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Average completion times: indie 5-10 hrs, action-adventure 15-25, open world 40-60, the RPG that ate the winter 100+. The backlog only shrinks under two rules: finish-or-formally-abandon (dropping a game you're not enjoying counts as clearing it), and the one-in-one-out purchase rule during sales.
What The Gaming Backlog Calculator Works Out
- Total backlog: unplayed games multiplied by the average length. Thirty games at a modest 20 hours each is 600 hours. Typical lengths: indie 5-10 hours, action-adventure 15-25, open world 40-60, big RPG 100+.
- Time to clear it: total hours divided by your weekly gaming hours, shown in weeks or years. Six hours a week is a school-night budget; 600 hours at that pace is about two years with nothing new bought.
- Verdict: a blunt reading of the result. Under a year is clearable, one to two years is a paid-for year of content, and five years or more is a library to curate rather than a queue to finish.
- Share of games you will abandon early (advanced): most people drop a fair chunk of their pile after an honest few hours. Dropping a game counts as clearing it, so this shrinks the realistic hours. Set the hours played before abandoning to match your habit (3 hours is common, the refund window on most storefronts is 2).
- Weeks a year with no gaming (advanced): holidays, busy periods and the weeks a new baby or job eats. The clear date and clearing rate use only the gaming weeks that remain.
- Realistic hours and clear date (advanced): the hours after abandonments, and the calendar month you would finish starting today at your weekly pace.
- New games you buy per year (advanced): the clearing rate in games per year minus what you buy. If you buy faster than you play, the pile never clears; the break-even card shows the most you can buy a year and still make progress. The Steam summer and winter sales alone add two or three games to most libraries.
- Money sitting in the backlog (advanced): games multiplied by your average price paid, with the cost per hour of play you have already bought. Sale purchases average GBP 10 to GBP 20; at GBP 15 a game, 30 games is GBP 450 of unplayed content, which is usually under GBP 1 an hour.