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’m a recreational coder first and foremost. Sometimes I play games, but rarely all the way through
Linux stuff
this for me too
Yes
Audio! I’m a hobbyist musician.
Gaming is a close second.
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?
Maybe “arranging” or “composing”.
As for tools to make it happen: You can use a “DAW” (Digital Audio Workstation) which is how most people compose these days. I use Reaper because it’s a tiny download, very full featured, and cheap. Ableton is very popular and has the biggest community online. Cakewalk is completely free (with a sign up.) ProTools is what a lot of professionals use, though it’s dying a slow death because it’s very expensive, they’ve gone full subscription model, and the things it can do that drew people to it can be done just as well with other DAWs that aren’t so predatory.
A DAW won’t do the work for you, though. If you want something to make harmonies or drum beats for your melody for you, there are a lot of "plugin"s or "VST"s you can download that can help with that process. Or, if you just want to give something a melody and tell it to make a song, there are probably AI solutions these days.
Good luck! Beware the audio rabbit hole. This can be a cheap, or ridiculously expensive hobby.
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).
I use mine mostly for work. But also games, music, and movies.
I do 3D animation and illustration. Fortunately, running games requires the exact same kind of hardware so my workstation doubles as a playstation
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.
Funny thing I thought about when coming back home…
My work laptop has been used more for gaming than my gaming pc has, and inverse of that my gaming pc has seen more work done than my work laptop
Why? I don’t fucking know why it just is
Technically for me it’s work now
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.
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.
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.
What’s a computer?
- I work with computers, so: work
- I mainly consume media (tablet, phone) or read (e-ink) these days.
- Raspberry Pi handles my home automation, and I’m always futzing with it
- my laptop plays games about once a month or taxes once a year
I do love games, but most of what I do at my computer is maker projects. CAD, 3d printing, electronics design, coding. Lately I’ve been building a puzzle box for my niece’s birthday.
Interestingly, I did upgrade my GPU a year and a half or so ago (to a used 3070, I’m not made of money) and since then the main thing I’ve used that GPU for is actually AI experiments rather than games. E.g. for the puzzle box, I got Stable Diffusion to generate images for a puzzle for me. It’s four images, and when you combine them in the right way they reveal a fifth image. I don’t think I could have done the same puzzle without AI.
I do still play games, though. I’m just kind of off the big budget stuff these days.