I began playing Cities Skylines this winter; i find it relaxing - Iām solving problems and building something beautiful.
Boardgames are always fun too - although for some reason itās a little difficult finding a group to play with the past couple of years. 
When I was a student we organized a university gaming club and had LAN parties, the club is still around and Iām an advisor for it as I work at the school now but I donāt really play much these days. We had a strong Linux user base back then (this was before Steam was a thing) and played a lot of Quake 3 Arena and the early Unreal Tournaments. Counter Strike carried the club though and we had one of the most popular CS servers on the east coast of the US in the early 2000s.
Last two games I really got into was Breath of the Wild and Splatoon 2, but around 2017 or so once I was solidly in my mid-30s it was like a switch went off in my head and I just canāt stay focused on them anymore. It was weird, I was right at the end of my BoTW play through and was just like āhmm, nope, think I need to do something else nowā and never finished it. I had nearly 300 hours in Splatoon 2 at the time as well. It was weird, just to have all interest in something evaporate suddenly like that.
Nowadays Iāll still play Cities Skylines occasionally as I really enjoyed the simulation and RTS type games back in high school but I canāt do more than 30 minutes or an hour in a stretch. I mostly use it as a benchmark/testing thing for hardware.
I spend enough time on the computer for work that I sometimes even feel like its too much to be messing around editing photoāsā¦
I prefer to be outside and moving while my body is still ableā¦one day if I am confined to a room or am mobility challenged then I will take up video gamesā¦
I am of course biased and trying to practice what I preachā¦as a physiologist/kinesiologist we like to say sitting is the new cancerā¦ we are constantly trying to motivate people to exercise so unless its a kickboxing game or something that burns calories its off my list for nowā¦ even then I would much rather be outside ā¦
Each to their ownā¦
You might want to have a look at his works.
I think that Germans are advanced in this field and a center of game studies is ZKM in Karlsruhe.
I donāt disagree, but be aware that things you (and I) are interested in i.e. painting and philosophy are also said to be a ĻĪ±ĪÆĪ³Ī½Ī¹ĪæĪ½ (childās play, game) and not for grown up people in Platoās writings (Statesman 288c, Gorgias 485).
@betazoid You being an art historian, you might enjoy the sheer silliness of these two games: Save 60% on Four Last Things on Steam and its sequel Save 40% on The Procession to Calvary on Steam
Maybe fun for others as well 
I can[1] play it! I may give it a go!
[1] 2.1 GHz 
i adore your patience. i tried once and failed miserably. it required me to install i386 (386!!) compatibility libraries and even then i finally only managed to make it run in a docker container (due to some other old stuff it required). it did start up as far as to show me an ad banner for some completely unrelated train simulation with in-game purchase business model (which i find unacceptable).
when i finally fought my way through this jungle to see the game i had purchased online before, it would refuse to let me install it because it insisted it doesnāt run on linux. i gave up and donāt think iāll return.
You canāt really blame Steam itself for this - other than perhaps not giving the UI/UX choice of making Proton optional and somehow filtering out everything that is not Linux-native as opposed to running under Proton.
Many games in the Steam library are old enough that they were never released in 64-bit form. As a result, you need x86 compatibility libraries as Proton dependencies. 
I have always liked videogames. I started with an Atari VCS 2600 and my first game was Pitfall. I was 10 yrs old I think, so Iāll leave to the elders to deduce my age.
I had my Gran Turismo moments back in the Playstation 2 era; then my Quake and Duke Nukem 3D tournaments against my cousin in a pre-internet era, with 2 pcs connected on a LAN etc
Years passed by with no significant videogaming experiencesā¦then with two friends we decided to get some second hand Nintendo DS and started fighting against each other on games like Brain Training (I am so slow with maths!).
Since last Xmas I have started again playing on a Nintendo Switch with my 9 yrs old daughter (what a brilliant console the Switch!!!) and we have raced cartoonish motorbikes with Mario Kart, explored a world in Zelda Breath of the Wild, but there are 3 games that I have also enjoyed on my own, after my daughter goes to bed, and I will list them here below ā and this is for Anna @betazoid : I know and in fact I have been asking myself so many times why waste my time playing videogames, but the simple truth is that there are little gems of videogaming that wonāt require you to stop having a real life and are fullfilling experiences, like watching a really good movie, or reading narrative (the first two games), or simply trying to challenge yourself (third game in this list is a tricky mountain biking game that youād love ā but only if you mountain bike yourself):
I mean itās easy to be dismissive of videogames and Iām always ambivalent about how much space should I allow for my daughter to play videogames, but the fact is that I prefer that she plays rather than watching dumb youtube videos (same for me).
