Of course gaming is a hobby in and of itself. But many games also recreate outside hobbies many have, whether realistically as a simulation or in a more fun arcadey style.

What are some games you like that reflect your real life hobbies?

They can be specific sports (watching or playing), or other hobbies like music playing, cooking, surfing, history, board games, flying, mountain climbing, fashion etc.

Tell us about your real life hobbies and any games that you reflect them well. Have you ever started a hobby after playing a game of it first?

Some of my hobbies include:

Skateboarding - I played the Tony Hawk games way before I ever tried skating. Didn't really have anything to do with my decision to start though.

Snowboarding-  I loved SSX Tricky back in the day. Again no real influence on my decision to start.

Surfing - I have never tried a surfing game but I want to some day.

Martial arts- Various fighting games. I guess Street Fighter and Tekken are the most influential for me but neither are realistic. Fun though.

Cooking - I actually did enjoy a 3DS cooking mama game before I started to like cooking more. 

Language learning- I've tried various language learning videogames to aid my studies. None really all that great. Sometimes I play other games in foreign langauges to boost my comprehension.

I'm very into history, so any game in a historic setting somewhat qualifies. But I'm a real buff when it comes to the Great War (World War 1) and 7 years war (Sometimes called World War 0 due to being fought in Europe and the colonies around the world), So History Line: 1914-1918 was perfect for me, especially the war report at the end of each level that explains not just what happens on the battlefield, but also how the war affected the daily life of the people, especially in blockaded Germany.

Similar to Boffer, I'm a history buff, so games with settings like the World Wars or the Victorian Era I enjoy from that perspective; the WW2 COD and Sniper Elite entries, Wolfenstein, etc.

I'm also a big fan/collector of Kaiju (Japanese Giant Monster) movies which led me to spend countless hours on Godzilla Save the Earth on OG Xbox back in the day.

Coming up with proofs for mathematical statements & coming up with new solutions to the various puzzles of Zelda. This is in fact the main reason why Zelda floods my top favorite games of all time.

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.

Victorian era?

If you like historical grand strategy and economics, the game Victoria 2 or 3 might be for you. Just a fair warning, it’s kind of esoteric as far as game franchises go. Warfare isn’t as big as other strategy games, it mostly focuses on population/politics and political movements, and forging economies, growing those economies, establishing trade deals.

Unlike games like Civ where money poofs into existence just because you have a building that grants +5 gold per turn, Victoria games require you to mine materials, manufacture them, and perhaps even further develop them into products. People in the world have to demand those products. If the world is flooded with booze, your alcoholic drinks won’t sell well. Trade deals expand marketplaces and such. However, if you’re the first person to develop the tech to make radios, and you manufacture all the components, you can make a ton of money by pushing those out into the world because you’re the only one making them. Usually, though, if you get the jump on any tech, many other countries will have it soon after… tech growth is a little different from other games.

A lot of the game covers the history of developing from a monopoly-based mercantile economy (the economy of empires where colonies sent raw materials to the mother country for manufacturing) to a more globalized capitalist economy (manufacturing centers were everywhere and competition became the driver).

Your pops (basically the people in various regions that represent a cultural type, political type, economic class type, and religious type) might push in some political direction while others push in other political directions. The dominant political system is how you get to run your country. So, for a more absolute Monarchy, you’ll be much more hands on than say anarcho-liberalism (small l liberalism, so capitalism). The game runs right up to World War 2, so you see the rise of Sovietism and Fascism.

But yeah, it’s an esoteric game kinda like Dwarf Fortress… it’s not for everyone. But you might enjoy it based on your interests.

World Class Track Meet with the power pad on the NES. NBA Jam/Hangtime.

At first is was any game to do with sci-fi. Sci-fi is my favorite to read and watch, and thus also play games, enhancing the likes of Space Quest, Bioshock and Mass Effect, but also smaller games with mysterious sci-fi settings.

My favorite was Elite Dangerous, allowing you to explore a realistic model of our galaxy which I did while writing my own quasi sci-fi story while drifting through space along the outer edge of the Milky Way Galaxy.
https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threads/exploration-quest-for-the-loneliest-planet.132053/ 


That urge to explore and learn more about the world then transferred to FS2020. From sci-fi to real world exploration, which made me become more interested in history and geopolitics. FS2020 was the perfect vehicle to use as a mind palace to learn about all the countries in the world and as a result the effects of colonialism and imperialism in the last couple centuries. Following evidence of slave trade along Africa, WW2 monuments along the Pacific, nuclear testing sites, and I even found my Mother's birth home in Indonesia from a picture.

https://forums.flightsimulator.com/t/exploring-the-world-in-the-beechcraft-bonanza/266981

Wandering around the planet during Covid lockdowns.

Both also tied into my interests in Math. Mapping out the deceleration aspects of the spacecraft in Elite Dangerous led me to figure out a formula to calculate, giving height and gravity of the planet below, up to what speed to let the spaceship freefall before turning on the engines to stop right at the surface. Turning it into Moonlander.

And in FS2020 I mapped the performance of the (virtual) Bonanza aircraft to find the optimum speed, flight level, fuel mixture and propeller angle settings to maximize the distance to fly, to figure out how to reach Easter Island in a Bonanza on 1 tank of fuel. Also used the ground effect from flying low above the sea to further extend the distance when icing reduced performance on a long leg to the Northernmost airport in Canada, Alert (CYLT) All by doing sped up test flights and plotting the results, graphing them out to find the relations. 

 
It all began with Civilization though, which sparked my interest in world history and political systems, which later led to building socialist Utopias in Tropico. Of course only sustained by outside wealth in the form of exports and Tourism. 


Other 'hobbies' are puzzles, any kind, which always intersected with adventure games. Combined with math it becomes an addiction, Riven being one of the highlights figuring out its numerical system as well as Fez's number and alphabet system.

Riven's base 25 number system

Now I'm into Puzzling Places, combining 3D puzzling with real world historic sites as subjects, 360 hours already spend on it and many DLC bought. And I'm playing Firmement, a spiritual successor to Riven and Myst in VR.
 
The advantage and disadvantage of VR is you can't take notes easily. I'm more focused on the actual games now instead of 'mapping' out their systems lol.

Hmm maybe my hobbies reflect my gaming? 


My active hobbies are quite separate from gaming, road cycling / mountain bike games I have no interest in. I do play racing games a lot but have no interest in car culture or racing irl.

Have you tried Shujinkou? It really helped me wrap my head around Japanese.

I enjoy board games, so I'm really into SRPGs since they are like board games with some extra mechanics