Smashing that mf’ing follow button
I haven’t posted on here in a while but I’ve been using Backloggd somewhat regularly since December or so. My favorite part about Letterboxd is getting my very short, quippy thoughts on something I just experienced out, so that’s usually what I’m doing here as well.
I’m glad they have the expansive stuff for journaling now but all I really want is some sort of comment system and a way to sort by more specific criteria.
Oh, also, I have some writing in my lists if you’re interested in that. It’s just my writeups for GotY but those are the most I write outwardly about games these days.
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Here’s my profile if anyone’s interested! I haven’t written many reviews yet, but the two I have are incredibly on brand! This seems like a great tool for recording how I feel about games as I play them.
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As someone who has kept updating a .txt file for the past few years that’s a list ranking my favorite games, this is extremely my shit. I didn’t know websites like this existed for video games to be honest! Here’s my profile: https://www.backloggd.com/u/whymeo/
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i started making one of these today, going through everything i’ve played from oldest consoles to new stuff and… oh lord how have i played so many video games
i’ll share it once i’m done but it might take me a day or two to add everything from steam and my switch. i’m only through basically everything i played from when i was a kid up until like… six years ago, and it’s at 151 games.
Edit: here it is.
I have been asking if essentially this exact service existed for years now. Letterboxd is extremely important for my movie-watching habits. It is less about checking things off my Watchlist (which the JustWatch addition has greatly helped) but using curated lists to figure out what to even add to my Watchlist.
The big thing though is that it helps me either jot down quick thoughts on a movie and create my own personal history. Weirdly, probably similar to why I like the NBA 2K games. I play the franchise mode where I create a unique version of the NBA over the next decade. When using Letterboxd, I can go to any month over the past five years and see what I watched, and what I thought.
I have cataloged my entire history with film over the past half-decade. That’s beautiful! It is why I created my own thread for my backlog playing here Browsing the Backlog. Not saying this will immediately replace that but this creates that outlet. It also allows me to see what everyone else is playing. I can compared my opinions to my friends, comment on their three year old review of a B-movie, and feel a part of community. I’m excited to see what I can do with this Backloggd platform. Definitely going to be messing around with it.
Think I followed most people in here but did start an account https://www.backloggd.com/u/Concrete/
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So, here’s a question.
In modern times, we experience media in a lot of different ways right? We might hear about something second hand and decide it’s not something we like, or see half of a movie, or hear an album in a car, or read random chapters plucked out from a book. Sometimes it’s hard to delineate when we’ve truly “finished” a piece of media when we haven’t just devoted a concrete dedication of time to it. Ultimately, it comes down to personal preference. And what I really like about Backloggd is that it offers six different degrees of “checking-this-off-the-list”. But even this doesn’t account for a very particular part of games culture.
So my question is: do you count watching someone else playing the game?
As for myself, I don’t think I’ve added any games to my Backloggd that I haven’t played myself. But I do feel like, given the right kind of game, I would feel comfortable doing that. Games that are less geared towards mechanical interaction. If I watched someone else play, for example, a visual novel, and it was a relatively linear one, I don’t think I’d have any qualms putting it down on my Backloggd. But then there’s something like a point-and-click, or a JRPG, where it kind of rides a line between systems-driven and narrative-driven. But all this is hypothetical, because I haven’t actually gotten to a point where I wanted to mark one down.
What about you all?
This is interesting because there are many games that I feel I have experienced that are primarily mechanics focused. Like watching someone play through a hitman level, or watching someone navigate a few encounters in Heat Signature. Watching those things gives me a great idea of what makes those games click, and is an exciting experience all its own. While I wouldn’t go as far as to say I have a great understanding of a mechanics focused game that I’ve only watched, I can at least tell someone “oh yeah, I watched [so and so] play it, seems right up your alley”.
My ontological instinct is that a specific person playing a specific game is a performance that should be associated with both the game and the performer, and is a work in it’s own right. Quick: someone start playlistdddd(d).
I think for a certain kind of video game media consumer, (and maybe for particular people, particular games) that would count as getting the game off their backlog, which is (as you hint) where things get hairy.
I would say yes. If I’m watching a let’s play made by someone earnestly engaging with a game and having a bad time, I don’t have a problem drawing a conclusion that that game is maybe shit. Even if I didn’t physically engage with the media myself. This obviously isn’t a perfect method, and vulnerable to a lot of bias, but I guess I trust my own ability to spot someone fishing for hate clicks.
