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
Yes
Linux stuff
this for me too
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 use mine mostly for work. But also games, music, and movies.
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.
I do 3D animation and illustration. Fortunately, running games requires the exact same kind of hardware so my workstation doubles as a playstation
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 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.
Technically for me it’s work now
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.
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.
yep same, stopped chasing hardware for gaming just to need better hardware for rendering and using all the other software I got into
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. :(
imo thats way more fun than playing a game, it’s a game in itself, ultimate sandbox
That’s exactly it! I always say it as “I’m going to play in Unity/Godot”, I’m really happy it’s not just me! :)
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.
