The thread below is open for everyone to share their weekend gaming plans as usual. But as is my occasional wont, I’d like to tack on an extra question: How do you manage your “queue”? By this I mean the backlog of games that you have intended to play for a while but still haven't gotten around to actually playing. Many of us have a queue―it’s a source of guilt and perhaps a source of longing for a period in your life when you had more free time to spend on video games. But rarely, at least in my case, is the queue a source of games that I actively play.
In fact, I’m astonished at how long I've had certain games sitting in my queue. I’m about five hours into Contact, a quirky role-playing game for the Nintendo DS. I’ve been five hours into Contact for some time. On most weekends for the past seven years, I've had the same thought: “Maybe I’ll fire up Contact again this weekend.” And I should! It’s the kind of game that I like—distinctive, idiosyncratic, whimsical—and it was made by Grasshopper Manufacture, a studio that often has something interesting to say. Yet I never charge up the DS and give Contact a second look. It’s just one game among many that I don’t give the attention I think it deserves.
My game shelves are dotted with neglected games like Contact. So are my Steam library, my Xbox hard drive, my PS3, etc. Granted, this is a first-world problem if ever there was one. But with that stipulation, I'd like to know: Do you have a queue? What’s in it? And have you had any success digging into your backlog? I wouldn’t mind some tips for whittling down my own queue. As for the titular question―what I’m playing this weekend—I’d like to say it’s Contact, but it probably won’t be.