Last month I wrote about my favorite games of 2021, and it got me thinking it may be helpful to share how I track what games I’ve played. When I was young and naïve I kept a spreadsheet, which was functional but a bit unintuitive to work with. So, one day, after getting tired of resizing column widths, and fiddling with cell formatting, I decided to make a change. I needed something that could track all my gaming cataloging needs: Wishlist, backlog, playing, and played. It was also important any tool I chose allowed me to easily take notes about the games I play. After checking an array of notetaking and list-making software I took a slight detour into project management. Eventually I found something that met all my needs: Trello. “But Trello is for project management, or bug tracking” you might say, and you would be right, but it can be used for so much more. Let me demonstrate how I use Trello to manage my game library and notes.
First, let me briefly describe how Trello works. Trello is a Kanban board. What is a Kanban board? Kanban gets its name from the Japanese word for billboard, it was developed by Toyota in the late 1940s to streamline their manufacturing operations. A Kanban board is a tool used to organize work. Each bit of work, task, thing, or widget is represented as a card. Any details and comments about the task are written on the card with the goal of keeping all information related to the task in one place. Cards are then organized into columns. Typically, each column describes a state of work. For example, you may have columns for “To Do”, “In Progress”, and “Completed”. The cards are moved between columns as their state changes. For example, once you think of a task it may be added to “To Do”, after starting the task it moves to “In Progress”, and when the task is finished it moves to “Complete”. Back in the day Kanban boards were physical, each task was represented with a notecard, and the boards were placed in relatively public places so a team could visualize their work. I’m not making auto parts, or trying to execute on a project, so how does Trello’s Kanban boards apply to maintaining a video game library?
On my Trello board each card represents a game. Let’s look at a game I’m currently playing, Persona 5 The Royal, as an example of a card’s anatomy.
1.) First, we have the title, which is rather self-explanatory.
2.) Next is the description where I like to add details such as a concept summary, production team members, the platform the game was released on, the genre, and more.
3.) In the comments section I add notes and observations about the game.
4.) Finally, to add a bit of color, I also like to add the games cover art to the which gives the card more of that video game box look. Sitting there in the “Playing” column doesn’t it look like a big box game on a shelf?
The card wasn’t always organized under “Playing”, it’s moved between a few different columns, and it’s like to move at least once more.
I use columns to organize my games by their current state. That was a rather technical description so let me break it down. In my Trello board I have 6 columns: Wishlist, backlog, playing, beaten, favorites, played not beaten. Going back to Persona 5 The Royal as an example, that game lived comfortably in the “Wishlist” bin for quite a while. I had the game in my sights but didn’t quite have access to it yet. Once I finally got access to Persona 5 The Royal it’s corresponding card was moved from Wishlist to backlog. Now I had access to the game, but I wasn’t actively playing. When the time came that I decided to commit myself to playing Persona 5 The Royal the card moved to the “Now Playing” column, where it is currently living quite comfortably. In the card’s future it may find itself in the “played not beaten” column if I take a long break and pick up another game, or the “beaten” column if I get to the credit crawl. Based on my experience so far though I think the ultimate destination will be my favorites columns.
I didn’t always have this many columns. When I first made my Trello board there were only four columns: wishlist, backlog, playing, and beaten. It was functional but lacked a level of specificity I was seeking. It didn’t feel right moving a game from “Now Playing” back to “Backlog” for example. I think of a backlog as a set of things untouched, tasks unstated. Putting a game I already started playing and gained some experience with back into backlog just felt wrong. I guess “Now Playing” and “Played Not Beaten” could be combined into an single “In Progress” column, but I like to keep my “Now Playing” column pretty clean; it’s all part of my attempt to focus more on the games I’m currently playing and avoid getting too distracted, otherwise I may never finish anything! I put a lot of thought into what games I should spend my time playing, perhaps that’s why I enjoy this process of organizing and categorizing.
Looking at my little abstraction of a game library, my Trello board, it reminds me of a physical shelf of games. Organizing my game library in Trello helps me visualize my life in games. With a single glance I can see my accomplishments (what I’ve played), keep myself focused (on what I’m currently playing), look ahead to what’s next (my backlog of games), and keep track of what I want to play (my Wishlist). To me getting that instant snapshot is one of the Kanban boards key benefits that is useful for project management, game organization, or anything that you’d like to track long term. I hope this inspires you to think of ways a Kanban board could bring a little more satisfaction to your favorite activities :).