Backloggd (for those that are looking for a gaming journal site like Letterboxd)

Games Video Games
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I’ve been using Backloggd for a long time now but never got around to posting here. I used to just make a basic text list of stuff I’ve played as Gmail drafts and GOTY rankings on Giant Bomb’s listmaker, but this has been way better. I haven’t written any reviews though because… I’m lazy lol.

Gonna start following everyone who’s posted their profile here!

But yeah, I’m mostly posting here now after reading the latest posts. I ended up spending the last 30 minutes or so going back to all my ratings and changing up a decent amount, most of which was to lower scores haha. Recency bias is a helluva thing!

Skimming through everyone else’s profiles, it does seem like we mostly share a general enjoyment of the games we have played, with ratings skewing more towards 3 stars and up. Budget is certainly a factor for me, but time also plays into the games I choose to play.

As for how I personally rate games, I don’t have hard and fast rules either and mostly go with my gut.

5s are reserved for my all-time favorites, and while “perfection” in design certainly helps, I can overlook obvious flaws to give a game 5 stars if it resonates with me emotionally or makes me rethink things or reimagine the potential of the medium.

4 and 4.5 stars are for games that are great but are just missing that… special something.

3 and 3.5 stars are for games that I mostly enjoyed but have some glaring flaws.

2 and 2.5 stars are for games that I’m 50/50 on in terms of enjoyment and frustration/boredom, or for games that I can see are going for something but have a lot of big problems.

Only game I have that’s lower than a 2 is… Resident Evil 0 at 0.5 because good god did I absolutely have a miserable time with it and hate myself for pushing through all the way to the end lmao. I think I’ll only reserve that spot for experiences like that. Maybe if I actually play another game that I have zero fun with that also happens to be completely offensive and/or broken that I also manage to finish, maybe it’ll top RE0.

Definitely agreed on the point about the technical aspects of games making rating them weirder than other media, at least for my relative inexperience actually thinking about other media to the level of criticality that I spend on games.

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Oh! I’ve been using Backloggd for a few months now after it got mentioned in the Discord, didn’t know we had a forum thread for it! I gave y’alls some follows, here’s my profile if you’d like to take a gander at it.

I’ve really enjoyed the Lists function for doing silly things like ranking the Yakuza franchise based on each game’s version of “Receive You”. Arbitrary rankings are fun and I need to think up some more to put together. It’s also something I used to make a big list of games I’ve gotten for free that I actually want to play, mostly to manage the large number of games from EGS and Twitch Prime giveaways. Having a place where I can quickly glance at a game and pick something at random has been super helpful in clearing out a bit of my backlog this year.

For rating things, I feel like only using whole numbers instead of half-stars has helped me to sort things out easily in my mind. One star is some devoid of fun and/or atrociously offensive, two stars is unenjoyable but probably has something good/cool about it, three stars is fine but nothing special, four stars is great but missing something special, and five stars is something I adore regardless of its flaws. I’m kind of on the side of “assigning numerical ratings is a bit silly in general” so I tend to just think about it as a quick mark of how much I enjoyed something and not worry about whether a game is objectively ‘good’ or whatever. I feel like that leads too easily into silly stuff like using average ratings to determine if Super Mario Bros is a better game than Fortnite, or something like that.

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We’re the same because time also affects how I look back upon a game (or any piece of media), so to remedy this I’ve started implementing a buffer where I don’t decide on a score until the game has moved off my Recently Played list.

Regarding my personal scale, I went through a phase where I decided to be more scientific and stingy about handing out anything above 3.5 stars, and so I shifted a lot of “weaker” 8s or 7s down until I achieved a nice Bell curve-y equilibrium. Eventually came to realize I wasn’t happy with my new system at all, and that to me ratings are best when they reflect my gut feel. So I gave all my ratings another pass, and for the time being I’m happier because my profile feels honest and reflective of my actual tastes.

This is my profile now. My rating distribution isn’t nice and symmetrical anymore but I guess I just tend to like most games I bother to finish.

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I like seeing all the creative uses for lists. The most I used to do was the same thing of making shelves for the free games from Twitch, Epic, Game Pass, etc, on my Grouvee (also kaj). I still update my Grouvee for that purpose, since I found the backloggd lists can be hard to manage, but seeing how you curate and comment your lists has given me some ideas on making my own.

I went ahead and added everyone in here. Didn’t realize there was a discord thread since I’m not in the discord yet, but I’ll check that out.

As for the ratings discussion, I do find myself more swayed by general consensus for games than other media (which is where the objective ratings angle comes from). I wonder if it’s because I consume more games crit than for movies or music, and listening to people like the waypoint crew gush about a game with their different perspectives lends to me coming away from a game with a more favorable impression. Idk what the count is for how many times Austin’s convinced me a game is great after listening to a pod, when I know I didn’t enjoy the act of playing it.

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It’s interesting that a lot of you feel recency bias makes you give games higher ratings. I usually find that right after I finish a game I’m most critical and then soften into a hazier, more nostalgic rating. I think this has been especially true, for me, of longer games that I can tie to a specific time in my life.

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Thanks for highlighting Backloggd - I hadn’t heard of it, but after creating an account and adding some games I definitely like it more than GG. Still seems to have a little trouble with search results getting clogged up with alternative SKUs, but not nearly as bad as GG! Anyway, here’s me, Korlis again (and given the Letterboxd comparisons, yeah, I linked to my Letterboxd in my profile in case anyone is interested). I like keeping track of movies and games like this anyway so I can look back on what I’ve watched/played, so I’ll see how well Backloggd keeps up.

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Here is my Backloggd! I’m thiccxnick on the page and will begin following many of you. I didn’t add every game I’ve ever played, but for games I played pre-2013 (when I took a gaming hiatus, 2013-2016) I only added games that I felt I could write something about.

Edit: I can tell a lot of you are Waypoint fans after my own heart by seeing how many of you had favorited Kentucky Route 0.

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I also made a profile so I won’t struggle as much when GOTY season comes around. I am also planning to follow the other people in this thread.

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I made an account back in February, I think, after suddenly remembering it existed and to decided to give it a whirl since I was in the market for some kind of way to keep track of what games I’ve been playing aside from manually jotting things down as the days go by.

I don’t rate anything I play because I truly can’t be bothered to care or think about doing that, I don’t write reviews because I don’t need another avenue to write my inordinately longwinded thoughts about video games but I do like the journaling feature! That’s pretty much the only thing I use the site for outside of occasionally marking games I’ve played/completed as they spring to mind.

Y’all can add me if you want and I’ll see if I can administer some “likes” on your “posts” whenever I remember to log the games I’ve been playing!

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