Organizing the steam game library

I have 125 games, so not nearly as many as you, but I just sort my games into three categories: Played Enough, Not Played Enough, Doesn't Run Well Enough

I only watch the games I have installed :)
If I'm done with those I look in the normal list to install another game.

I have three catagories

Favorites: Games I have beaten or played enough of. For example I played counter strike 5 hours and didnt pay anything for it. It goes in here because i have played it enhough. All games must have a minimum of 2 hours.

Must Beat: Games i have to complete the story on.

Must play: Games that i havent played enough. For example, I payed 20 for bioshock and only played 18, it goes in here.

(1) Shortcuts
(2) Priority Play List
(3) Valve
(4) Indie
(5) Retail
(6) Everything Else
Will Never Play

I know the alphabet and I don't have many games, nope.

Categories, a lot of categories. Each one starting with three digits (so it's in the order I want to, not the Steam wants = alphabetical).

i use the favorites and categories all the time. it's the only way sadly

i have smth like this

AAA games : Fortix, Fortix 2, Faerie solitaire, Lucid ...

Favorite games : Secret of the Magic Crystals, Horrid Henry, Bad Rats.

Don't care anyway : the rest about 50 games

I add games to their respective category (Action, Adventure, Shooter, Racing, RPG, Strategy, Sport) also there is a category for all Indie games, Mods, Non-Steam games. I'm thinking of adding more subcategories like: free roam, 1st Person Shooter, 3rd Person Shooter and something to divide all these indie games from bundles.

I have a large libary too, I try to fit the games into these categories...

Adventure/RPG.
Fighter.
Indie.
Racer.
Shooter.
Strategy/Puzzle/Sandbox.

But i know how you feel with the category system being bad, i would have liked to have been able to make sub categories, then I could split up the ton of indie games i have and put them in their proper categories.

How about making shortcuts and putting them in a map on ur desktop or something..

I have two categories one called "Games" the other one called "Skyrim". True story.

I don't have my games sorted at all right now. Then again, I only have like 1/10 as many as you, stickmand123. That's few enough for me to just scroll up and down the list. I suppose when/if I got enough games though, I'd try to figure out some way of using the categories and putting each game into one category. You're right that for large collections like yours, something like tagging (multiple categories) or subcategories could be helpful. Could you suggest that to Steam as a possible feature for a future update of the client?

For example, I have an FPS category with random FPS's. For subcategories I just append something to it.
Like this:

FPS

FPS - COD

FPS - Half-Life

so I have multiple FPS categories. Not sure if that will work for you

... I don't have as many as you, but I just use categories. Oh, and I now use the Grid view for custom images so this list is irrelevant really... :P
Favourites - Stuff like Skyrim / Dungeon Defenders / Nation Red / Portal 2
Demos - for the few demos I have (yet to try some of them, still to delete others),
Free - for the free games,
HiB - each bundle has a category with all the games from that bundle in, unless one is in the favourites,
Ironclads - Ironclads from Indie Gala got it's own cat due to the large number of DLCs / launch options, as did Company of Heroes.
Then theres the generic 'games' cat - for everything else.

I use the following categories: Action, Action-Adventure, Adventure, Betas, Platform, Puzzle, Racing, Rhythm, RPG, Shoot 'Em Up and Strategy. Also, for game series with 4 or more games in them, I use separate categories (such as Half-Life and Serious Sam).

My categories:

• Betas - self-explanatory

• Exceptions - anything that doesn't fit anywhere else. Currently reserved for The Ship Tutorial, since it's not really a separate game.

• External Games - all non-Steam shortcuts

• Free Games - these disappear from the library when uninstalled, so they have their own category

• Good - all games that I believe are worth paying for

• Mediocre - all games that I believe are worth playing, but not good enough to pay for

• Terrible - all games that aren't even worth playing

• Undecided - games that I have installed, but have not yet sorted into one of the above categories

• Unsorted - games I haven't installed yet

It's worth noting that I launch all my games from desktop shortcuts, not from the library.

You can make Windows shortcuts to launch steam games, how about using them to arrange your games in a directory structure on your desktop? Could have the same game in multiple categories then. Would imagine Mac Steam can do shortcuts too.

Make Categories based on genre.

I have always just done mine by genre.

Isnt their a search bar for your game library?

Sort by Installed

I find it interesting that so many people sort by genre or publisher. Seems very ad-hoc. I use the following categories:

• Favorites
• Currently Playing
• New (Unplayed)
• Completed

I find this is a nice way to quickly get to games I want. If its a game I play alot, I put it in Favorites. Otherwise, if I am currently playing it, it goes in Currently Playing. Pretty simple. This way, I can have the currently playing category always open, and then the others closed. Keeps my list nice and tidy.

My categories...

All my games: