A place to start might be a friend or family member who is into video games.

Gaming hardware can be a little costly, so you may want to visit with someone and play a selection of games before deciding which direction you’d like to start in. I’ll also point out that video games are often the very most fun when shared with friends.

If my 30 year old woman friend came up to me one day and said “Hey I’ve never really played video games before and I’d like to give them a try, but don’t know where to start,” I think we’d talk awhile first to see if I can find what games are interesting to you. I see a lot of people in this comment section recommending Stardew Valley, which is a game I deeply like and respect though I have seen people bounce right off it, including someone recently here on Lemmy. So while I would recommend giving it a look, if you do bounce off it, don’t just go “video games aren’t for me,” maybe cozy games aren’t for you.

Some questions I might ask are:

Are you looking for a more relaxing or more exciting experience?

Would you like your play sessions to be challenging, contemplative, creative, or competitive?

Are you more interested in story, or gameplay?

How important are flashy fancy graphics to you?

Where will your gameplay sessions fit into your life? Do you want something to do during your daily train ride? Will this replace your daily television hour? Is it what you’re going to do all Saturday afternoon?

Do you see yourself playing games on your couch, at a desk, or on the go?

Do you want to enjoy games alone, or with friends? Will you gather in one place to play together, or play across the internet?

Do you have a genre of fiction you like? Are you into historical drama, sci-fi, fantasy, slapstick comedy?

How do you feel about horror? Both the psychological Lovecraftian existential crisis type, and the “oh god a 10 foot monster with 50 mouths for a mouth just jumped out behind a tree and roared” type?

“Damn near” is a euphemism for “didn’t.”

Sort of. What that page describes is in the same building as what I’m thinking about.

The attitude toward nuclear weapons displayed by countries that haven’t ever nuked anyone are always fun to watch.

The thing I’m more nostalgic for was the time when everything had to be a glistening amorphous translucent blob, a bit like the Cingular Wireless logo or the MusicMatch Jukebox logo. And I’m in that era where you can just play MSN messenger sounds and you’ll get an OH MY GOD out of me.

Nah I guess I’m gonna build shit until it’s time for a dose of buckshot.

Lemmings of Lemmy: What’s your blood type and eyeglass prescription?

I’ve been shaving with a DE razor for about 15 years now, and I haven’t found it any easier or harder to cut yourself with them than the modern “Mach 84 Spike TV Edition” cartridge razors.

I’m changing my vote in the Agora from “yes defederate” to "Hell fucking yes defederate.’

Excel?

I like how the expression is starting to morph into “He drank the Well Actually It Was Flavor-Aid.”

I’ve seen a few seconds of gameplay, but I’m not sure what that game “is.” Is it fun?

I have persuaded The Sims to run on Linux; though if the game wasn’t purchased through Steam it can take some doing. No experience with Cities Skylines. Stardew Valley runs very well, I think ConcernedApe releases Linux native versions. My understanding is Roblox deliberately prevents itself from running on Linux. Minecraft Java edition runs on Linux and you’ll find launchers for it in most package managers. An open source alternative called Minetest or recently changed to Luanti exists, but I know it’s not the one his friends play and that’s mostly the point. Can’t say for Stellaris or Slime Rancher.

Do you use other social media? If yes, which services? What are your screennames and handles? What street did you grow up on? What was your Elementary School’s maiden name?

Statistically, yes.

I’ve seen a cable lift that worked basically like that. It transferred ore down the mountain, so heavy buckets going down lifted the empty buckets back up.

Young people want to live their own lives, and part of that is choosing their furniture. You finally get a home of your own and the freedom to furnish it how you want and…oh I’m supposed to have all this old crap I don’t really like.

Then your dad starts up with his shit. “Don’t throw out that ratty yellowed old doily. I remember that from when I was a kid.” “Okay, you take it.” Here’s a cabinet of gramma’s china. They bought it for her out of a mail order catalog in the 30’s so it’s more sacred than god’s glans.

We’re also entering the era when the grandparents who are dying and leaving behind their furniture bought all their furniture from Sears and it’s not much better than stuff you can get at Ikea, 40 years out of date, and seen 40 years of tobacco tar, cat piss and grampa farts.

I mean, you don’t ask yourself why the heirs don’t wear their grandparents’ old clothes.

My understanding of things like the IME is that its reason for being is mostly benign, it lets enterprise-level IT departments do things like boot computers from across the network and stuff like that. It has no real use to home customers on their private PCs, but it’s included on all systems to simplify engineering; it handles a lot of the early boot process. And it’s always running. The privacy enthusiasts out there who carry a copy of TAILS on their keychains just in case aren’t fond of the fact that there’s a proprietary OS with unrestricted access to memory and networking just sitting there with no way of auditing or monitoring what it was doing.

This has been a thing for AWHILE now, and the whole coreboot thing…Intel, board manufacturers etc. keep their data so locked up that it’s a challenge to build anything that works, so it’s a miracle we have things like Coreboot at all. They largely concentrate on laptops IIRC, and it’s rare to see full fat desktop motherboards that work with Coreboot.

I could be a lot happier with Synology. Honestly. When it’s time to replace mine I’m just going to build one.

I’ll allow it (my authority: some jerk that doesn’t even have an account on this instance).

Part of Reddit culture was hyper narrow focus on the topics of subreddits. I wouldn’t be surprised if the mods of r/samsung_galaxy removed “Overall I like my Pixel better” for being off-topic, even if it was a reply in the comment chain “I have both a Pixel 5 and an S22 and the S22 has the better camera.” “Other than the camera which of the two phones do you like best?” 7 day ban, rule 4: mentions another brand of phone without also mentioning a Samsung.

That doesn’t happen here on Lemmy as much and I don’t mind it. While a NAS isn’t necessarily directly a piece of gaming hardware, I think a lot of gamers might have one. Any who stream might save video of their play sessions to a NAS, etc. So I think this article is of peripheral interest to PC gamers.