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How do you organize your gaming library?
I'm currently reorganizing my Steam library, as I do every other year or so, and I'm curious as to how people here organize things (or not). Do you have certain categories or a taxonomy you put your games into? What are the benefits and limitations for the way you've chosen?
I tried it once, but given how large my collection was I gave up after a while and kept them in alphabetic order.
Off topic, but is the new steam client incredibly buggy for anyone else? Half of the time the io doesn’t want to render, and unless I turn off half of the settings to fetch community stuff and whatnot, scrolling through my game list will bring Steam down to a crawl.
It works fine for me, and I have a pretty large library. I also have the "Disable Community Content" toggled.
I had to do the same thing too, but it is still a bit choppy when scrolling. Oh well, better than nothing.
Many years ago, I had my games categorized in broad genre categories (e.g. "adventure", "RPG"). At some point I stopped keeping up with it, and now:
I'm thinking I should delete my categories and just go back to alphabetical by title. That's at least consistent, universal, and doesn't require manual maintenance.
My Steam library's organization is pretty simple.
With some other stuff left uncategorized like Blender and Skyrim Script Extender.
I also use GOG Galaxy, and don't have anything sorted there, because it's close to 450 games, and I don't really feel like going through all of that.
Pretty much how I did my set-up.
-Favorites (I try to keep this list below 25 so I can easily find what I want to play)
-Unfinished Sympathy (games I love and would like to give another go when I find the time)
-Done (played and most likely never want to play again)
-To Do (the massive backlog of mostly indie games I picked up for peanuts)
I noticed typing in the name is faster than sorting through categories and I don't think I ever felt like "playing an RPG" and then just picking one at random, I barely care about genres, if I feel an itch to play something, it's a specific game.
For a while, I tried making a kind of "schedule", where I'd put games I felt like trying next in its own category. But it didn't last very long. Ultimately, Steam's convoluted interface wasn't making it any more convenient than just having a text file. The advantage of a text file: You can also list games on other platforms.
Here are my groups that did not change for some few years:
Favorites (the functionality that's built in)
! Lounge (= 'after a normal day' games. about half single, half multiplayer. ! for alphabetical reasons)
Achieving (= where I still want to complete / see stuff I haven't yet)
Amazon (= Stuff I bought cheap from Amazon. These are not the best games but they meant at least a little)
Bundles with same initial words (= Amnesia, Commandos, Hitman, LEGO, Penumbra, Stalker)
Free or cheap (= gifted, bought for <0.20 or giveaway Games)
Humble Bundle (= like Amazon)
Other Bundles (= like Amazon)
Shoulda Woulda Coulda (= Things that would be awesome to play, but there have been better alternatives)
Steam Sales (= like Amazon but from Steam Sales. Don't buy much in Sales anymore)
Tildesuser/kfwyre (= no joke, the games from your gifting landed here to group them^.^)
So I group them after where I got them from, apparently. Apart from the '!' in Lounge I didn't need any alphabetical-scumming and I'm happy with the order of the groups. Games I play at the moment rarely do not get put into Favorites.
What I do every other year or so is look through the uncategorized list of games. And every time still feel amazed that they can IMO just stay there and there's no need to categorize them so they get played more. :D
Oh and hi feigneddork, thanks for your answer about idbloc.co :) And my list doesn't have render problems, but I don't scroll around too often to notice these days.
I love your categories, and not just because I'm featured in them! :D
I find it interesting that you break the games down mostly by source rather than genre, type, or status. Do you run into situations where you can't remember whether you got a game from, say, Humble or a Steam Sale?
Yes these situations happen. When I find a corresponding confirmation mail or sale article that tells me the source, I can then categorize it accordingly. When I don't, it's similar to the 2nd to last paragraph in my post: Maybe they can stay uncategorized and bugger right off, haha.
And I really don't feel the need through my gaming habits to breaking them down by genre or type. By status yes, but then my Favorites group covers that. Fav'd: Playing / want to play soon. Non-fav'd and in category: Not playing / want to play eventually.
I used Depressurizer and have categories for release year, rating, and HLTB. I do like using Steam's sort by recently played. Its like a journal of the games I played throughout the years.
Mine's barely organized.
I have a few genre categories so I don't have to rely on any search. Most of these are also sitting in Maybe Someday or Finished, but these categories are really so when I feel like playing a particular genre, I don't have to root around in Maybe Someday. This is stuff I play in concentrated bursts. Those are:
And then I have a category for GFWL because those games are probably busted and I don't want to get my hopes up if I try to play one.
My organization:
I find trying to categorize around genres, moods, or anything like that to be too ambiguous or become too detailed to be useful. Instead, I focus on current play state, which helps guide what to focus on in the backlog.
Alphabetical works for me, but I'm positive your collection is waaaaaaaaaaay larger than my 41 titles.
You are a saint of restraint! My library is a sloppily constructed cathedral of excess.
I keep most games on a shelf in a closet, except for the one or three I'm currently playing, whose cases are in arm's reach on my desk, the disc of one of which is nestled in the optical drive of my PS4. The games in my closet are sorted by the default entropy of the universe. The cases on my desk are sorted by most recently played. /s
I have a modest collection of PS4 games. About 10 are physical and I keep them in a shelve inside my closet with no particular order. I probably have 50 games on the PSN, most of them “acquired” via PS Plus subscription. I recently organized them by genre which was not that hard. But every time I have to rebuild the PS4 database my folders vanish. I can “reload” one by one with a few boring steps. It’s better than recreating them from scratch but I’m getting tired of it.
And even with so few games, I still have a backlog.
I do not organize my games at all. The closest thing I have to organization is the default alphabetical organization of my digital Xbox games. I do have all my emulators in a single folder though. My physical releases are in chaos and spread across my room, some in a basket and some in an unused top dresser chest.
Well if I'm looking at my collection via Playnite, I use no sorting at all. And just kinda sorta know what I want to play and when.
But if I'm viewing my collection via Steam, I've found the Dynamic Collection feature really cool and easy. Just tell it to make some collections based on tags and things just kinda work out right. The only none Dynamic Collection I have is one called "Top Plan to Play", which also means I will eventually, maybe, one day install on play the games I put in the list. But it has ended up growing a bit too large, and I don't really use it to decide what to play next.
🖼️Here's another way to sort I just found.
Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/Steam/comments/ggsjmm/it_has_been_a_long_process_but_library_sorting/
This is great! I had no idea I could use emojis in the categories. Being able to give each category a visual indicator is huge!
I use just favourites and uncategorized. I put basically every game I like into favorites and mostly just games that I got from bundles/for free stay out of favorites.