Friday 14 August 2015

Blaugust Day 14 - Organising Steam

Like Herding Cats, Organising Steam should become a euphemism for an impossible task,

My Steam library, like most gamers that habitually dip into Steam Sales, Humble Bundles and other such massive deals, often buckles under its own weight. I know Sean of  Gaming Conjecture has often spoken of how his own library feels like a huge weight on his shoulders and I often feel the same way.

Today I have started to try and organise my own library to match my gaming moods and give it some kind of structure in the hope that will help me complete some solo games instead of having them sit half played.

Steam has a handy little option to create categories from your library so I made full use of it,

MMOs - The mainstay of my gaming experience over the last several years and also the reason I never get to focus on just one solo game. Although I have several in this category, I rarely play more than one. Right now Lord of the Rings Online with occaisional sessions on Marvel Heroes are my regulars, but until recently Guild Wars 2 took over. They tend to come and go in phases, depending on content, community and ultimately my mood.

Now and Again - This category is for games I can dip into for literally a few minutes at a time. They rarely hold my interest for long (Darkest Dungeon being the exception) but they are good to have to hand.

Now Playing - A category for single player games I've started but not yet completed. Having sorted them in this way should hopefully give me a focus to get them completed. Having just started Fallout New Vegas, I'd really like to get that completed (at least as much as is possible for the main story)

Survival -  As the games in this category are similar and currently in Alpha, they're something I dip into now and again but tend to spend a long time in them. H1Z1 in particular usually sucks me in for a good few days.

Waiting to Play - These were originally in the Now Playing Category, but in order to make it more managable I prioritised and created this as a queue.

Wargames - I also have a penchant for strategy games, Age of Empires and the Total War series populate the category. Though I haven't played any for a while, when I start one I put most of time into it so these are occaisional pleasures.

Games - The final category (not shown) contains everything else, not yet organised. At last count this list number 124 games!

According to Steamleft.com, I need 1361 hours, almost 57 days of continuous play to finish them all, no doubt not including the massive time sink that are MMO's.

How do you organise your Steam library? Do you have any kind of plan to help you focus on finishing certain games? Leave a comment or write a post on your blog!

This post is part of the Blaugust 2015 initiative. If you are interested in taking part, all the information can be found by clicking the logo below.

5 comments:

  1. I have Favorites for games that or most likely retired from play,but I don't want to get lost in the shuffle. And then I have Need to Play, which is for games I haven't crossed out yet.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Interesting stuff. This sounds like a good plan, and something I should look at. In fact, the way you have done it would suit me pretty well too.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. If nothing else, it pushes a lot of games I've no immediate interest into the bottom of the list and out of sight unless I scroll down !

      Delete
  3. Nice way to organize! Thanks for the post. I'll have to go back through my Steam now.

    ReplyDelete
  4. That's a good way to organize, based on what you're playing/waiting to play! Maybe I should add a fifteenth folder...

    ReplyDelete