Anybody here whose main use of computers is NOT games?

Yes

A lot of people in IT, especially programmers I have met, are completely uninterested in gaming.

To be sure, there are PLENTY of gamers in IT, but many people I have met are done with computers once they get home.

My main use is for porn.

I use mine mostly for work. But also games, music, and movies.

I'm a recreational coder first and foremost. Sometimes I play games, but rarely all the way through

Linux stuff

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.

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 dont really game. my hobbies are more self-hosting, service related stuff. giant media library.. distributed av system. lots of docker, server stuff.

the selfhosting communities have some interesting traffic

I never play, i always code.. And i am not even that good at it 😢

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

Audio! I'm a hobbyist musician.

Gaming is a close second.

Technically for me it's work 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.

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.

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.

I do 3D animation and illustration. Fortunately, running games requires the exact same kind of hardware so my workstation doubles as a playstation

I use the crap out of my computer.

-Video editing -Music editing -Word processing -Spreadsheets -Microprocessor programming -YouTube viewing -Image editing -Shopping -Investing -Web surfing -3D printing -CNC Routing -Website development

• Oh and gaming.

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 play games, but I also work on creative projects and watch shows/movies on my computer. I use Illustrator to create typeface designs, graphic design for laser cutting or stickers, 3D modeling and slicing programs for my 3D printer, Google Docs for writing, coding for Raspberry Pi and Arduino projects, et al.

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. :(

Hmm it's difficult to quantify. On workday I spend an average of probably 6-8 hours on a computer with job related tasks. Not really coding most of the time, since we're maintaining and building a network, so it's more configuration, planning, coordination, and documentation work. Some days we're out to actually deploy hardware, or run around and debug stuff, so it's hard to estimate the average screentime.

My free time involves a lot of computer time too, but it is split up into more smaller categories, either on the desktop computer or the smartphone computer. Manga, Games, Youtube, Movies, Anime Series, Lemmy, Pornography, News, Banking and Investments.

In the end I think my job is the biggest unified chunk of time, but that's kind of arbitrary, if I started subdividing it into different tasks maybe gaming would become the biggest chunk.

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.

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

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.

I rarely play games on my computers, coding is the bulk of what I do, the rest is data analysis, email and research.

I'm not a gamer. Work at computer all day, only mobile (no games either) outside work.

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.

I use online games as a way to hang out with friends. Usually it's about an hour or two a day. The rest of my computer time is spent coding or doing work stuff.

54M here. Rolled my first D&D character in 1978. Played GURPS, Twighlight 2000, Traveller, you name it I probably have at least dabbled in playing it.

Today I play D&D 2024 and 5e, Call of Cthulhu, Castles and Crusades and a few others. Some on Roll20, or Foundry VTT (which is awesome BTW.) My primary gaming group is all fathers and mothers spread out across the country.

As far as actual Computer games, I used to be into Flight Sims, but dropping $500 plus on JUST a graphics card is just not something that is going to happen. It's not the wife acceptance factor, it the sheer balls the graphics card manufacturers have charging that much for their crap. I still dust off MS FS 2004 and run it on my Dell Precision laptop, but my machine won't run the latest version. I would like to see if it would run Battlestar Galactica Deadlock though.

Otherwise, I have had a home server for many years. It runs Proxmox and I have containers running Plex, Homeseer, SMB (acts as my NAS), and it provides backup services for every other computer in the house.

For reference, I am an IT Professional, with about 30 years in the business.

I still game on my desktop. But it's never been the primary use.

Graphic Design, video editing, 3D modelling, etc... has been the reason for my upgrades over the years. The fact that each of those upgrades allowed my games to perform better was a side-effect instead of being the primary reason.

Mainly gaming but if I’m looking things up online and need multiple tabs. I won’t use mobile. Mobile sucks ass for that.

Multiple tabs and two monitors makes things much easier to do research.

Spreadsheet work for my business… on mobile?

I’m crazy not stupid.

My partner and I have some high end gaming machines and play games maybe once a week or every other week. Our computers’ main use is downloading movies and shows and playing them for us!

