1 Game
• Bought - 1 Truck Sim Pack (DLC – did play this)
• Bought - Bundle of Talisman Content (DLC)
• Picked Up Free Games - 4

While free games do add to the backlog, I don’t fully count those as being “bought” as I didn’t put money towards them. However, I do need to eventually try them out because they do sway my numbers.

There’s a lot of free games I by-pass now days, to be honest. I get lots of free non-Steam games from Prime Gaming and the Epic storefront. Most I just toss in backlogs there because they’re free – but only after looking to see if they’re something I’d actually want to play.

It’s sad when you have so many games that you will pass up free, but that’s how it’s gotten to be for me!

So, anyhow, the only bundles I bought this year were very-nicely priced DLC for two games I’ve already sunk hours into. Talisman has a new version releasing, so there was a huge Humble Bundle with an amazing price for all the content to the original version that I couldn’t pass up. I do want to pick up that game again, but I have to have the itch for board gaming.

All 9 of the games I bought I have played. The 1 game I was gifted – Enshrouded – I have also put many hours into. The free games, not so much, but again, my goal was to play games I buy. I’ll get around to those sometime.

So, overall, I feel like I’ve done a good job in upholding this goal, especially when there’s lots of good games and good sales out there that are super tempting now days.

I still have a ways to go to reach my goal of 70% played for this year, but I think it’s well within doing.

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