So here is my guide to un-fucking your Steam library into nice easy chunks that are easy to wrap your head around.
The crux of organizing your Steam Library lies in the use of categories. You might already have a few categories that manage some of your games, you might have a ton and are just reading this to see if I bring anything new to the table, which I probably won't in all honesty.
For a long long time, I just had my library in long form. It seemed easy enough to keep everything sorted, I mean it's all in nice alphabetical order, pretty easy to find stuff, but using the categories to their full effects can stop things like, "What game should I play?" or "Did I finish that game or not?" which might seem minor but actually plagued me for years.
But everything is much better now. Much more streamlined, easy to remember where I was in a game and stopping things from getting stagnant. Now just a warning before I start, I'm going to go through my process. The key part of that is "my", this might not work for you, but it may get you started on your own system that works better for you. These are just guidelines that I have found that work for me and would probably work well for others. So without further delay, here's my system.
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For those who just scroll till they see something important.
This is my current Steam library page
When I first started my reorganization, I just put games that I wanted to play in my "Favorites" category. This worked well for a while until I started putting too many in, the list got too large. I would just ignore some games to get to the ones I wanted to play, which is hardly any better than using the long form library.
The first thing I did was put all the things that were Half-Life or mods there of in one category.
Picture provided for those who don't know exactly what I mean. Now you may notice a few things that are missing, but I'll get to that in a bit.
That worked well for a while, especially having somewhere to put the betas as they were just taking up space.
The next category I did was "Multiplayer". These are games that require the internet to work properly. I made the decision to include a few games that are possible to play offline, but that I personally played exclusively online. This was mainly to keep everything I couldn't play when my internet died off my list.
The next thing I was tired of was games that I had completed clogging up my list. So I made a "Completed" category originally. This worked well for a while until I got a bunch of DLCs and a couple of games I had added achievements. So I made a "Main Story Complete" category for games who's story I had completed. This allowed me to put both games that were actually complete with no further content to explore or ones that I had finished the main storyline but might want to revisit for achievements, new game plus style things or just another play through.
The next was the other half of the split of my "Complete" category which is "Unplayed DLC". I recently got a hold of all the DLC for Skyrim and New Vegas, but they were hanging out in my "Completed" category so I was neglecting them.
Next up was "To Be Finished". This category is for games I started but lost interest or stopped playing for whatever reason, I can only play Dark Souls for so long before I need a break. This also includes games with current achievement or 100% runs going such as my current running Just Cause 2 completionist run, that one's taking a while. As a rule, if a game sits in the "To Be Finished" category and hasn't been played in 2 months, I uninstall it and move it back to it's "To Be Played" category or into "Main Story Complete" depending on circumstance.
"To Be Played: X" was the next set and was made as an offshoot of the "To Be Finished" category. Oringinally, this was one category, "To Be Played" but the list was rather long and wasn't giving me the answer to, "What do I want to play next?" problem. So this category exists as two. "To Be Played: AAA" which is for games with AAA devs, but more as a way to differentiate a style. AAA games tend to require investment in story, a long run and less "pick up and play" style of gaming.
The current holdings. These are games that I have never played or only played the first hour of at some other time in history. Except for Spec Ops: The Line, that's in there because I want to play it again so very, very much. It should be coming up after I finish my Dead Space 2 blog post which I swear is coming up, work, school, social, explanation 4 not found.
The other side of the coin is "To Be Played: Indie/Small". This is for small arcadey games that I can just pick up and play but for whatever reason haven't. And also for Indie games so they have their own niche. There's a few in here that I started playing and then they violated the "To Be Finished" rules and fell back into here because I didn't get too far into them.
The last few categories I didn't mentioned spawned out what was needed to get the rest of my library under control. "Server Tools" contains server tools like old Half Life Mod dedicateds, Terraria's Server Tool and a couple of links to outside admin software, just so I have it all together.
And "Strategy/Retro" was born because I had a bunch of strategy games that I pretty much only install to play with friends that have little to zero story content and after that was all sorted I had a very small amount of re-released retro games, such as the Thief series sitting around that I had already played so they didn't fit into either "To Be Played" category.
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The last thing, and perhaps the biggest thing that has changed is my "Favorites" category. This is only for the game or two games that I am currently playing. If a game has sat for a week or more in favorites without being played, it gets booted back down to it's old category. Strictly adhering to this rule has provided the biggest benefit. Now I start a game, play it for a bit and say, "I'll come back for it.", I used to do this all the time, end games midway through but those days are gone, it forces a rule and a time limit so I actually finish games which is a big hurdle for me and many people I know.
Interesting read. I wish it would allow you to give games multiple categories or allow you to tag them. I have mine sorted by genre but I would love it if I could mark them as completed or uncompleted as well, like you've done.
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