Looking for a hobby to replace PC games

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Nice catatar.

Thanks, but I'd prefer something far from IT - in the office there's more than enough of software, developers, servers, setups, installations, testings and all other great things Tomorrow morning we'll fail another deadline right because of troubles with hardware part so I'd better avoid it in the free time.

But to you - good luck! My father is a fan of microelectronics, so I fully understand these activities.

I watch documentaries before I go to sleep.

It's too passive activity for me - I watch documentaries sometimes but not too often.

Yesterday I've downloaded nice program for creating music from 6000+ highly editable samples, with easy interface. It's possible to work with it via headphones at night. Though I completely lack musical ear so don't sure it will finally become hobby.

Tried - music is really not the point.

Hmmm, you seem to have too much time.
I wish I had your hours in which you can't find something to do other than computer games to play.
If only they were transferable to me.

I just learned to optimize time to find maximum of free from what I have Thanks to the current job - or else with its 9-6 daily and 2 hrs in transport it just would be too hard to find any time for hobbies and useful activities.

....why not just play games that dont have such high requirements? There's *tons* of that sort out there, dramatically (*VERY* dramatically) outnumbering the sort you speak of.

And even the ones you're talking about... they have all those settings. Turn them down.

I typically like having a powered-up gaming rig myself, but... even without that, I've never seen the need to upgrade "because graphics" (and no, I dont JUST play smaller indie games). I upgrade when the current machine is on the verge of falling apart (as in, parts dying, everything being corrupted as a result, stuff like that). Which is pretty much how I approach everything, like buying new shoes or such. I keep the current ones until they're wrecked, because I'm lazy and I can. There's just never been a good enough reason to do otherwise, despite that manufacturers would love you to believe that there is.

That's not saying you cant find other things to do as well, but it just seems a silly reason to drop it entirely.

I like first/third person RPGs with open world - the former helps to get used to the role of character and the latter is good because I don't like limitations so prefer to have plenty of opportunities what to do - say either to hunt for orcs, either to save town from dragon, or just explore some wilderness for hours.

There are not so many games of this kind, they are expensive in development, so no indie ones, and what about existing - except the WItcher I finished them all: each game of TES series (from Arena to Skyrim, with mods), Two Worlds 1/2, Fallout 3/NW, Batman: Arkham City/Origins and so on. Yes, maybe it's a stupid limitation but I don't care.

The last straw was that Witcher III is virtually unplayable on my PC even on lowest settings. And here I realized that I'm not ready to buy new laptop again, this one is working fine, it's only two years old! I buy new jeans only if older ones are ragged, use cell phone while it can call, so I don't see the reason of changing pc so often. I have money but just don't want to waste them in such way, I'd rather donate more to the snake nursery I support.

Unfortunately, no other such gams left except for the new Witcher so I decided to drop this hobby and find something less expensive.

Hello. Thought I'd toss in some random suggestions because I was in a similar situation. I work in IT (software) and needed to find hobbies that didn't involve computers (too much). This might be a bit random so I'll go with bullet points.

1) I found that getting a desktop instead of a laptop gave me a lot more years of use for the same price, so you'd be able to keep your game hobby.
2) I started building furniture (it is nice being able to show people something I created rather than trying to explain software). I do most of my work between 10pm and 2am as well. I just use hand tools and take my time designing and carefully sculpting / building.
3) Another one where I work with my hands is building remote control helicopters. fun to design and build, and on weekends you can find a park to go fly around. I found that I can build a quad for < $100 which is fairly indestructible (for learning to fly) and then I built an expensive hexacopter for exploring.
4) If the city is safe enough at night you could try jogging etc. I take a camera and do interesting night photography too. Again, for the sake of doing something that isn't logic based.
5) As other people have suggested, reading is good. You can even do something else and then just read for a small amount of time to "wind down" before sleeping.

It's late here so that'll do for now. Realistically the best chance of finding something is if you find something you think you want to do and let people suggest how you might be able to make that fit your time slot.
Maz

What I like to do are passive activities like learning history, but just learning and researching is slowly becoming boring - even despite you can find lots of interesting facts (did you know that in fact Soviet Red Army was preparing for offeisive war against Nazi Germany months before the latter attacked USSR in 1941, and was completely ready four weeks before the operation Barbarossa began? Or that almost 2,5 millions of Russians (not to mention other Soviet nations) were fighting within the ranks of Wehrmacht, Waffen SS and local Polizei forces against the Red Army, mostly in regular German divisions?).

Anyway, I started this topic to see advices from other people because I failed to find the appropriate hobby myself. I don't like crafts or sport much, I'm terrible drawer due to complete lack of spatial thinking, I never wanted to make movies, and take photos only while I'm in the trip and want to make kind of chronicle (hundreds or even thousands of photos for week-long trip, often done on the move that cover all the major things, places and sights that I've seen).

One more interest I already have - social projects, I have one to be launched in next 1-2 weeks. But that is serious project, with planning, organizing, managing team and lots of other not so funny activities. And very demanding - like always whhen you see some people rely on you, on rightness of your decisions and lead.

I also like to write hough nobody except one person likes to read it Fantasy about demons. But it's difficult to write as good as you can dozens of pages (and frankly I'm bad in describing characters, relations and motivations - NT human society generally seems weird to me) so gaming was not so demanding activity where I could get some inspiration, interesting time spending, kind of reward (gaming character development) and just to feel like I'm in the fairy tale world, that's pretty awesome.

Now I don't know how to get feelings like those.

I loved to go hiking at night in the local forest-park (http://www.geocaching.su/photos/areas/59437.jpg http://bellona.ru/imagearchive/tsaritsy ... neniya.jpg http://i.otzovik.com/2013/10/10/568867/img/11023680.jpg) and it was nice - I love forests with rough terrain, especially when I'm almost alone there because after midnight there are very few people for miles around. But I've explored everything there, so it's no more interesting, and other similar places are far away and really dangerous due to hungry feral dog packs that occasionally kill people. I like risk but only if I have any chances to win except luck.