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.

  • anomnom@sh.itjust.works
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    3 days ago

    I pretty much stopped gaming when I started working serious jobs after college. I was a designer and front end dev, then design lead for a startup (where I allowed myself to be overworked, especially around deadlines). It’s a lot of screen time and playing games when I got home lost it’s appeal. Plus I’d switched to Macs, and my favorite multiplayer games were being over run by cheating (mid 2000s).

  • 🐍🩶🐢@lemmy.world
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    3 days ago

    I mostly use mine to program. I started gaming again after barely playing them for a decade, but that is not my computer’s primary purpose. Otherwise, I do dumb online browsing, play D&D with friends (used to…), fiddle around with art (mostly do that on iPad), 3d printing or electronics related things. Random shit like that.

  • originalucifer@moist.catsweat.com
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    4 days ago

    i dont really game. my hobbies are more self-hosting, service related stuff. giant media library… distributed av system. lots of docker, server stuff.

    the selfhosting communities have some interesting traffic

    • Oisteink@feddit.nl
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      4 days ago

      And home automation! Microcontrollers! I do try to game, but its just not that fun anymore. Nothing beats 8vs8 quake on school lan anyways

    • LovableSidekick@lemmy.worldOP
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      3 days ago

      That reminds me, for a long time I’ve had an idea for a piece of instrumental music that would be the intro to a video. I’m not a musician but used to play the piano a little. I do have a little synthesizer keyboard from when my kids were young. If I noodled out a melody on that and recorded it, is there software I could use to make it sound like multiple instruments, add drum effects etc. so it sounds real? I don’t know if there’s a musical term for doing that - flesh it out?

  • Hanrahan@slrpnk.net
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    2 days ago

    Anyway I’m just wondering how common it is to use computers more for coding and other technical non-game stuff.

    I’d estimate gaming is <5% of my use, probably lower.on my PC

    Id say maybe <10% on my phone

    I have no console. I had a WiiU as my last one and sold it during Covid as I never iswed it.

    Have been thinking aboit a Steam Deck

    Am old as fcuk, used to wrote my own games in machine code on my Commodore 64.

  • COASTER1921@lemmy.ml
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    3 days ago

    No games here, I never have found them interesting for whatever reason. Because of this my laptop is a 2018 Chromebook with reflashed BIOS running Ubuntu. It has significantly less processing power than my phone but is plenty sufficient for everything I ever need a computer to do.

  • Nollij@sopuli.xyz
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    4 days ago

    4 hours and 52 comments, and not a single mention of what we all knew even before Avenue Q:

    The Internet is for porn. Everything else is just what happens between porn.

    More seriously, my desktop is where I do larger research that will require more than a couple of tabs. Little to no gaming there. Other PCs are mainly for videos.

  • IngeniousRocks@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    3 days ago

    I use an HTPC that happens to be powerful enough to be a gaming PC, I also have a media server facing the internet for use on the go.

    Most of my pc use nowadays is for media consumption and analog to digital conversion for backups (VHS to HDD and eventually M-Disc for long term storage).

    I do a bit of emulation, most of that is done with an ARM handheld PC but it’s an SP form factor and I don’t really think it counts. I do a bit of PS2 emulation as well on my HTPC but mostly just to verify good rips of my physical games which I have backed up.

  • Hadriscus@lemm.ee
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    3 days ago

    I do 3D animation and illustration. Fortunately, running games requires the exact same kind of hardware so my workstation doubles as a playstation