It would be interesting for you to list titles, because I share the OP's sentiment that this year has been largely uninteresting for gaming. I've had exactly three games which I cared about: Like a Dragon Ishin, LaD Gaiden, and Baldur's Gate 3. Good games all, but not exactly a barn burning year.
Sure, here's some highlights from this year for me: Street Fighter 6, Sea of Stars, Ghost Song (technically late 2022, but I'm counting it), Super Mario Wonder, Octopath Traveler 2, Void Stranger, Oxenfree 2, Age of Empires 2 (on Xbox).
Thanks for that. Looking at that list, I wonder if the reason that I've felt underwhelmed is because of my backlog. For example I actually kind of forgot about Sea of Stars and OT 2 (both games I do want to play), because I have so many JRPGs in my backlog already that I can't throw more onto the pile.
If by "backlog" you are referring to the mere brute fact that you have a bunch of games you haven't played, fine.
If by "backlog" your mental model includes even a hint of obligation... drop it. You have no obligation to games. You have no obligation to play them, you have no obligation to finish them if you start. They're just sunk costs. If they happen to be what you want to do, great, but if what you really want to do tonight is drop $30 on some new (to you) game and go to town, all that is costing you is $30 and the relevant time. It is not costing you $30, the relevant time, and the moral failure of betraying your backlog, because the latter does not exist. It is not costing you any more because you "wasted" the money acquiring your backlog, because, again, it is sunk cost.
Yes, it's obvious when I say it, but if you're anything like me (and most other people I see) it takes a few very deliberative passes at training your subconscious to really get this.
The good news, breaking yourself of sunk cost fallacy can directly pay off in your job, too. It's a pernicious little mistake that can sneak up on you, and it's one of the things that divides the engineers from the business folk in your company... and I gotta tell you, even as an engineer and with all sympathy to engineers, the business folk are 100% in the right on this one.
(Additionally, once you really internalize this, you'll also find yourself less inclined to buy something just because it's on a killer deal. The marginal value of adding one more game to my list of games I can play in the future for $0 may not be even $1 once I've already got a couple dozen such great $0 choices.)
Agree with all this. One additional thing for me is I think it's fun to be playing a game while it's hot and part of "the conversation", rather than after everyone has moved on to something else and I'm just playing catchup. Just another point in favor of forgetting the concept of a backlog entirely.
The two big hits for me this year have been Baldur's Gate and Armored Core. Both are by devs with a good track record. But I can definitely see the argument that there is a lot of samey crap. Activision seems to be on an annual release cadence for Call of Duty now. Its already come full circle by remaking the modern warfare trilogy. Starfield was a disappointment, Bethesda seems stuck in 2003. There's the endless stream of sports titles which really should be their own category of entertainment. They are so divorced from the rest of the video game market.
Everyone seems to have forgotten Hogwarts: Legacy was this year too.
Maybe not to your taste, but over 15m copies sold, second highest single player game of all time on Steam after Cyberpunk and very strong reviews (89% aggregate on opencritic).
