There's a certain condition that any true devotee of the gaming discipline soon begins to suffer from as they grow in age. As their faces wrinkle and their body weakens, their game collection expands and expands beyond all reason. Many of these games go unfinished, leading to a gigantic backlog. A backlog is not only distressing in that many great games (in my particular example, over 200) have gone unfinished, but in that it can affect your game playing habits overall.

There's two main ways that a huge backlog can really affect you. The first way is the most depressing of the two for obvious reasons. Simply put, you lose all desire to game. You look at that huge stack of games and go, "Man, I've finished maybe 10 of those 400 games. What am I doing?" You stop playing games altogether because, let's face it, if you never finish what you start, why start in the first place? It's a terrible rut to fall into.

The second way is that you stop completing games, but still buy them. This is bothersome in its own right, because you don't finish a lot of games and your backlog continues to grow. You'll still have a large collection, but eventually you will reach something I like to call the "backlog singularity". In that scenario, you revert to the first guy, who no longer plays games because he's depressed.

What can you do about this? Well, start playing more old games. People often say that the games of the past are better than the games of the present, and while that's arguable, it doesn't change the fact that there are doubtless many games you have never finished. Go back and play some of them! If you have trouble keeping track, use something like an Excel sheet or The Backloggery to ease yourself.