I’m an older dude whose phase of staying up all night playing was back in the early console days. I prefer in-person tabletop RPGs like D&D, Traveller and Call of Cthulhu. Just not into computer games anymore, but that and social media seem to be most people’s primary computer activities.
Game chatter has changed over the years - I used to see a lot of talk about graphics quality and massively powerful hardware - maybe that was during a period when it was rapidly improving, I dunno. But the current focus seems to be more on game industry business decisions sucking.
Anyway I’m just wondering how common it is to use computers more for coding and other technical non-game stuff.
I have games installed but I mostly just write programs for fun now. I usually don’t get a ton of time to play games, plus they haven’t been as fun as they used to be as a kid.
My partner and I have some high end gaming machines and play games maybe once a week or every other week. Our computers’ main use is downloading movies and shows and playing them for us!
I used to play 40+ hours a week, but that was like a half-decade ago.
Does making game code count? I like making game things and binning them before they resemble something playable! :)
Besides that… I mostly… no that’s it, I rarely play things, unless that time every 6 months that I get really into a top-down RPG. For a weekend, my main use is exploring a colorado wasteland or a small town, but it’s followed by me starting to make a game aaaand giving up again… but it’s fun! :)
I really should make music, I sometimes feel the spark went and it’s sad. :(
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And if you dig hard enough you’ll see I’m an app architect closing in on 20 years in the industry.
I mean, I play a lot of games, but the time I spend coding for work and coding for not work is definitely greater time spent gaming.
54M here. Rolled my first D&D character in 1978. Played GURPS, Twighlight 2000, Traveller, you name it I probably have at least dabbled in playing it.
Today I play D&D 2024 and 5e, Call of Cthulhu, Castles and Crusades and a few others. Some on Roll20, or Foundry VTT (which is awesome BTW.) My primary gaming group is all fathers and mothers spread out across the country.
As far as actual Computer games, I used to be into Flight Sims, but dropping $500 plus on JUST a graphics card is just not something that is going to happen. It’s not the wife acceptance factor, it the sheer balls the graphics card manufacturers have charging that much for their crap. I still dust off MS FS 2004 and run it on my Dell Precision laptop, but my machine won’t run the latest version. I would like to see if it would run Battlestar Galactica Deadlock though.
Otherwise, I have had a home server for many years. It runs Proxmox and I have containers running Plex, Homeseer, SMB (acts as my NAS), and it provides backup services for every other computer in the house.
For reference, I am an IT Professional, with about 30 years in the business.
I last launched Minecraft about 4 years ago. Before that, I don’t even remember what games I might have played on my computer. The last console game I played with any regularity was GTA 5 on console, and once I beat the single player game I pretty much stopped. I simply don’t have time to spend on games I guess. I do have both Cribbage and Sudoku on my phone. Probably play them a combined average of 2-3 hours a month.
I do so many different things on my computers that I rarely have time to play. I do have four or five games (as in Steam bought), but all I get to play is a clondike solitaire occasionally.
I build my machine about 8 years ago and it is time for a new one. I use it mainly for coding and research but I do like the occasional game (even VR). I try to max out specs so the PC lasts a long time.
Photo editing and uploading, maintaining my sports club’s website, video calls to family members, watching films and TV. Do word puzzles count as gaming? I do Quordle and Octordle every morning. I also have an ancient laptop running Linux; I’m trying to work myself up to switch the computer over come October.
Hmm it’s difficult to quantify. On workday I spend an average of probably 6-8 hours on a computer with job related tasks. Not really coding most of the time, since we’re maintaining and building a network, so it’s more configuration, planning, coordination, and documentation work. Some days we’re out to actually deploy hardware, or run around and debug stuff, so it’s hard to estimate the average screentime.
My free time involves a lot of computer time too, but it is split up into more smaller categories, either on the desktop computer or the smartphone computer. Manga, Games, Youtube, Movies, Anime Series, Lemmy, Pornography, News, Banking and Investments.
In the end I think my job is the biggest unified chunk of time, but that’s kind of arbitrary, if I started subdividing it into different tasks maybe gaming would become the biggest chunk.
I do game, but I have a dedicated HTPC that I game on. My laptop is mostly for work, I own my own business so I do a lot of design, spreadsheeting, etc. I also write lyrics and prose for a hobby, so I use my laptop for that, as well as some light music production. I think the only game I play on it is the KDE minesweeper clone.
Mainly gaming but if I’m looking things up online and need multiple tabs. I won’t use mobile. Mobile sucks ass for that.
Multiple tabs and two monitors makes things much easier to do research.
Spreadsheet work for my business… on mobile?
I’m crazy not stupid.
I still game on my desktop. But it’s never been the primary use.
Graphic Design, video editing, 3D modelling, etc… has been the reason for my upgrades over the years. The fact that each of those upgrades allowed my games to perform better was a side-effect instead of being the primary reason.
Does collaborative writing for fun count as games? The communities involved call them games, but there’s no thoughts about control schemes or graphics, and no need to do anything outside your browser. That, chat, social media, reading (both for work and personal time), and the like take up the bulk of my PC time.
I would call collaborative writing computer use but not a computer game. Programming feels like a game to me!