I used to play 40+ hours a week, but that was like a half-decade ago.

https://mastodon.social/@livelakemichigan/ https://mastodon.social/@livelakesuperior/ https://bsky.app/profile/lake-michigan.live https://bsky.app/profile/lake-superior.live

And if you dig hard enough you'll see I'm an app architect closing in on 20 years in the industry.

I mean, I play a lot of games, but the time I spend coding for work and coding for not work is definitely greater time spent gaming.

I used to use mine for games but I don’t really play games any more. So for the last year or two my PC has been mostly dedicated to CAD, PCB design, coding, et cetera.

I’m in my 40s and I sort of just dropped out of gaming on PC. I game on a console when I feel like I want to game.

My desktop rarely gets turned on anymore and I only use it for a cracked version of Wizards of the Coast’s 4E character builder because I play in a group that runs fourth edition.

My laptop is for learning things (IT related), general browsing, taxes, and whatever I feel like doing that feels cumbersome on a phone.

I last launched Minecraft about 4 years ago. Before that, I don’t even remember what games I might have played on my computer. The last console game I played with any regularity was GTA 5 on console, and once I beat the single player game I pretty much stopped. I simply don’t have time to spend on games I guess. I do have both Cribbage and Sudoku on my phone. Probably play them a combined average of 2-3 hours a month.

Love setting up servers and home labing. Working on setting up a Pixelfed server now

I do so many different things on my computers that I rarely have time to play. I do have four or five games (as in Steam bought), but all I get to play is a clondike solitaire occasionally.

I build my machine about 8 years ago and it is time for a new one. I use it mainly for coding and research but I do like the occasional game (even VR). I try to max out specs so the PC lasts a long time.

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.

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.

If I can find the time I use my home computer for gaming and watching torrents, but most of the time I spend using computers it's at work, for coding (hopefully, if there's any time left after all the daily bullshit), answering emails and whatnot, and swearing at while trying to get them to work.

Don't know if that counts.

So I do all my software development on my work pc at the office and the one at home.

My personal computer, which is heavily over specked, is used to play Minecraft, Factorio, and RDR2. I do use for non gaming stuff too though, but that’s mainly 3D Printing.

I really don’t game a lot as don’t feel like using the computer when I’m off work and I’m into rock climbing in free time.

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.

I do game, but I have a dedicated HTPC that I game on. My laptop is mostly for work, I own my own business so I do a lot of design, spreadsheeting, etc. I also write lyrics and prose for a hobby, so I use my laptop for that, as well as some light music production. I think the only game I play on it is the KDE minesweeper clone.

I'm a sysadmin, so non-game stuff is my entire day job.

When I use my PC at home, it's a variable split between internet, media and gaming, depending what I damn well feel like at the time :D

My gaming PC became my self-hosted server around 5 years ago. Now it runs 24/7 serving up media through Emby, providing backup/cloud/vpn services to my mobile devices, DNS adblocking for everything on the LAN/VPN, password manager syncing, and whatever else I feel like playing with :)

Time, energy, and willpower just never seem to come together for gaming anymore. And on the rare occasions it does, that PC still games just fine; even after making the move to Debian last year.

I don't even really have a computer.

For games, I have a switch or Xbox, and everything else I use my phone or iPad.

Does collaborative writing for fun count as games? The communities involved call them games, but there's no thoughts about control schemes or graphics, and no need to do anything outside your browser. That, chat, social media, reading (both for work and personal time), and the like take up the bulk of my PC time.

I don’t use my laptop much anymore (don’t have a desktop either): Some modeling, accounting, spreadsheets, or doc composition; things that are cumbersome to do well on a tablet. General browsing and videos are on my phone, tablet, or cast to the TV. When I want to game it’s usually on my switch.

It’s The laptop is really my device of last resort. I know it will do exactly what I want it to do, but I have to dig it out, clear space for it and usually plug it in if it’s not a quick job because the thing is old and an energy hog. My tablet is newer and I got it a convertible laptop-like keyboard case. The battery lasts so much longer and it’s just easier to lug around to where I need it for whatever.

Same for me. Coding, 3d modeling (for fun), lately some fpv simulator to get better with drones before I shred a real one. I even worked in the gaming industry, but it just doesn't keep me interested for long anymore.