I knew from the start that the Backlog Barbecue 2021 was going to be a beast of an endeavor, especially for me. The previous Backlog Bingos were also monumental tasks, and I know I completed the first one, but I think I abandoned it’s sequel. This was the third attempt, and I knew there would be some hardship, but I honestly felt I’d give it a pretty good go.
Well, it broke me. I wanted to complete it, I really did, but I made some mistakes early on, and the with the way I set it up, it was doomed to fail. Here’s why…
It was intended to be a streaming project. It was supposed to be a good inspiration to get me to stream more. There are a few problems with this though. The first problem was that a lot of these games just weren’t popular for streaming. Now, if I had an established fanbase and then decided to do backlog streaming, it might have been fine. But to start with this, well… let’s just say I was doing a whole lot of streaming where I was just talking to myself the entire time. Not very motivating. On top of that, I have a bad habit of watching Youtube or television while I play something, and other times I’m chatting with friends that are playing other games. So to stream not only meant talking to myself, it meant cutting out all other forms of visual/audbile stimulation that I’m unfortunately used to getting when I play. Streaming took the backseat pretty quickly.
It was forcing me to play games I didn’t like. What do you do when you play a game, and decide you just don’t like it? You stop playing the game, right? Well, let’s just say there were more than a couple of games on the Backlog Bingo board that I really didn’t care for. Either they were games that I thought I would like, and later realized they weren’t for me, or they were games that I’d never played before and had no experience with. Games like Journey to the Savage Planet got off to a decent start, but I realized after a while that I just didn’t care enough to finish it. Then there were games like Yakuza 0 that I desperately, tragically tried to like, but was just torture to play. Eventually I just have to admit to myself that I have better things to do and more fun games to play and that I really owe it to myself to drop games I don’t like. Under normal circumstances, that’s just life. When you’re basing a major project on it, it’s just gonna make you look like a goof.
My writing was really suffering. I love to write impressions about games I’ve completed. But with the random nature of the games I was playing, due to the setup of the “Bingo” aspect of the Backlog Bingo, I was playing many, many games a small bit at a time. When I would finally complete a game, it would be really hard to do write-ups on them, as sometimes the span of time between the start and completion would be pretty significant, with multiple other games being played in the meantime. A lot of my write-ups depend heavily on my own short term memory and also the emotions I feel after completing the game. Anger, pride, relief, happiness, sadness… all of these things influence my writing, and the problem I was beginning to encounter repeatedly was apathy. I didn’t care to do the write-ups afterward because I didn’t feel anything about a lot of the games I was finishing. There were a few that stirred up some raw emotions, but for the most part it was just.. nothing. To make it worse, there was a lot about the games that I couldn’t remember because it had been so long.
The Backlog Bingo background image was poorly implemented. I chose the image to go in the background of the Backlog Bingo board, and while that was fine for the viewers, it inherently came with two problems. First, (and I knew this) the image would only be effective until the mystery was gone. Once enough of the image had been revealed, the remainder of the Bingo process was kinda pointless. The second problem was that, well, I chose the image. There was no mystery for me. At the end of the day, the backlog bingo should have had some air of mystery for me, as well as the audience. I knew what the image looked like, I photographed it. It was my image. It’s not like I wanted to see the final image reveal as much as everyone else. And that kinda kills the buzz. If I ever do this again, (and I doubt I will) I will have to have someone else in charge of the image updates, so that the final image reveal is as much of a mystery to me as everyone else. That’s not likely to happen.
Some of the games were too long. I knew this could be a problem from the start. I even swapped out Kingdoms of Amalur: Re-Reckoning with a shorter game because I knew that game was easily a hundred hours, not counting DLC. But some of the other games, like The Outer Worlds, weren’t exactly short either, and the further I got into the Bingo process, the more clear it was going to be that a game like that was going to be the last one standing, and that I would barely be starting it when there were only a handful of games remaining. Nier Automata could potentially be a much longer experience, should I decide to pursue the multiple playthroughs and endings, so the question became, “What would be the point of continuing a Bingo card with only two games remaining on the board?” The answer is, “There is no point.” Simple as that.
It was monopolizing my blog. I knew the Backlog Bingo was going to be a big project, but I realized after a while that the only time I was writing for my blog was when I was doing something Backlog Bingo related. It just took up so much of my gaming time, that when I was gaming or doing something unrelated, I just didn’t want to bother with it. Therefore, my blog quickly turned into the Backlog Bingo blog, and that’s just boring.
So there you go. Those six reasons are the main reasons I’m ditching the Backlog Bingo. Am I disappointed to have not completed the project? Yes, yes I am. Absolutely. It’s a bummer. But at the same time, my happiness and love of my hobby (and writing about my hobby) is infinitely more important to me. I game because I enjoy it, and I wasn’t enjoying it. It’s not my job, and I’m not getting paid for it. Therefore, it’s over, and I seriously doubt I’ll ever attempt this again. That’s not to say I won’t try something else, but if I do, I’m definitely going to scale it down and make it more satisfying, not just to the five of you that read my blog, but to me as well.
For posterity’s sake, here’s the final image reveal:
