Looking for a hobby to replace PC games

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Some time ago I decided to drop my almost lifelong (since 3 years old) hobby of playing pc games in the freetime. That was mainly dictated by my strong attitude against contemporary enterntainemt industry, while I like games such as Morrowind, Skyrim or recent Witcher 3, I'm enough ofnecessity to buy more and more powerful laptops to be able to play them, games doesn't really worth those money we have to pay for such hobby. ANd while I'm tired to be kind of their slave in case of necessity to buy new pcs, games, dlc for games and so on - I decided to withdraw and find something better.
So - now I need to find something to fill my new free time, wile I'm not wortking in the office, or with my projects. I have finally no ideas, so maybe some of you have?
My free time now is somewhere between 10 PM and 1 AM (not all three hours though, more like 1-2 daily), so outdoor activities as well as loud ones (e.g. playing music) doesn't fit.
Please don't advice writing, reading, learning languages or chess - I already do it all. The same is with listening to music - I do it for 2 hours daily in the public transport. Watching movies is again not what I need - I've seen all movies I was interested, from nowadays back to 1910's (the oldest was "The Birth of a Nation", 1917). I tried various kinds of painting - that's also not the point.
What I need - some intellectual but not demanding (I have plenty of activities with really high demands and responsibility, need to have some rest of them) and inexpensive hobby, that could be done at late night at home, alone. PC games fit excellent in this grid, but now I need something to replace them with.

My suggestion for a new hobby is to visit your local library and check out some interesting books. No, they do not have to be on languages or chess, but something that you are interested in learning more about. For example, maybe you are interested in science. Then you could chose which path of science that you want to learn. There are different levels even within the same area, you choose at what level you would like to start at. I realize that you mention that you do not want the new hobby to be demanding of you, so you get to set what you want to learn and at what pace. If you want a goal, here is one with books: Not everything is on the internet, see if you can find what is missing....

I'm now reading two books (one is about secert societies and another about social life of German medieval towns) - I love history but that's too passive activity.

While games are also not so demanding (especially with easy difficulty level and save-load), you have to do various activities there - if for RPGs like Skyrim is fighting different monsters, travelling, progressing character, solving quests, buing equipment and so on.

I know you're said you're changing hobbies, but if you really love PC games I do have an alternate suggestion for you: check out some indie games.

Games like Pillars of Eternity, Divinity, & Wasteland 2 may not have the visual fidelity that the Witcher 3 does, but they're pretty similar from a gameplay perspective. They also tend to be cheaper, less demanding for state of the art hardware, and more open for modding and free expansions than the big AAA titles.

I used to play 10,000s of hours of video games for much of my life. I picked up a few different hobbies like lifting weights, cooking, and Lego, so I wouldn't be spending so much of my life sitting.

OK, how about designing games rather than playing them? Let your imagination run free in developing new ideas, that is part of the process. If you don't know how to code well, then that would be motivation to learn it in much more detail. Since you have played many of the games out there, you should be able to clue on what people might want to have in a new idea for a game or games. Since you like history, you could include that into the game somehow (solving medieval problems like stopping/treating the spread of plagues using their technologies could be an example of this). I could see one based on being a starting alchemist page from that era and gradually working up to a grand alchemist by being able to formulate different materials via experimentation procedures that were done then. What you want to do and where you take it is all up to you. Just a thought...

How about graphic coding and editing?

Seriously, coding. And without intending to advertise, this site is great (I do not work for them, I wish I was that smart)

http://www.codecademy.com/

If you make an account it keeps your progress on different lessons. Once exams are over I wanna get myself hooked on it. It has different languages. I wanna learn all of them, is that bad?

(forgot to mention it's completely free)

Oh no guys, no coding I have MS in IT Engineering, and was very glad when I finally left coding and direct software development by becoming IT Manager. Now searching ways to leave IT completely.

Last edited by Andreger on 20 May 2015, 12:51 pm, edited 1 time in total.

The problem is I love first/third person (camera like in shooters) RPGs with open world, like TES series - I know no one such game between indie.

So I'm playing not for graphics

Last edited by Andreger on 20 May 2015, 12:57 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I tried to be game designer without programming but that's difficult, and almost impossible to get motivated team of coders for free. I was sure it's so but tried twice.

And programming... no, thanks for advice but that's what I was happy to drop forever.

Oh, sorry

Hope I helped someone reading this looking for a hobby I'll try to think of something else

If you are looking for something to do between 10PM and 1AM... go to sleep.
<- says someone who has a habit of watching anime between midnight and 3AM.

You could consider stargazing though. For example by spotting satellites using http://www.heavens-above.com/ You don't have to go out - looking through window might be enough although I used to stargaze from my balcony or garden when I was into it.

Well, I tried sleeping as well - not exciting at all Why do we ever do it still? ))

Stargazing is not the variant because I live in the huge city, Moscow, and in dozens of miles around there is too big light pollution to actually see something except Mars or Polar star. I have a friend with farmhouse in the mountains - there you can easily see Milky Way without any telescope, that's amazing. But it's 1000 miles away, not good for regular hobby

How about electronics? I've recently been looking into a Raspberry Pi, which is around $35, or an Arduino.