Last May, I challenged myself to beat, start to finish, 15 games from my backlog. By May 31st, I had completed 16 games.

One small backlog chunk for me, one giant backlog chunk for…wait. This doesn’t make sense. Moving on.

When I updated my gaming database this week, I realized that my backlog is entirely out of control. So I’m taking this into my own two gaming hands and doing something about it.

Heck yeah!

While I have overall plans for the year, I am presenting myself with a challenge for the month of January: complete five games.

I know this may not sound like many, but this is a good jump start to the new year. I have my first game all lined up (Alan Wake), and after that, I have 32 tiny pieces of paper (with a different game written on each) all folded up in a glass bowl that looks like a ziplock bag, so I can choose the next at random if I am temporarily stumped on what to dive into.

Each Monday, I will update on the challenge.

My hope is to make a challenge for myself each month to see if I can push myself to really knock out a significant chunk of my backlog this year. It has become quite important to me to game a bit more responsibly, and that starts with purchasing less and drawing from my existing library of games more. After I updated my database, there were over 400 games in my backlog. I’d say that’s more than enough for me to choose from.

There are a couple of new games coming out that I will certainly want to try either upon or near release (Until Dawn, I’m looking at you!), and I am okay with those acquisitions. They will be relatively few and far between. And if I can make the intended progress, I won’t feel quite so bad about picking up the occasional game.

And now, friends, off I go to be backlog productive!

Is anyone else with me in this gaming challenge? I’d love it if other people wanted to join in the fun. :)

To the backlog!