I keep meaning to try this or backloggery just to catalog my stupid collection…hmm…
Just my perspective, but backloggd doesn’t seem well suited for cataloging collections. It’s good as a social platform, for writing reviews and seeing what your friends are playing and making themed lists. But the way it handles versions is messy and insufficient for actual cataloging I bet.
In that respect, I’d say the current incarnation of Backloggery is better for actual collection tracking. It is delightfully Web 2.0 and the social features are out of the way and completely ignorable.
It’s kind of a shame how much of a downgrade the upcoming redesign is, especially considering how much time it has taken to get going. If they had just updated the old site with a mobile-friendly layout, it would be much better than what they’re actually planning
I believe the one guy who basically runs the site and is doing the update has a medical condition that really messed up his ability to use his hands, so the very slow progress being made is at least understandable.
Also anyone who joins backloggery can become my friend and see my daily game updates where I post a single sentence that may not have much to do with anything~
Yeah, I’m sympathetic to that, I just really don’t see the point of taking the time to upgrade it to modern web standards because well, the modern web is shit and the reimplementation is not exempt from that
i have no desire for collection tracking and prefer to engage with these things as artistic experiences so backloggd works for me
The new backloggery site finally went up and… I’m really not sure about this at all. The social bit has been pushed much to the side and I worry is just ill conceived (I can’t tell if others can actually see the posts I put up on their pages) which is a shame as I’ve got a couple of online friends where that’s the main way we keep in touch.
I used the beta site a bit a few months ago and everything has become much more cumbersome to maintain. It’s sad that one of the last individually maintained web apps with a distinctly 2000s design and workflow is now replaced with this…
idk if ppl here would go to a site like backloggd for games writing as such, but ill just post some of my fav moments here:
ludzu is my favorite poster on backloggd tho he doesn’t seem to be active anymore. tbh prominent users and “circles” thereof drop off that website frighteningly quickly, or maybe i just joined at the wrong time…
likewise poisonpink was good but deleted their account some of their stuff is archived though
windowlight is a more recent (by one year) writer whose point of view i think is very cool. on their rym page they have a 5/10 review of Black Saint and the Sinner Lady which just says “jazz for rock n rollers”
having spent a lot of time on it in recent years i’m alternately charmed and put off by the site itself and its culture… vgame thing i think about a lot is a backloggd list of gamescrit whose description goes, “It goes without saying that Backloggd is the foremost Lyceum for video game discussion and debate on the internet. However, some significant writing on the topic of video games has taken place beyond our walls.” some!! and of course theres like 11 video essays on that list
i regularly find good weird little thoughts and readings on backloggd, i feel like vgame criticism is still at the point where it suffers hugely from trying to be inflated into something “substantial” or fully worked out… we’re still at the groping-in-the-swamp stage imo so fragmented stuff often holds up a lot better. it’s funny that most of the people on backloggd whose reviews i thought were interesting seem very ambivalent abt the emerging culture of the site, esp a penchant for bitchiness or letterboxdy joke reviews that they themselves often help create… but idk i feel like maybe “a critical structure that everyone involved kind of disrespects and loathes” is at least more conducive to interesting work than the “we are thrilled to be a member of this important institution” mindset of more formalised places. good to poke around before the website itself deletes all these reviews in a server migration once it’s bought by the ign family.
Yeah idk what it is about bl in particular but it is sad how many writers that i like deactivate their accounts after like a year.