Me too, specially now with the release of the Steam Deck which pushed some studios to provide anti cheat support with proton. Every game I have runs pretty well on my setup, no reason to boot windows whatsoever now. Finished Elden Ring a few days ago, next up Iāll give Death Stranding a try.
Also lichess 
If that counts
I think for me gaming is just a good way to de-stress / distract oneself from oneās ills.
The last game I āfinishedā was Red Dead Redemption 2, a very well put together game simulating the life of a cowboy! Even though I finished the main storyline, there is probably hours and hours of gaming still available with all the side missions.
Plus itās probably worth a reply as well, where you can be a naughty cowboy rather than a good one!
a good friend of mine is kind of addicted to rdd
however, to me, it does not sound very interesting
Each to their own. But red dead redemption has a pretty epic story line!
Similarly, I donāt get what is so interesting about watching 22 grown men kick a bag of air up and down a field for 90 minutes, or spoiling a nice walk in the countryside by hitting a tiny white ball with a stick to make it land in a hole. 
Life would be boring if everyone liked the same thing!
Hitting someone with a 3-foot-long piece of steel is quite fun.
I was a volunteer in 2012, which meant I got to see this fight for free - Aron Szilagyi Szilagyi Wins Fencing Sabre Gold - London 2012 Olympics - YouTube
At least itās not what the US calls football. Which I feel is best described as āletās find as many ways to run down the clock without doing anything that we can on a regular basisā.
ābag of airā
At primary school, I was always the weirdo for thinking like that. At high-school, it was still not general, but at least accepted. Still, I sometimes envy people who find enjoyment in it; if for nothing else, then for not looking dumb in many conversations (at work, etc.). Though I wonder, how many donāt really enjoy it all that much, but watch it anyway in order not to look dumb in the aforementioned discussionsā¦
I think a reason for my disliking games is also the fact that they are not real (life). I want those challenges in reality. Although I must also admit that I donāt like/want all kinds challenges, and that I did not master all challenges in my life so far.
I think there is a link. People who like games are more successful in real life, too. Although I also know gamers who are loosers.
I wish that were true, many of my students would be extremely happy Unfortunately gaming addiction is a struggle for a great many young people.
The thing you say about games vs. real life I can get into. Games can be an escape for some, but also am augmentation of real life. For instance, I might want to know what itās like to be a racing driver, but there is no reasonable way to follow that career path. However, I can imitate it to some extent by playing racing simulation games.
Change racing driver to āmagicianā or āfarmerā or āassassinā or whatever, and thereās bound to be a game for it.
Well, depends.
Yesterday I had a literal urge to nuke both Russia and the USA (God knows they both deserve it so much.). Thatās where Civilization VI came in handy. The nuclear mushrooms were really satisfying.
You have story-based games, like RPG. I have played Divinity 2 Original Sin with the wife. Itās like watching a movie except you write the story, and the graphics and musics are sooooo beautiful, so it is like a movie. Since itās an open world, you pick quests and adventures where you like.
You have lots of mind and strategy games that resemble chess or checkers, only with more possibilities. Iām a big fan of real-time strategy games, especially the old-timers (modern games need so much powerā¦) like Cossacks Napoleonic Wars, Age of Empire, Pharaoh/Cleopatra. Build cities, run them, honours the MOFO gods if any, build economy, fight wars, keep your people happy while they complain about taxes, that kind of thing.
When I was younger, I use to enjoy first-person shooters like Urban Terror (on Linux since at least 2008 !!!) or later Call of Duty (Black Ops & World at War), but now when I start them, I get fragged like gunmeat by kids half my age whose reflexes indicate they should probably go see the sun more often (and that was before COVID, not sure now).
That said, I maybe open a game once every 2-3 months, play it every day for about a week, and resume to not gaming for the next 2-3 months. The computer box having become my working box for way too many hours/week makes sitting in front of a computer for funā¦ much less fun than it use to be. Now, most of my fun happens doing stuff outside, in the woods or else. And most of the games are played with the wife now.
Iām not sure games are responsible for game addiction. In the 2 times of my life where I deliberately over-gamed, it was definitely to escape shitty real life, not because a shiny game trapped me. If virtual worlds start being more appealing than reality, thatās most likely not to blame on the gameā¦ Same as a lot of people drink alcohol too, not that many end up alcoholics. Or can you get addicted to therapy ?
Anyway, all of my games live in Steam since 2014 or so, and it says 626 h played in 8.6 years. Meanwhile, Garmin says 150 h spent on a bike since last summer.
Speaking of addictions and sport, lots of middle-aged men solve their mid-life crisis by becoming born-again athletes who push themselves too hard and canāt get through a day without their daily cardio trainingā¦ These guys are walking heart-disease-hazard, but since exercising is socially valued, thatās an acceptable addiction. And a future socially valued heart attack.