… Yes?

Start wherever. Buy games with interesting covers or play free demos.

If you like puzzle games I suggest trying portal. Portal 1 is inexpensive on Steam and playable on any modern PC including on Linux. It’s low pressure, has some humor, not very violent, and you can restart from anywhere you like.

If you are considering a hobby for your general well being and long term happiness, video games probably aren’t your best bet. Learning a new language, a nusical instrument, a sport, an art or craft, meditation, etc.; could be much more fulfilling for your life. It is easy to invest too much time on video games without getting a considerable reward in terms of long term happiness.

IMHO it’s worth getting into games because they are a mainstream form of entertainment these days (just like movies) and there are incredibly well made games and all sorts of genres, so that everyone can find something. It’s also a fun hobby, at least as long as you play either with friends, or singleplayer, or a multiplayer game with a non-toxic community. Stay away from popular e-sports titles, they’re usually filled with toxic teenagers.

If you like puzzle games, there are some great ones, for example Portal 1+2 or The Talos Principle 1+2 are probably the most polished ones out there, these are AAA games made by big studios, who don’t usually do puzzle games as they’re somewhat niche but there are some exceptions thankfully. Portal 2 is the highest ranked game of all time on Steam (I think it’s deserved).

There are also tons of great indie puzzle games out there, of course.

Somewhat related to puzzle games are “point and click” adventure games. That genre was very popular in the 80s and 90s, now it’s also rather niche, but still some great ones are being developed all the time. Adventure games are (also) about story-telling and solving many puzzles to advance in the game. You usually find lots of items in those and have to combine them in various ways and interact with the game world and its characters to solve puzzles and advance the story. That’s maybe the key difference between those and more focussed puzzle games where it’s more about the puzzles, less about item combinations and character dialogs. But adventures can also contain quite challenging puzzles none the less.

Genres are hard to distinguish these days because so many games are a blend of different genres. Anyway, you probably want to stay away from games tagged with “action” or “e-sports” and primarily look for “adventure”, “puzzle” or “casual” tags.

I will say, as a 30 year old man I had the urge to start playing games because they just looked so good these days. I played a little here and there growing up, but all of my friends were gamers and I just wasn’t interested. When I got interested, I found a lot of fun and joy in it.

I’m still not your typical gamer. I find a few games I really love and I keep playing them over and over—great campaigns with great story telling and great characters and great graphics are so much of it. Since I started playing video games in like 2020, I’ve basically played four games, but two of them I’ve played a bunch of times (red dead redemption II and Cyberpunk).

Now I’m looking at Stalker 2 and I think that might be my next game I want to play to death. Gotta wait to hear how people feel about it though.

What sort of experience are you interested in? Something challenging and competitive would have you looking at very different games than something relaxing. I’d probably recommend stardew valley for a first game as it’s widely regarded and cozy but not without challenges

My wife didn’t typically game in the traditional sense, but games she’s enjoyed in the past are the older Mario games, the Sims, and project zomboid (which she describes as the Sims but with zombies).

She’s also got like 100 hours in power washing simulator and she’s too scared to try Stardew valley because she knows it’ll consume her life.

No

A lot of women I know who aren’t the typical “gamer” type really enjoy Stardew Valley. It’s a little farming game where you live in a town, foster relationships with the townspeople, and generally go about small town life. Very cute game, especially fun with friends.

Also Minecraft, it’s very open ended and there are many ways to play it.

As for how to start, an affordable laptop will run both of these fairly well, if you want Nintendo games you’ll probably have to get a Nintendo Switch.

Definitely make a Steam account though, you’ll find pretty much all the games you could want in one place there (Minecraft is separate).

My wife is a 30+ woman and she loved (among others) OneShot, World of Goo, and Final Fantasy XV.

OneShot is an atmospheric, story-based game with some puzzle elements and a lot of lovable characters. On the flip side, there’s a lot of walking and it’s easy to get lost. Nevertheless, there’s a deep connection you as the player can build with the characters and the world they inhabit.

World of Goo is a physics-based building game, where you build bridges and towers out of cute sentient rubber-like balls, but beneath the solid physics, art and music there lies a deep social commentary too.

Final Fantasy XV is the most mainstream of these, but it is an entry into the FF games specifically designed for newcomers in mind. It follows four main and several supporting characters on a journey that starts as a road trip interspersed with beginner-friendly but still jaw-droppingly well rendered and animated combat and slowly but surely escalated to an epic catharsis.

This game recommendation thingy might be helpful: https://apps.quanticfoundry.com/surveys/start/gamerprofile/

In the profile you choose what you are looking for in a gaming experience - it doesn’t matter if you don’t know yet or need to make up some answers. There are questions like “How important is working towards a common goal with other players?”

It’s a place to start anyway.

Can I go completely 180 and suggest programming as a hobby? If you want a hobby where you’re in a computer. Then try learning to program little things. If you work on a computer then it’ll make things easier for you in the future, it’ll keep your brain sharp and teaches you problem solving.

I’d say start with some of the most popular games, like Mario and Pokemon. Those are the two biggest video game franchises in the world, they’re very accessible and even decades later still a ton of fun.

edit: FWIW, Nintendo is a problematic video game company and trying to destroy video game preservation of their games (and trying to prevent community-run video game competitions/tournaments of their games), but they still have made some of the best video games of all time.

Try out open-source games too, not just the big corporate games. Space Station 14, OpenTTD, Endless Sky, Naev, plenty of choices. Saw someone here rant about how the “videogames industry has become very rotten” and decided I’d point you to a non-rotten part of it.

I’m gonna go against the current here and say no. Videogames are not a good hobby and a poor investment of your time. If the alternative is deer hunting or anything shady then playing videogames is one of the less harmful things you can do on earth but among the thousand activities you can do and pick up as a hobby videogames are not free of issues.

First of all by specifically getting into video games you are looking at stare at a screen and sit for hours. Not a big deal if you can manage it but don’t limit yourself to just videogames, there are board games, social games, mind sports and many other games you can get into.

Videogames industry has become very rotten and has appropriated the whole community. Many of the titles being suggested here are “products” made by evil companies with mechanics built to mess up with people. Steam which many recommended you to download is a proprietary software launcher that belongs to a company that has no problem pushing loot boxes and abduct kids into gambling. That’s the sort of business you are getting your hands into.