Venting (on entering GAs, huge backlogs and guilt)

You took the words right out of my mouth. Although I'm still entering games I am trying to enter only for ones that I REALLY want now.

I don't feel bad for entering for games I might not be able to play right away. I play games in bursts, during university breaks and such, and I'd rather take a chance to win a game and not have to pay for it later. At the end of the day it's good to have some perspective: these are games, and not resources like food and medicine being kept out of the hands of the poor by the rich.

I have a backlog of 85-90 steam games ... I have maybe 4 that are from SG the rest i bought the thing is volvo have them sales and the GabeNator always seems to make my wallet twitch.

I only enter GA's for games on my wish list and the past month i've won a few game and need to to a gift back or i'll slide down further from what was a 1:1 ratio.

Now I don't see it as a wasted game I mean i'll get around to playing it. What i've done over the past 2 years is i've only bought one AAA game the witcher 3 at a discount for owning the other 2, and I will only buy a game on my wishlist if it's either one I really want and will play right then or it has at least 50% off.

I never did finish the witcher 3 as a bug broke it so i sit it aside for a whole and now it's my backlog lol

I'm also addicted to anime which means I game far less.

I feel the exact same, to be honest. I barely enter any games that aren't on my Steam wishlist that seem interesting anymore - and lately I even stopped entering for some games that are on my wishlist. Like you said, I just feel bad for entering when I've still got so many games, so many wins to play. Same goes for the part about group giveaways. I also tend to feel bad for entering giveaways for AAA titles when I can only give away bundled or cheap games.
I won't leave or "take a break" though. I love being here nonetheless and I just love the people on the forum.

Have a read through this thread describing a situation much like your own. http://www.gog.com/forum/general/my_own_personal_journey_toward_more_playing_and_less_spending/page1

Well there is the thrill of the hunt (in fact I do refrain from getting some cheap games just to hunt them), though I've been sort of slowing down on the bundle buying due to the backlog I've built up.

I must admit I the last two months have been winning games at a somewhat higher rate than I play them, but I'm most definitely finishing my "SG backlog", just this week I have completed two of the games I won here. I have only entered for games I want to play, and I don't think I would get to the point where I have a collection of games I can't see myself playing.

If I feel I would start winning too much, I would also take a break in entering giveaways. I think that was a nice thing to do, giving others who haven't had the same luck better chances of winning the games they really want to play.

As for my own giveaways (or at least most of them), I don't mind too much if the one who wins won't play it for a year or so. Almost all of us have backlogs, and sometimes it takes time to get to the next game. What doesn't make me happy is high quality games being won by people who won't play them: if they will just be library +1's or used for farming cards and nothing more.

...for wins that won't be played for over 3 years, maybe it would have been better not to enter at all? Especially if it was a new AAA title at the time of the giveaway, but a 3-time bundled game the day it actually gets played ;)

I play a ton of games, but I also have two sons who will likely be into video games in a couple years. There's no telling what they'll like, so my backlog may be their...frontlog?

Having said that, I only enter for games I think I would like. Just in case.

Most people here seem to be game collectors. The degree of actual game playing varies, but I think the reality of digital gaming in our present time is that the bundles and steep discounts for games prey upon our cognitive biases and game collecting is the result. We intend to play a game we buy, or enter a giveaway for, but we likely won't, because we just have too many games already. I think I bought Mafia (having played it a little bit previously) during my very first Steam sale years ago and I still haven't played it.

I understand the feeling you've felt and have felt it before, but the guilt of game acquisition without game playing is a problem of the excess of the digital game library, and the financial ease of creating such an excess, even for someone with limited funds for discretionary spending, and SG is just a small part of that.

I might be inclined to feel bad if I thought my win likely deprived someone from playing a game they really wanted but can't afford but I'm pretty confident in feeling like that is rarely the case.

One can never have enough entertainment
Plus you give so much away yourself, why feel bad?
It's not because life gets in the way you should forbid yourself having joy in getting something you want.
Despite not having time

View attached image.

1. I enter giveaways and feel bad about it
2. I don't create good giveaways (usually) and I feel bad about it
3. I enter giveaways which I know my potato PC can't run (and I just keep wishing for a better time when I'll be able to afford a GPU upgrade instead of working my ass off without any positive results) and I feel bad about it
4. I enter giveaways for multiplayer-based games even though I know that my internet is from the 80s and I feel bad about it

TL;DR: I can't stand the feeling of guilt and my own greed. I hate myself but I love video games, so I keep on entering giveaways. cg save me. Amen.

backs away to the door and leaves thread

Well i try to prioritize won games, but still have a couple in backlog...

i suppose if people want a game, and if they can't play it right away (because they don't have time at the moment, not because they need $1000 to upgrade their pc...), it's fine to enter just to have a shot at winning it.

we could discuss that they are stealing chances from people that would play it instantly, but there's no way to make everyone comply with that idea. :|

Honestly speaking, have the same problem.

You know more or less how I look at this ;)
Recently I decided to play games I win shortly after I win them. And of course I started winning a lot. Few days ago my steam crashed so badly I had to reinstall it (actually the problem was more complicated) and I've lost all the currently won games I downloaded. Now when I'm in my hometown for Christmas with reallly shitty internet connection, it will probably take me weeks to redownload them D: It's like the backlog just refuses to shrink D:

I went through the same thing circa 2013 and sans the thread. My entries have always been super selective to things I want to play, and my entries per month dwindled down slowly until my final entry 2 years ago (30th Oct '13) TWO YEARS STRONG, OH YEAH. I still give games away occasionally, and like to check the forums in the off chance there is an actual discussion thread (like this one!) I have received lots of gifts outside of SteamGifts (birthdays, christmas, etc.) so that's been holding me back from finishing the few won games here on SG I haven't gotten too (a few games I tried and tried and tried to like but just weren't enjoyable, I'll finish them...after everything else, curse you Cortex Command and Commandos!).

I don't know if I'll ever enter a giveaway again, at this point in my Steam life I feel like I have too many games, I spend like $5-10 dollars on myself during Steam sales now and it's usually just picking up a few small indie titles I really want or some much needed DLC for some game or another.

Everything said, I just hold myself to those conditions, the only reason I would want people to be selective about entering my giveaways is to be considerate to the other entrants, not because I find it offensive they are entering something they may not play (although I usually limit my giveaways to people I know and trust to be considerate anyways, which sort of makes this a moot point)

Nice post. I stopped entering giveaways in March 2013, and I also largely stopped giving, mainly because I don't feel the charity. SG is a game, where people who have too many games give games to other people who have too many games. The only criterion I feel could let me create charitable giveaways, a "maximum number of wins" criterion, will likely never be offered.

I don't think it's wrong to participate in the game, I just don't feel like doing so.

For me its like playing the lottery and kinda fun despite having an enourmous backlog myself

Anyway I give way more back so I don't feel guilty about entering

Sometimes I think that, too...
Time is too short... :(

Yeah you're not alone, I had a similar realization 1 year ago. Right now I have played to completion (or near completion) 48 of my 77 wins. Because I have waited too long, some multiplayer games are now dead and I feel pretty bad about that...
I also checked my winners and only 1 of the 22 games I gave away has been played. I try not to think too much about it, after all maybe they are all going to start playing their wins tomorrow but it doesn't motivates me to make more giveaway...
I always wanted to include everyone, and make AAA giveaways when I could to make people really happy, I thought it promoted a better atmosphere and avoided frustation for those who couldn't afford to make giveaways.
But if it continues like this I may start to make whitelist giveaways for people who play the games they win. I don't like it but I kinda feel forced.