recording games played

I obsessively record every single game that I play. I have a stack of rough paper stapled together for me to conveniently record games played, dates, player names and scores of each player. I transfer the information recorded into an Excel spreadsheet, according to which I have played 1804 games since March 2004. That's about 45 games per month, which is more than one game a day. I also record my games played on Boardgamegeek. Because of this, I can use an interesting feature of Boardgamegeek to display my most recently played games on the side bar of my blog.

My gamelog

When recording games played, I sometimes also write some comments if that particular game was interesting, e.g. something funny happened, or it was an unusually exciting / fun game.

I have even written an Excel macro that generates a report of games played between certain dates, how many times they were played, how many times I've won etc. This is handy for generating five & dime lists. "Five & dimes" is a term used in the boardgame hobby to mean a list of games being played 5 times or more, and 10 times or more, within a certain year.

I also have an Excel spreadsheet that I use for recording information about my wishlist. It includes games that I'm interested in and I rank them with my own ranking system, e.g. 10 means I'm sure I want to buy it (i.e. on my "buylist"), anything 4 to 6 means I'm interested but am not sure yet whether I really want to buy it. 1 to 3 means I've decided not to buy it, but sometimes I do review them and may decide to "upgrade" them to a higher rank. I think I am rather obsessive about being systematic. Games in my wishlist will "graduate" to my ownlist if and when I buy them. I also keep an ownlist.

Keeping a gamelog is fun, and keeping a wishlist is useful. I sometimes enjoy doing some statistical analysis on my games played. Yeah, I'm a weirdo. I do find it fun when looking back at some games played and reading through the comments I have written. The wishlist is, of course, useful for planning my game purchases. I have a big collection now and really should be playing more instead of buying more. So, it's good to have a consolidated view of games I'm interested in, to compare them and to narrow down my buylist (but not to eliminate it, ahah!).

Well... things that a boardgame hobbyist does... I wonder how many other hobbyists are like me.