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NoahFuel [any] @hexbear.net

people are right to be upset their hobby is pricing them out.

"Mario 64 was 60 dollars in 1995 meaning that it would be about 100 dollars today"

Pay has NOT kept up with inflation. People are poorer.

Folk need to stop pretending like people have as much money as they did in the 90s. Rent costs, house prices are astronomical.

Xbox's business is still impacted today by outpricing people with their initial Xbox One reveal pricing a decade ago.

Nintendo Treehouse comments are absolutely packed with people complaining about prices.

Again, I'm vastly aware that game budgets, inflation etc have increased!

but Pay has NOT increased accordingly. I don't know the solution, but that's the reality.

And I make these points as someone who is lucky enough to earn well enough to just buy them regardless. Most aren't as fortunate.

Game bubbles regularly disregard the poor, unfortunately, as the industry has an above-average number of middle-class background workers.

Price increases combined with physical knock effectively prices the poor out of legally gaming (Buying directly from them/the digital store)

81 comments

  • my hot take is gaming is not a hobby and never was... its a past-time. its semantics but whatever.

    a hobby is something like painting, or fixing up an old car, or doing some amateur music production with a friend... something creative or something that develops a creative skill. sports also dont count as a hobby. past-times can be pretty cheap or free, like hiking.

    • This is an absurd take. Even by this pointlessly reductive definition of a hobby, plenty of video games and sports still count. Do you honestly think there's more creativity involved in fixing a car than creating an entire city in City Skylines, or figuring out new tricks on a skateboard? Watch a video of Danny MacAskill on his bike and ask yourself if that's honestly less creative than fixing a car.

      • Do I think that there is more creative skill in rebuilding a car, getting involved in metal fabrication and so on, than place some pre-made digital assets around a city in a video game? Yes, I absolutely do and I think it's ridiculous to pretend otherwise.

        I go into hobby shops all the time. They sell kits for building RC cars and planes and boats. They sell stuff for painting or sculpting. A craft shop also sells the stuff for hobbies. I have never been into a hobby shop that sells footballs, or baseballs, keyboards, skateboards, or anything else. These aren't hobbies. Some of these things are sports, which are different.

        For the record I do both things. I do hobbies like painting miniatures. I enjoy past-times like watching shows and video games. I also do outdoor activities like kayaking or just doing nature walks/hikes. I'm not belittling any of this stuff. You do whatever you like in your free time. Only you can decide the exact value of what you do.

        • I can reduce your hobbies to "past-times" too. There's nothing creative about putting some pre-made car parts together. Might as well call building ikea furniture a hobby. I go into sports stores all the time and I don't see rc cars or miniatures, so it's pretty clear those things require no creative skill and are on the same level as watching tv.

          • and i can reduce it to anything being a hobby, like thinking of new ways to be racist or creative methods of farting but whats the point.... i dont think those things are hobbies i feel that shit in my bones and im not the only one

            whats strange is youd probably say hiking is a hobby. whats creative about walking places? loads of people who are poor do that daily its called commuting and its not a hobby. oh your hobby is baseball? your hobby is standing in a field with a glove on one hand for half the time and sitting on a bench for the other half? thats not a hobby. you like doing these things thats fine im sure you have fun and however you have fun is just as valid as anyone else. aint a hobby tho, champ

    • I mean, not to get "they targeted gamers" on anyone here but some games do fit that definition. Especially in the era of games like Minecraft which became mediums for creativity and skill.

      It might be less tangible than a physical painting but people make art and express creativity in videogames, even games where those expressions aren't intentional.

      I'm not too fussed about whether it is or isn't a hobby (either way it's enjoyed enough to piss people off) but I wouldnt want you to assume that videogames cannot be used to develop or express creativity either.

    • come on, this is a bit curmudgeonly. ridiculous to say sports don't count lol

    • That is certainly a hot take. I guess you also dont consider reading books a hobby since that is basically the same as watching tv ? Or working out also isnt a hobby since its not creative ? And gaming also isnt a hobby. So I guess I dont have hobbies :^)

      • Working out is absolutely not a hobby by any definition of the word. Reading books and watching TV are definitely past-times. Sure, it can be enriching, like how a sport can exercise the body. Not a hobby, though.

        • First, where did you get this from? "Working out is absolutely not a hobby by any definition of the word" It falls within the denotation of the word given it's sense being:

          Cambridge dictionary: "An activity that someone does for pleasure when they are not working"

          Collins dictionary: "A hobby is an activity that you enjoy doing in your spare time"

          Oxford Learners dictionary: "An activity that you do for pleasure when you are not working"

          Wiktionary: "An activity that one enjoys doing in one's spare time"

          Second is your meaning of hobby is not defined enough, paraphrasing: A hobby is something creative or that develops creative skill. But later on you disagree on videogames that are used to create and express creativity being a hobby.

          Your meaning of hobby seems to relate more with if something is manual/physical media than about just relating to creativity or creative skill.

          Bibliography

          hobby. (2025). Retrieved April 5, 2025, from https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/hobby

          Hobby definition and meaning | Collins English Dictionary. (n.d.). Www.collinsdictionary.com. Retrieved April 5, 2025, from https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/hobby

          hobby noun - Definition, pictures, pronunciation and usage notes | Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary at OxfordLearnersDictionaries.com. (2022). Oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com. Retrieved April 5, 2025, from https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/english/hobby

          hobby - Wiktionary, the free dictionary. (2025). Wiktionary. Retrieved April 5, 2025, from https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/hobby

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          • this might surprise you but most people dont define words based on what some assholes wrote down in a dictionary but rather the cultural context for which they hear and use those words like exercise some basic dialectic analysis here this reference to dictionary shit is literally lib-brained

            • Defining sense to understand the sentence meaning is a basic tool of semantics, due to the lack of common cultural referential, if you are that tepid to not understand it there's no point in continuing, disengage. Also don't bend theory to justify your dullnes it's not Marxist

              • dont try and couch your ableism behind synonyms like "dullness"... gamers really cant help themselves even when they dont use slurs the intent is still there.

                fuck.right.off. lib

    • Gaming is practically cheap or free too. There are computers everywhere and abandonware, emulators/roms, piracy or magic like openttd or openmw.

      Communism isn’t mere treats. We may not even be able to promise people much like that anyway.

81 comments