Would I go out of my to review something I only watched, however? Eh, probably not. I think in order to be fully confident in my own take, I would need to get my own hands on experience.
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Yes and no.
If I feel I have gotten the complete experience or at least an experience that gives me a good idea of how the game plays or how the story goes, then sure.
It’s basically the equivalent of watching a movie on tv, but never all in one sitting. Or watching enough of a fairly average or even good television series, but not every single episode.
Like, have I played all of Castlevania: Symphony of the Night? No, I actually kind of hated my time playing it and never even got close to the second castle. But would I consider that I have “completed” it, I have watched dozens if not hundreds of speedruns of it across several categories and have played it’s successors to death? Yes, absolutely. There is nothing the game has to offer me, even if I haven’t fought half the bosses or ever done an Air Slash myself.
Yet there are still some games that I have watched way too much of, but still felt I had to beat on my own. Rogue Legacy was one of those games that I remember watching several different streamers and let’s players go through, yet still felt that I needed to beat it myself to have actually “experienced” it.
And it’s not just roguelikes. I may know the ins and outs of most of Breath of the Wild at this point, but until I’ve actually mapped that whole place out and killed Ganon myself, it’s still on my backlog list.
I could definitely count it, as long as the LP seemed suitably thorough. Even when there are mechanics I’m missing out on, my favourite LPs will foreground the mechanics in a way I can vicariously understand.
I haven’t played Pathologic 2 but it’s 100% on last year’s GOTY list after watching Marshall Dyer’s playthrough where she meticulously picks through the game. I think it was a better experience than if I did so myself, because I’m not convinced I could have engaged with the game as well as her.
But I would like a separate option to delineate what I have only watched and not played.
Also here’s my under filled backloggd:
I use Backloggd as a way to keep track of the games I’ve experienced, so I’d count it. At least once I’d finished watching it the whole way through or decided I’d watched enough and didn’t want to watch anymore. I also include games I’ve played but haven’t completed if I feel like I’ve played enough and won’t return to them.
I don’t really consider these games completed, but if I go back through my games list in a few years I’d like to remember my experience of them.
A very hardy “it depends”. If you can watch a game and feel like you have had enough of an experience with it, sure! 100% not 1:1 but if you listen to an audiobook, that’s experiencing the book. There isn’t that mechanical layer, but the performance layer is there for both.
I have been watching more Let’s Plays recently given the situation, but I’m personally less inclined to say I have completed a game that I have watched because I am watching them as much if not more so for the performance element. I can’t separate the two and nor would I want to. To contradict myself I’m trying to find some good Kingdom Hearts Let’s Plays to get through the side games I don’t want to play but want to get the story. I wouldn’t check those off my backlog…but also would remove them from my backlog? I wouldn’t put on this site “Hey, done” but would silently remove this from the “to play” pile.
I’ve been using this a lot ever since it was mentioned here. I really like it! It’s basically exact what I’ve wanted for a while. Here’s mine:
My only worry is that I tend to get obsessive with these sorts of things - I had to make myself stop using RYM years ago because the drive to catalog more and more media and rate things “properly” was negatively impacting the way I listened to music. So I’m trying to engage with this more casually.
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Just remembered this and thought this weekend might be a good time to go back through and update it some more.
If I do any reviews it’s probably just going to be a paragraph at most. I think I’m going to try and remember every game I’ve played? I tried to do this years ago with a spreadsheet and had some trouble but I think it would be a fun nostalgic thing to do because a lot of older games are tied more to moments in my life and what was happening at the time and who I was playing with.
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Having basically tried to do that with mine, the thing that seemed to work was going by console? Like I started by trying to remember old GBA games and then worked my way forward in time to now. I felt like I managed to remember almost everything, even stuff I played as a kid.
I will say going back through this has reminded me that I actually used to like racing games when they had 0 plot and were more arcadey.
Does anyone know if there’s a way to file a “This game needs to be updated”? I’ve noticed a few games don’t have all the platforms they released on.
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Could ask them about it on Twitter (if you’re on it). I’ve tweeted a couple of questions at them and they tend to be pretty responsive? I think there’s also a generic email form on the site.
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