Time to once again make an attempt to tackle that backlog… Whether it’s stretching all the way back to Pong or just a few games from last year, it needs to be defeated!
Our challenge is to finish as many games as possible from the backlog and not adding too many new games to it, bringing the total number of games down.
This is the fourth year we are doing this challenge and it’s a lot of fun! It’s a great opportunity to discover games, get inspired by each others completions and talk about great, and bad, games. Hopefully making a dent in the backlog, but most importantly having fun. I hope you’ll join!
Each game successfully completed from your backlog gives you a point (+1).
Each newly purchased game detracts a point (-1) .
The competitor with the highest score by December 15th, 2024 will become the XboxERA 2024 Gaming Backlog Champion.
Games on Xbox Game Pass or any other subscription service are worth zero points aside from the following exemptions:
The game is already part of your backlog, in which case it is treated normally
You purchase a copy of the game at which point it becomes a -1 until beaten
Any games received as a gift from your friends/family/dog do not count, as you did not make the conscious decision yourself to add it to your backlog.
Length does not matter. Regardless of whether the game is a couple of hours long, or a 100+ hour RPG, it’ll be worth +/- 1 point. Additionally, feel free to play multiple games at once.
As for DLC, significant DLC will be worth +/-0 .5 points for each individual DLC. You can complete multiple DLC for one title. Since not all DLC is created equal, we’ll leave it up to the council (the competitors) to decide whether a DLC should count for points.
Expansion passes that are purchased count as -0.5 per DLC.
Grace period: Starting December 15th, 2024 through December 31st, 2024, any purchases made will not count against you for the next competition. However, this also means that any games completed during this period won’t count either.
These rules aren’t perfect, so if needed, we can modify them as we go. If you have an issue with any of the rules, feel free to bring them up.
How To Play:
Sign up by commenting below! The contest will begin on January 1st, 2024, but challengers can still join afterwards.
Once you’ve beaten a game or bought a game, comment the name of the game and system, then give yourself or remove a point. Scores will then be tallied on our leaderboard.
We run on an honor system. This is meant to be a fun competition, so come on, don’t cheat.
A game doesn’t need to be 100% completed to have it count. Your definition of “completed” is up to you, but if the game has a story, then at minimum it should consist of beating the main campaign and seeing the credits roll. If needed, we can discuss and have the council come to an agreement as to what counts as “completed”. And again, any length goes.
Not exactly, but at the moment it’s north of 1000 games, across all platforms…
I’m working on a revised edition of the backlog atm, one that is hopefully a bit more manageable. I’ll cut out all the shovelware on PC and games I have no real interest in playing, hopefully that’ll get it down a fair bit.
That’s nuts bud. You have more backlogged games than I have played games total in my entire gaming life. Yeah, eliminate the shit games and stuff you know you’ll never play. That should hopefully make an impact for you.
According to steam I have over 700 games in my library…I dont know what in my life went wrong to have so many games and not have the slighthes idea how I got them :v
Do you mean you bought Diablo 3 or that you completed it? Anyway, the competition doesn’t start until Jan 1st so it doesn’t count neither as a positive or negative
I might try to do this this year - surely this is the year I’ll stop buying random stuff and actually make some progress on my backlog. I’ve got a ton of old stuff in there (the bioshock games, mass effect trilogy for example) that I’ve never played but want to. Maybe I can get around to making a dent in those.
Or I’ll be competing for the other end of people who keep buying stuff and never getting around to it…
