I'm mildly proud of how I categorise my games on Steam and interested to see others' methods
I'm mildly proud of how I categorise my games on Steam and interested to see others' methods
They're in order of likelihood of being played. Craig is a mate of mine who I play with when time permits.
Not pictured: Won't make the mistake of playing with Craig again
I just use dynamic collections, eg. group games by their store-tags, eg. arpg, fps, puzzle, walking-sim, online-coop... etc, whatever I consider handy when going through all of it.
Sure, the categories have a lot of overlap, but I don't mind, the games list is a disaster anyway (>1300 games on account... yea.).
I used to maintain my own categories, but at some point the number of games started to be too much to do it by hand.
edit: One of the better features is to group games with online-coop with friends who have it too. Makes it a lot easier to find the next adventure to start after few beers.
I tried to sort by genre too many times and failed due to how specific some games get. So now they are sorted by completion.
I also have a huge word document that has a very detailed, color-coded checklist of every game I have sorted alphabetically & by franchise, this was made so I could include any games from my other devices.
I just have "Craig" and "Not Craig".
Installed Locally (17)
Uncategorized (1447)
Like this
mine would go something like:
stuff i play: 1
stuff i used to play: 3
stuff i got just because it was cheap: 983785789567Craig
Oh fuck! To start, and to finish! What a great idea.
I just have genres, series, and have really nothing based on what I still have to play
Lol, I have virtually the same system, though my Craig is called Dan
Rhythm Games (15)
Favourites(12)
Uncategorised (210)
I have mine set up with a bunch of categories that are sorted with a prepended 3-digit number. Allows me to have different sections of category without it getting mixed up. ex:
010 S 011 A+ 012 A 013 A- 014 B+ etc... 350 plz play soon 355 wont play ... 800 dont remember buying this
I haven't added anything to a category other than favorites in a while. Just can't be bothered. I use my 'favorites' as an installed and/or probably will play again.
“Welcome to the British Museum Collection of Egyptian Antiquities… My name’s Craig…”
I still dont understand how people play varied games so far. I only have limited times and I can only slot it to play my comfort games. Even when i have extended times, eventually I just play the same things again.
TBH tho I usually just use recent activity, but having genres, mechanics, and "vibes" helps me find the game I'm in the mood to install and play. Some of the catagories are essentially useless tho as most people who tag games have no clue what certain genre's actually are, so I have to curate some of these I care about, I have too many games to do it without steam tags though.
before steam had the built in library categorization I used a third party tool that created categories automatically based on tags
which is to say I have way too many useless categories now and need to wipe them all and start over 🙁
I just hide everything I don't want to play again. "Favorites" means "games I am playing right now". I have one real category of my own, which is "Finished", and actually means "maybe I beat this, or maybe I just got close enough and watched the ending on Youtube." Very few games are actually visible in "Finished" because mostly I don't replay games, so if I beat something, it goes into "Finished" and then gets hidden.
I have
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"Pile of Shame" (started, never finished out of boredom, too long of a list tbh)
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"Goated" (Always installed and ready to play, something like Sekiro, DS3, MHW)
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"Co-op" (Couch Co-op Games for when friends are coming over. Having them in an extra list is easier to choose from)
The Rest ist unmanaged. Oh and I also just hide a game if it's a one-playthrough-only thing and I am finished.
-
Friendly reminder that “backlogs“ are prisons of your own making. There is no moral imperative to play or complete every game you buy!
Haha! I'm not the only one with categories that are just "friends name"
- Favorites (13)
- Hall of honor (1)
- Local Multiplayer (6)
- Trash Bin (11)
- Uncategorized (92)
(Hall of honor as of now contains "Brothers: A tale of two sons", game brought me to tears so I created the category, shoved it in there and never played it again.)
I would play with Craig too
The games in progress I mark as favorites, I have “Finished” and “Play Next” categories, and I have a big dump category called “Won’t Play”.
Aside from that, I have some big categories for collections of old games from humble bundles and steam sales, like legacy Myst, Wizardry, or Sierra games, or like Star Wars game collections.
Favorites - Games I'm playing very frequently
Bugged - Games I might try again if specific bugs are fixed.
Classic - Games I play less frequently but still plan to again
Couch - Games that would only be fun to play on a couch with friends. if I had a couch. or friends.
Doze - Games that require tweaks to proton to work on my Linux desktop.
Meh - Games I'm not playing again.
Old - Finished games I'd only install again if it had a massive update.
Testing - Uncategorized games I haven't made up my mind on.Currently:
- VR
- Uncategorized
Soon to be added:
- Linux (tested/works on)
I have no category for games I play often, I have "played" for games I likely won't play again. And I have "shitty trash" for well those. I also have uber trash for sacred 3 and two worlds
I have three categories:
- Completed
- In Progress
- Uncategorized
They go into In Progress when they're installed.
They go into completed when I've finished them. Either 100% achievements or completed to my own satisfaction if no achievements.
If I lose interest and uninstall they drop back into Uncategorized until I'm ready to pick them up again.
I just have installed and finished. Also emulator categories created by emudeck
Needs a "morally obligated to never play again" for Spec Ops and OneShot
Looking at some of these... I'd never even considered sectioning them by genre - mine's mostly by physical location - if I want to play that game, where's it already installed?
