[daxorid]

Gardening, home improvements, personal or side development projects, exercise, online courses, playing music, etc.

There are plenty of activities to do that moves one's life forward, rather than the utter stagnation that is television and video games.

edit: To be clear, leisure activities definitely have their place. But to loosely paraphrase JC, while playing games is fine, it's much better to make them.

[Cyph0n]

> Gardening, home improvements

Not if you’re living in an apartment.

> personal or side development projects

I write enough code at work, thanks.

> online courses, playing music

Sure, those are good options.

> the utter stagnation that is television and video games

The fact that you decided to lump watching television (passive) with playing video games (active, engaging, sometimes social) tells me that you have no idea what you’re talking about.

[josefresco]

> Gardening, home improvements, personal or side development projects, exercise, online courses, playing music, etc.

I've done all those things AND have spent more time gaming than ever before (well at least since college). Don't hobby shame, celebrate your differences and support those who have unique interests.

[ssully]

I have a group of four friends and we have a video game night twice a week. Outside of my wife, it's probably the only social contact I have now that feels "normal".

[C1sc0cat]

Like wise for Roleplaying (TTRPG) - for my groups its a way to keep in touch and have human contact.

I have three game sessions for the upcoming week and we are supposed to be starting Startrek at half term.

[ryneandal]

This is a tired and archaic take.

[rosseloh]

Makes you wonder what their response would be when I bring up that one of the more common games I play is Stormworks, where I spend most of my time in the engineering screen figuring out how to build fuel control and PID systems to run jet engines properly. Not quite to realistic levels, sure (it's one of my gripes about the game). But it's not on the level of mindless shooters by any means (which I also occasionally enjoy).

[otachack]

It's not total stagnation. Sometimes you need to lay back and play some mindless game. Other times it's fun to team up with friends/coworkers and play a co-op game. Or maybe you just want to play some visual novel, which can be on par with reading a book.

I definitely would love to put my focus more on something harder like a side project or blog but it can almost feel like a side job at times. I'm trying to tackle those projects by just chipping away at them. Latest has been a blog. I started with Hugo, didn't like the templates, then went for a straight HTML approach to do it bare bones. I'm starting to get ideas of just making my own personal Markdown parser since I start seeing patterns in my HTML that can be generated. I think this way will be more fun!

To each their own.

[watwut]

This comment being downvote is incredibly odd. Yes, I can confirm that there are plenty of activities programmer can do at home that are not gaming.

Preferring gaming is one thing, getting offended over suggestion it is actually possible to be happy at home without gaming is ... odd.

[seattle_spring]

It's obviously (and rightly) being downvoted because of how condescending it is to people who choose to spend any amount of their time with video games.

[detaro]

Except the comment didn't just suggest alternatives, so don't pretend that's what it was downvoted for.

[Grimm1]

Your thinking is so antiquated name me a good novel and I'll give a video game that matches it in narrative content. And playing music and gardening? Please.

[billfruit]

While I don't agree with any attempt to see games as lower form of culture, I don't think that story telling/ narrative is something that games do well.

I personally find narratives in games actually detract from the experience, and many games are better from having no or only minimal story built into it, and more like being sandboxes:

-Cities: Skylines

-Just Cause 2

-Prison Architect

-Kerbal Space Program

-Pool Nation

-Blood Bowl

-Hexcells

-Sins of a Solar Empire

-Elite: Dangerous

-Dungeons of the Endless

-Rocket League

-Sonic Allstars Racing

Literature has immensely more complex narratives than it is likely possible for films and games can hope to achieve. But to be able to provide interactive sandboxes with unlimited possibilities is perhaps one that only games can provide.

[burntoutfire]

> our thinking is so antiquated name me a good novel and I'll give a video game that matches it in narrative content.

"Brothers Karamazow"?

[justwalt]

Gardening and playing music are both timeless activities, what do you mean? Kind of unfair to jump down the throat of someone who’s only offering friendly advice.

[gnulinux]

I spend a lot of time watching TV. I WISH I could play more games, the fact is playing games is an active activity, that forces you to focus on something, learn new things, interact with people. I get bored of doing this and end up playing less games and watch more shows. I think your view of putting in the same bin is very wrong.

[brenden2]

Video games are pretty fun though. They are quite mentally stimulating, and you can play with friends.

I take multiple walks every day (I have a dog), but I also live in a 500 sqft rental apartment in Manhattan which limits the kind of activities I can engage in.