Tracking your collection - On-line? Software? Custom?

[prfsnl_gmr]

I keep a detailed "want" list on my phone. If a game isn't on it, then: (1) I already own it or (2) I made a decision that it wasn't worthy for inclusion in my collection. (My standards are pretty low; so, it is usually the former rather than the latter.)

[Fragems]

RFGeneration the data base is pretty well updated and they go through user submissions pretty fast so adding stuff they don't already have is fast and easy as long as you don't mind a little data entry.

They also have submissions contests at least once or twice a year which are pretty fun to compete in.

As for going out and shopping IRL I usually just go by memory but that can be a little tricky now that I sold off some of my harder to find stuff a few years back and because I'm sitting at 3834 games now although around 600+ of that is digital but I haven't really kept up with tracking my steam/PSN stuff for a while now .

[PartridgeSenpai]

I generally just remember what I have. It's very rare (I think it's happened once) that I totally forget I own a game and buy it a second time. However I do use Google sheets for tracking which games I own for the purposes of tracking what's beaten and what I want(ed) to move onto next-ish. Blank spaces are unbeaten, green-filled ones are beaten, and red-filled ones are ones I want to move onto soon.

I also keep a want-list in a very similar style on a Google Sheets. That way I can remember what to look for if I'm out and about, and it syncs between my phone and PC effortlessly so entering stuff is easy and so is checking it when I'm at some far-off store or somefin'.

[CRTGAMER]

I keep a detailed "want" list on my phone. If a game isn't on it, then: (1) I already own it or (2) I made a decision that it wasn't worthy for inclusion in my collection. (My standards are pretty low; so, it is usually the former rather than the latter.)

Same here, I use an Android App called Color Note. Very handy, each save list has matched to game console color (take an easy guess which system) white, blue, green, purple and grey.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.socialnmobile.dictapps.notepad.color.note&hl=en

[Jagosaurus]

I'm an Excel nerd. Big time. Sort, filter, pivot table.

I also track total quantity of games and dollars spent/made in/out this way.

I've sold 48% of my collection over the past 11 months. I can tell you to the penny how much I've spent in the past 4 years on the hobby. Was just thinking I need to plug in a few updates. Yeahhhh. I have a problem.

I sat down with a financial planner once who admitted my family budget sheet was more detailed than his template his clients pay him for .

[Xeogred]

A decade ago I liked using IGN and they did a fun job of giving you a valued estimate of how much it was worth too. Then with every new big website update the site list thing became buried beneath hundreds of pages, switched to dial up speeds, and I don't even think it exists as of years ago. Went to total crap. I haven't really bothered keeping track of my collection much since then, I've got some stuff up on my RFG page but only systems I haven't bought anything for in awhile.

I'm more meticulous about tracking games I beat thesedays with a yearly notepad file, RB, backloggery, and HowLongToBeat.

[Omerta]

I keep a detailed "want" list on my phone. If a game isn't on it, then: (1) I already own it or (2) I made a decision that it wasn't worthy for inclusion in my collection. (My standards are pretty low; so, it is usually the former rather than the latter.)

Ditto. For the most part, I have the want list in my head too since it's (sadly) much easier to remember than the stuff I have stashed away.

[BoneSnapDeez]

Years ago I started putting everything into rfgeneration, but I stopped at something like 150 games. It's painfully tedious to start from scratch when you have a thousand something games...

So I should get around to actually finishing that, but its really unlikely.

Yeah, when I created an RFGen account I had something like "only" 200 games. No way I could sit down and add my entire collection today. I mean, I guess I could but it would take an eternity.

[laurenhiya21]

I use a few different things:

1) Backloggery: The main thing I use to keep track of what I have. I like it since it's very quick to add something new. The random game feature is also handy if I don't know what to play.

2) Google docs: I have a spreadsheet which has most of the games that I have on Backloggery, but I remove all the games that I decided not to beat. It's mostly just so I can quickly look over what I have, but I also put some extra info in there just because.

3) Howlongtobeat: I pretty much only use it for the time feature. I don't tend to know how long games will take to beat, so this is handy when I only have a limited time to play something.

And I think that's it. I've tried to use RFGeneration before, but I found that it takes too long for me to add something when I don't care about a lot of the info you can put in.

[retrosportsgamer]

I've used VGC before but found I had to add a lot of game art myself since it is so pal focused. I was never interested in the updated monthly fee service and switched to....

RFGen a couple years back. I went system by system. It's great. Hardest thing is digital tracking - I've moved to becoming more google sheets based there. I do like the Rf gen wishlists also