From Digital Hoarding to Digital Order: My Game Library Story

Having just completed the main story of Starfield, having recently lost a 2 year long colony in Rimworld and with no release date (at that time) for Enshrouded in sight, I wasn’t sure what to play next. So like many of us, I opened Steam’s library and scrolled through. Title after title, nothing jumped out with interest. Not a thing reached out and said “play me.”

Browsing the Steam store I searched my usual tags of Management, Simulation, and Automation. I wanted to find something new with problem solving, systems to learn, and the addicting feature of Automation. But again, there was nothing of interest I hadn’t already played.

About ready to give up, I checked my phone and saw there were some unread emails. And one of them had a name all too familiar. HumbleBundle.

HumbleBundle had sat forgotten for some time and as a result, a few months of the monthly game subscription hadn’t been redeemed yet. I thought that this could be my salvation.

Of the first 10 games to choose from I knew I had 1 of them, 3 of them looked alright, and the other 6 I was not only looking forward to, but I’d never seen them before. And that was exciting. After a click of the mouse, the keys were redeemed and ready to be added to steam. Or so I thought.

5 of the 6 games I’d never seen before were already in my library. At some point I’d purchased them and forgotten. Moments ago they’d been scrolled over without a second thought. Yet now the idea of starting them was exciting. I began to wonder how many other games were hiding in that library.

Over the past 12 years I’d gone on some pretty bad spending sprees. For years I was making youtube lets plays, then reviews, then more let's plays, then streaming games on twitch, then streaming games back on YouTube before I settled into Minecraft content. And during that time I would purchase anything and everything that was on sale. I told myself I was doing it because it would save money. Looking back at it, I think it started out as a fear of missing out but quickly turned into just an obsession with buying games on sale.

With so many games it had become overwhelming trying to pick what to play next. I tried creating the fabled To Play List. But adding to it became a problem of its own. I thought I wanted to play everything I bought. So the list grew and grew until it eventually broke apart into 3 separate lists. Really Want To Play, Would Like To Play, and Looks Interesting. But at that point none of the lists mattered. Every time a game was finished, a new one was purchased to start next. And that didn’t stop other games from being purchased in between or even at the same time. It was a forever growing cycle.

So why start again? What was there to gain from creating this list a second time? Maybe it was blind optimism. That somehow it would give the courage to tackle these games once again. Or maybe it was just an obsession. Cause I mean really, who can ignore the beauty of a well done spreadsheet.

But either way, there’s a strong sense of confidence this time. After a few months of work so far, a little over 1400 of the 2479 games (steamdb.info says I have) have been compiled and cataloged into the spreadsheet. Everything from the creation of my Steam account back in 2007 all the way up to the start of 2010. I’ve recorded the game, when I purchased it, how much I purchased it for, its main 2 genres, its steam rating, the depeloper, the publisher, and more.

There’s also the argument that this time it’s not a To Play List. No rankings of interest are taking place. It’s just simply a catalog of every game I’ve ever purchased and ever owned.