Can you beat all of the games you own within your lifetime?

[J T]

There are a lot of members of this forum that have insanely large gaming collections, myself included. If you were to take the average amount of time you have to play games each week, extend that across the rest of your life (estimating death at age 75-80, which is the average American life expectancy for those of you in the USA), plus include your average intake of new games, would you ever even theoretically come close to having enough time to play all of the games you have to completion?

If your answer is "no", does that change how you think about playing games? Are you ok with never getting past the tutorial level? How do you decide if a game is worth beating or even completing with so many left unfinished? Are you fine with owning games that you know you will never play ever again, and if so, what's the point to having them?

[BoringSupreez]

I have somewhere between 200 and 300 games right now. I've beaten about half of them. I'm very confident that if I were to stop buying new ones, I'd beat them all within a decade.

[MrPopo]

According to my memory card on Backloggery my backlog grows at 100 games a year. Granted, this is a small sample size (only a few years) and there are certain factors which inflate that number. For example, I list every game even if I own it in multiple forms, like Mega Man 2 on the NES and in the GC Anniversary collection. If I beat it in one I mark it as beaten in all of them. By contrast, FFIV DS is separate from FFIVA, but I count FFIVA and FFIVPSP (the first half) as the same from a completion standpoint.

[J T]

Here's a rough estimate for me:

10 hours gaming per week
2080 weeks left to live
1500 games owned
20 hours average time to completion

=(10x2080)-(1500x20)= dead with 9200 hours left of unfinished gaming

Even if I never bought another game in my life (fat chance), I still wouldn't have time to complete everything. There are just too many games and not enough free time. For this reason, I actually don't care much about not completing a game if I'm not feeling it, though I have a hard time getting rid of games and claiming I'll never play them again. I've realized more recently that it is more important to me that a game be worth my time than it is that it be worth my money. I like to play a diverse amount of games though because I am interested in the history of gaming and what each new game adds to it, but I don't feel like I need to have beaten a game to say whether I like it or not. This irritates some people, but I feel like you can usually get a good sense for a game after you've made your way a few hours past the tutorial levels.

[DinnerX]

I think I could.

But I don't plan to. I enjoy some of the games I have beaten much more than many games I haven't beaten. I play the games I've beaten so much I don't have time to play the unbeaten ones.

I keep the less liked games around because every once and a while I do feel like playing them.

[fastbilly1]

I think I could. I couldnt 100%, but I think I could beat them.

[dsheinem]

I think so, yes. I've beaten around 100 games a year for the past two years, so even if I had 2000 games I could probably beat them all in 20 years or so. Certainly I should have more time in retirement, so there's that too...

It is also worth noting that retro-game collecting over the past 5 years or so has dramatically increased the annual addition to the backlog (200-300 a year), but I can see this number falling off quickly over time as I get to where i want to be with my retro libraries.

I guess the real question is whether I'd even WANT to beat them all. The answer to that is probably no.

[sevin0seven]

as long as the game is not Equinox..

[Gamerforlife]

Yes, if I never bought or played another new video game ever again I could easily beat every single game that I own. I could probably get it down within the next....ten years maybe. That's accounting for life getting in the way with work, people, etc. That's the real reason we all have backlogs, we keep buying and playing new stuff

Of course, that's assuming I have the skills to beat everything that I own. I guess my ass handed to me real quick when I play Ikaruga

[Duke.Togo]

No way, shape, or form. I completely understand that there is a difference in the games I collect, and the games I play. I don't feel any compulsion to play entirely through games just because I own them. Collecting and playing are two different sides to the same hobby.