Nothing big comes to mind, I’m into a lot of things I’ll get into on my leisure time… I’m big into history. I like pro-wrestling. Reading. Film watching. Music listening. Video games. I’ll also put together spreadsheet programs to aid in certain tasks trying to minimize VBA. Going for a skate. Fitness. Hiking/exploring on foot. Running. Politics. Drug experimentation (I promise, legal). Growing plants & Gardening. Monitoring ecosystems (there are still spiders in my backyard even though we’ve been below 0 a few times). Taxonomy (NOT, taxidermy), that is, figuring out how things relate. Inventing food dishes (it’s hard, any time I find something good it has been done). Whisky collection. Going to the bars. Parties.
Games that really hit on my hobbies are probably sandbox style games. And when I say sandbox, I don’t mean Mario 64, that is a platformer to me; when I say “sandbox game” I mean SimCity, SimEarth, Dwarf Fortress (especially DF), and games of that sort. I also enjoy historical simulators which have a lot of sandbox stuff in them: Victoria II and III, Crusader Kings 2 and 3, going to try EU5 when I have time. RPGs with opened up development systems, Final Fantasy 8 particularly appeals to me in this regard, as do a lot of more recent RPGs like Xenoblade Chronicles X and Witcher 3…
So, sandbox games often incorporate emergent gameplay and storytelling (Dwarf Fortress does both extensively) which appeals to me a lot. Zelda games since Breath of the Wild have had some interesting emergent gameplay. Animal Crossing NH has dipped further into the sandbox genre, it was always there from the beginning, but New Horizons took the concept much deeper; that ended up being my most played game of Switch. Crusader Kings (especially 2) is built around its emergent storytelling… although gameplay is fairly locked into linear systems to explore the world. Much like Dwarf Fortress, the Crusader Kings world is filled with thousands or tens of thousands… even hundreds of thousands of characters with their own stories that build over time, and you can follow them. Most people see Crusader Kings as a single player game, I always play it multiplayer (part 2, unfortunately, crashes every 2-3 hours). Dwarf Fortress is single player though…
I suppose fitness games also fit the bill on the fitness thing. When it comes to fitness, I guess I mainly focus on weights, HIITs, and walking, running. But fitness games will often fit into that somehow, just a way to stay active and avoid any kind of connective tissue knotting… whenever someone in my family gets tightness in their back, I always tell them “it’s because you’ve been laying on the sofa all day! You gotta get up and move! Stretch!!! Now!”
I fucking hate music games, though… Well, not the DS ones like Theatrerythm or EBA, but the Guitar Hero and Rockband ones… it’s because anytime a party had a good grove going back in the PS2/Wii era, some asshole would think it would be a great idea to get Guitar Hero or Rock Band going. Those aren’t party games! In 20 minutes the party is dead. Party games that worked were Warioware Smooth Moves and Just Dance games, those got women up and dancing, and eventually got people up and dancing who weren’t even playing.
I suppose that covers some of it. Never really thought about videogames connecting up with hobbies… but then again, I never really connected what I do on my spare time as hobbies, I was thinking “Well fuck! I don’t have any hobbies! Hmmmmm…. What is a hobby exactly? Oh, something non-productive you do on leisure time. Wait, I have a fuck ton. But does fitness count? I don’t think of it as a chore. I’ll put it on just to be safe…”
I suppose posting on Forums counts too.
The Miiverse kind of did that.
I describe myself as a little dose of toxic masculinity.
