Some gamers believe that a game backlog is eternal, never to be cleared in its entirety. It's a massive collection of games amassed over a lifetime, reflecting countless impulse purchases over years and years of Steam and Epic Games sales. In my case, the problem wasn't so much the size of the backlog (it was just 45 games) as the lack of drive to pick up a new title. Over the last five years, I have seen my motivation steadily decline to the point where I preferred watching a YouTube video over playing a game. It's not that I didn't try playing new games, but I could never get past the first few hours. So, it was time to get some help from AI. I decided to feed my game backlog into Claude, so it could do what I couldn't: devise a step-by-step plan that I could actually execute to reduce my backlog. I didn't just want generic recommendations; I needed a customized plan that took into account my likes, dislikes, and gaming behavior. Claude created a phase-wise strategy to address my lack of motivation, and told me the real reason behind my long-pending backlog.

My "wing it" strategy was clearly not working

It was time to try something new

I'm not a recent PC gamer; I got my first PC over 26 years ago. This problem of not feeling the motivation to play is quite new, relatively speaking. It's only in the last five years that it has truly become a thing. Perhaps it's the workload that's leaving me with too little mental bandwidth to engage with games as I used to. Maybe it's just age catching up with me — many fellow gamers in their mid-30s feel the same. Whatever it is, I haven't quite made peace with it yet. I still want to be a gamer, enjoying old classics and new titles alike, just as I used to ten years ago. That's why I've been fighting my growing backlog on my own, and failing miserably.

Mulling for days whether to play Alan Wake 2, Death Stranding, or Metro 2033 before firing up Smash Karts — a casual browser game — yet again hasn't exactly been a successful strategy. I've even been struggling to resume titles from series that I've loved, such as Dying Light 2 and Ori and the Will of the Wisps. In fact, the last time I actually saw the end credits of a game was over two years ago, when I finished Alan Wake and Max Payne 3 back to back over two weeks. And I don't remember being completely engrossed by a game since Cyberpunk 2077, which I played years after its initial, bumpy release.

Hoping for things to improve, I never really thought about creating a real plan to address my backlog. Although it's still only 45 games long, it weighs heavily on my mind. Having missed playing multiple standout games during their initial release windows, I feel this game backlog has grown into something I need to fix. For instance, I still haven't touched Ghost of Tsushima, Senua's Saga: Hellblade II, Hogwarts Legacy, God of War, and Elden Ring. If this continues, it will become near-impossible to find my way back to gaming. And that's not something I'm ready for just yet. Hence, I finally admitted that I needed a structure to solve my problem — Claude was my tool of choice.

I needed a proper plan, tailored to my track record

Claude told me the fix wasn't more willpower — it was sequencing

I may not have been playing new games in the last five years, but I've been religiously tracking the ones I want to play. I use Backloggd as my game backlog tool, and I've added 45 titles to my backlog over the last 2–3 years. To start my Claude backlog attack project, I took some screenshots of my backlog, so Claude knew what we were dealing with (it failed to scrape the data from Backloggd due to site restrictions). After corrections to 3 of the 45 titles that it had captured from the images, I gave it the following prompt:

I want you to build a step-by-step plan that I can use to reduce this backlog. I'll give you some pointers, so you have the necessary context:

1. I have been struggling to pick up new titles in the last two years, and I spent most of my time playing a browser game that I am accustomed to.

2. The games I do pick up, such as Metro 2033, Alien: Isolation, Control, Ori and the Will of the Wisps, Ghostrunner, and Dying Light 2: Stay Human - I struggle to finish them past the first few levels. It's not even that I don't like these series, since I loved and finished the first Ori game, Dying Light 1, and also liked the atmosphere of Alien: Isolation and Control.

3. I did finish some titles in the last few years, such as Cyberpunk 2077, Max Payne 3, and Alan Wake, so it's not as if I don't enjoy videogames anymore.

4. I'm looking for an actionable plan to reduce my backlog which takes into consideration my past history with games, the titles I abandonded, and my likes and dislikes.

5. Ask me for whatever information you need to come up with this plan.

6. This plan should detail the order in which I should start playing these games.

Right on cue, Claude asked me how much time I could dedicate per session, why I finished or didn't finish certain titles, and how frequently I play games, among other things. Each of these questions had options, so I didn't have to think too much about the answers. Claude then identified the "core problem," and it was something that I had missed: I was mixing sporadic gaming sessions with momentum-dependent games. It told me that my backlog was filled with titles that either had complex systems or slow-burn segments. The former demanded relearning after a long absence, and the latter needed longer sessions to pay off.

Hence, the plan it created hinged on kicking off with games that delivered concise and immediately gripping narratives and were relatively free of complex systems, such as Gone Home, Undertale, and What Remains of Edith Finch. I could then move on to longer experiences like Metro 2033, Dying Light 2, and God of War — these titles made up the familiar territory that I always enjoy. I could then follow up with games like Alan Wake 2, Control, Ghost of Tsushima, and Spider-Man: Miles Morales, which are fast-paced and offer strong narratives. The last phase would be made up of games that demanded the most investment — Red Dead Redemption 2, Elden Ring, Horizon Forbidden West, and Hogwarts Legacy, among others.

Claude didn't just classify the games into different phases; it also ranked them according to the likelihood that I would finish them once I started. This turned the plan from a phase-wise approach, where I had to pick the games myself, to a ranked list where I had a roadmap from game #1 to #45 — no more decision fatigue. Claude also told me to drop games without guilt if I wasn't enjoying them. This was obvious, but when I saw it laid out in front of me, that's when I warmed up to the idea of abandoning games that I had lovingly added to my backlog. Lastly, Claude recommended I don't play two momentum-heavy games back to back; instead, I should follow a long open-world or RPG game with a short Phase 1 game as a palate cleanser. This advice further gave me another lens with which to approach my backlog.

A fresh look at my backlog was what I really needed

Claude helped me gamify my backlog attack plan

Claude didn't do anything magical; it simply put things into perspective. Ranking games according to playtime, degree of complexity, and fitment with my past gaming behavior, it helped me see my backlog in a new light. My Backloggd list no longer seemed like this homogenous, impenetrable blob that wore me down the more I browsed it. Claude broke it down into manageable phases, and ranked the games to make the plan more actionable. Instead of the backlog feeling like a chore that I had been procrastinating on forever, Claude helped me gamify the entire process.

I've been playing Forza Horizon 6 for the last two weeks, so I'm already doing better than I was before. While it's a new title that wasn't in my backlog, I'm glad it's engaging enough to keep me going. I haven't thought of abandoning it till I earn all the wristbands and explore all the regions Japan has to offer. Now that my backlog has been converted into a tier-wise roadmap, I'm finally looking forward to revisiting titles I abandoned years ago and picking up gems that I couldn't before. If you've been struggling with your game backlog, I highly recommend you use Claude to better manage it. It may not give you a silver bullet to finish your backlog, but it can surely allow you to make better choices when deciding what to play and what to keep for later.

Using Claude helped me see my backlog differently

Anyone can look at a game backlog and tell you to start some games before others, based on length, recency, or Metacritic scores. Claude helped me uncover that I wasn't approaching my backlog the right way. After understanding the kind of games that I actually finished and abandoned, it devised a phase-wise plan to help me chip away at the backlog. It converted the project from a chore to a game in itself, and that's the real game-changer.