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 gaming 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 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.

  • thevoidzero@lemmy.world
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    26 days ago

    I rarely use my computers for games. Occasional bomb squad game with my wife. That’s about it. I use it a lot for watching things, and coding a lot, related to work/personal projects and such. It was weird for me to find out most people that spend a lot of time on computers here are doing it because of games. Not because computers are fun to work with.

  • psion1369@lemmy.world
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    25 days ago

    I have my primary daily driver laptop running Arch for web programming and writing, my side laptop running arch for monitoring services and writing, my server computer running (again) arch that I use for web dev and jellyfin streaming, and my work laptop running Ubuntu for server management. Not to mention my chromebook for paper weight, and my wife’s laptop on Win10 she uses for design stuff. Nobody running games outside of my xBox One.

  • 3dmvr@lemm.ee
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    25 days ago

    I havent been gaming lately, I like playing with 3d software like blender, messing around setting up websites with vps and learning to setup my own fediverse instances, might go into local webdev or do some dropshipping, might do nothing with it, just fun to learn.

  • SmokeyDope@lemmy.world
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    25 days ago

    I still play games but now I have more things to do with computers. I started helping out an open source software project learning how to code basic things in lua, how to contribute using git pushes. make art texture graphics in gimp, mess with sound effects in audacity, clip videos together using kdenlive. I hope to learn how to use blender and do modeling. I test and review fellow devs stuff to try helping them out. As long as I learn new things and contribute it helps me feel like my computer time is more productive.

    Then I got in on the local LLM scene a year ago with the release of llama 3.1. I’m a science nerd who genuinely thinks the study of neural networks is cool. The idea of getting computers to simulate thoughts to help solve problems is a neat thing. Also I wanted to see how far we came from cleverbot days. It inspired me enough to dig out the old unused gaming desktop and really extract the most potential out of my old 1070ti.

    Now I wish I had more vram not for chasing high end graphics in video game entertainment, but because I want my computer to simulate high quality thoughts to help me in daily life.

  • sleepmode@lemmy.world
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    25 days ago

    I mostly use my Mac for business stuff, art and coding. The PC spends most of its time on offloaded AI tasks and rendering jobs. It was originally a toy for gaming but I’d rather use my Steam Deck for that now.

  • tiredofsametab@fedia.io
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    26 days ago

    These days, my home PC is mostly used for consuming media, editing my own media, and (at least this time of year) business and tax paperwork. Games are definitely not my primary use.

  • Nollij@sopuli.xyz
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    26 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.

  • Riskable@programming.dev
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    26 days ago

    I mostly use my computer for:

    • CAD (both 3D modeling and circuit board design)
    • Programming (mostly embedded firmware in Rust lately)
    • Chatting because doing that on a phone is too slow and autocorrect sucks.
    • Work (remote desktop, mostly)
    • News
    • AI tomfoolery with stuff like Stable Diffusion and LLMs.

    Every now and again I’ll get addicted to a new game and use my PC for that too. My latest addiction was Baldur’s Gate 3 when it came out 🤷

      • Riskable@programming.dev
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        24 days ago

        Oh yes! Loads of fun.

        Trying to get a good workflow for Micropython at the moment. It’s so I can make things easier for a robotics team I’m coaching.

  • SolidGrue@lemmy.world
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    26 days ago

    I don’t use my computers for modern gaming. Like OP, I prefer tabletop games, though I do speed run crossword puzzles and play some PixelDungeon on my phone when I have spare time. I also built a Retropie, and play some old Atari and PS2 roms on a bored Sunday. My stuff can run Civ IV, which is probably the last title I bought.

    My main systems are for work, or for supporting self-hosted services including local infrastructure, home lab stuff, email, blogs, home automation, media servers, etc, etc. Lately I’ve been getting into SDR projects using RPi or old laptops.

    So, uh… Yeah. Fun stuff, but not so much gaming.

  • qaz@lemmy.world
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    25 days ago

    I spend a lot more time coding than playing games. It’s not unusual for me to not be active on steam for a month.

  • Blastboom Strice@mander.xyz
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    25 days ago

    I don’t game very much (just recently I started playing outer wilds though a few times per week). I feel like I probably enjoy tweaking my laptop more than actually using it.😆 I dont even code much. I like finding open source alternatives to software and generally improve my laptop. Spent about 4months learning nixos:)

    I don’t know, at least I might be able to help others improve their pc’s too

  • Anissem@lemmy.ml
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    26 days ago

    I know you said you’re not into games much anymore but If you’re into D&D you might like Baldur’s Gate 3. I also know of a group for older gamers if you’re ever thinking of dabbling again.

      • Anissem@lemmy.ml
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        25 days ago

        It’s a discord group, only reason I really use the platform. It’s a fairly active group of 30+ year old gamers. I’ve yet to find a similar group on any platform that’s decently active.

    • LovableSidekick@lemmy.worldOP
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      24 days ago

      Thanks, a friend of mine is also trying to get me to play BG3. I do have an Oculus headset and have enjoyed playing Demeo on it, a D&D-style 3d game, just not often.