So there's :
Desktop, Laptop, Deck Internal, Deck SD1 (and SD2, 3 & 4 for removable SD cards)Then like most people, I've got a "Complete" and a "Maybe [person's name]" for ones the missus might enjoy.
The only sort of grouping is "Wheel Games", which is basically driving games, but the type you want to play with wheel & pedals, not just a controller. My wheel and pedals aren't set up permanently, so when they are set up, I pretty much only play all the Euro Truck/Bus Sims, Dirt Rally, F1, Revhead, BeamNG sort of games etc.
I use genre categories to which I assign games I have completed.
Working on it - Stuff I'm in the middle of
Leeloo Dallas Multipass - Anying that is 2 or more players
Done Did - Games that I've done did
Then title groupings for anything with 5 or more installments.
- Now Playing (Has exactly one game mostly, or zero, when I close the game)
- Everything else
Implies:
I Don't categorize
- Favorites (I'll play again after finishing) (21 games)
- Completed (I've finished and probably won't play again) (430 games)
- Dead Games (online games that are literally unplayable due to servers going down) (3 games)
- TBD (I haven't finished yet) (140 games)
Completed also includes things I decided weren't worth playing anymore, mostly from bundles back in the day. Stuff like Fallout Tactics and some of the XCOM spinoffs.
A few games in my favorites and the rest is uncategorized (i only have like 20 games though so that's not much of a problem)
I just leave mine in the recent activity sort, and then use the search bar when i want to play something that i havent played recently
I don't really need more than that.
Putting how many games I have in each category in brackets since your screenshot included that info and I think it's interesting data to include.
I have "Uninterested" [7] as a category for games I will probably never play. "Backlog" [33] for games I haven't started, but do eventually want to play. "Story Started" [25] for games that I have started playing but haven't finished the core story or made it to the credits of (some of these games have been in this category for years). A "Playing" [7] category for a few games from the "Story Started" collection that I consider as games I'm actively playing. And a "Story Complete" [91] category for games that I've at least reached a credits screen or otherwise finished the core game/story.
If I enjoy a game a lot, through multiple playthroughs (or at least expect to return for another playthrough at some point) it gets added to my Favorites [14].
And then there's the 280 games in the Uncategorized list, I have played a bit of some of them, but for most of them I'd want to start over from the beginning rather than continue from where I left off.
Something similar.
- play soon
- done but revisit
- Done and meh
- Done and complete
For example - "done and complete" is Portal 2. Great experience, but no reason to just replay it. "Done and meh" could be games where I gave up trying.
Then it's
- Steam Deck only
- Play with wife
- Play with kids
- Pc only
Finally it's specific categories about how it makes me "feel".
- Chill-like - vampire survivors, or farm games, or Satisfactory
- Action-like - fps, action games. Doom or Horizon Zero Dawn
- Story - strong narrative. Like Nier automata, or Witcher 3
The valve tags are better if i want granular.
I have to play, playing, done i dont think i have any unsorted rn
I just have Favorites (all games installed, steam or non-steam), playlist (games I want to play but haven't installed yet), and finished games.
Everything else is mixed together to search through when I'm looking for something specific (coop, etc).
- Favorites
- Playing
- Finished
- Valve complete pack
- Uncategorized
My "to start" tab would be waaaaaaay too long to be useful as a category lol
i did this but didn't keep up with it. ended up with a big "unsorted" folder that occasionally has gems when i look through it
i either group them by genres, or by series/franchises, or by developers.
with some stupid category names, of course.
I just organize them in 3 categories for me:
-
Did I get the game for free?
-
Did I actually purchase said game?
-
Is it an emulator?
It's a mess, but it's better than no organization because it makes the list feel more organized than it actually is.
-
-
Favourites
-
artsy (for sorting all the pretentious crap)
And then the rest are sorted via genre tag.
-
I've got a category for the rating (/10) I give any games I've finished, as well as the following:
- Dropped
- Shelved
- Won't play
- In progress
- Backlog
- Software
These categories don't overlap (ie, I don't give ratings to games I haven't actually finished, even if this means I dropped them with no intent to play them again)
Work pretty nicely for me and it's nice to be able to easily point to games I'd recommend to my pals
And the "wont play" category is largely just games that were in bundles, that I don't care for, or games that I thought I'd want to play but became uninterested in them before I got around to them
I have:
- favorites
- want to play
- multiplayer
- beaten
- all achievements
- uncategorized
Might have to adapt this for my own use
Could be something to spend hours on, you know, instead of playing Horizon ZD, Jedi Survivor, Life is Strange, Tell Me Why, or the Tomb raider series.
And those are just the story based
I group them by general type. Shooters, Rts, Turn-based, rpg, platformers, puzzle etc. And then there's a separate category for games that suck. Like a category of shame, to always remember the lows of humanity.
1 - currently playing 2 - favorites (contains games that I often replay, even if I finished them) 3 - next up 4 - finished (games that I finished, I.e. i saw the credits of) 5 - completed (games that I finished and have 100% achievements on) 6 - abandoned (tried the game, didnt click with it, unlikely to be picked up in the future)
