Weird 2010's gamer nationalism meets china bad.
"Oh no, kids won't be able to use games to escape reality now" — Good, have them play outside or read a book or something.
"Horrible, I couldn't live without games" — Yes, this law is attempting to help people before they become like you.
"New generations won't grow up to be gamers now" — How will society survive!
"It's about controlling freedom of thought" — Ah, yes, this will stop the great dialogue had by fourteen-year-olds in LoL game chats.
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Not in the city, feller
And in the suburbs both suck if you don't spend money to go to places where those things are fun.
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everyone needs to recognize that all hobbies are commodified and capitalist marketing encourages you to spend as much as possible on hobby equipment to make line go up. the strong consumers identities formed out of hobbist groups are likewise encouraged by capitalists to increase profits
I disagree with the bit about music. Back before computers, the most common form of "training" was handing a kid a guitar, teaching them how to tune it, and telling them to try and play stuff off the radio.
Everyone I've ever met who plays guitar over the age of 30 learned that way.
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my bad, got a bit heated
yeah all that shit is cheap in theory until you have to buy all the camping gear, fishing gear, hiking gear to be a "real" hobbyist. Very few people who 'camp' for a hobby (not even a hobby imo, that's a vacation) don't also buy a bunch of gear to flex on the other dads with. Same with fishing and hiking.
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Those aren't things you can just do whenever. You aren't going to get home from work, decompress for a bit, put on your hiking boots and walk into the woods. That's a weekend thing. That isn't going to occupy a good chunk of your time.
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85% of Australia lives within 20km of a City.
There are city dwellers, rich retirees that make the inner country unaffordable with $15 coffees and $2million dollar homes in "quaint" former farming villages, and station owners who own farms the size of Belgium. So to a first approximation, everyone who might be a gamer does live in an urban centre.
:aus-delenda-est:
Ok that doesn't really help the majority of people who do live in urban environments though?
Great for you if you walk 2 steps outside and fall into a pristine lake surrounded by a huge forest but that doesnt really represent most people who would try to find a hobby to take up their time.
It's 90 degrees out in most of the US rn. It's not realistic to go hiking or camping in that weather unless you are dedicated. It's not something you can do whenever.
gaming can be cheap if you build a cheap pc (not rn entirely ofc with gpu pricing) for 500-600 dollars and pirate all the games.
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You need a place to play where the volume wouldn't be an issue. All the kids these days use a computer program and a DI box if they live in an apartment. Which is actually more expensive if you get programs that don't sound like shit, but the free ones are good enough to get people into it.
Also, for literally nothing you can download stuff that lets you play with MIDI. I don't know what programs are best because I can't stand fake instruments most of the time, but many people love MIDI. I bet if I was introduced to it when I was in middle school I would be one of those people.
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Those sound like shit and are a lot less fun to play through headphones as a result. Playing through headphones with amps like that feels like dry practice, if that makes sense.
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Can get an epiphone dot and a hotrod deluxe for that much.
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The gpu shortage is a temporary anomaly in the same way COVID stopping people from going to concerts is a temporary anomaly.
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There has been like two or three temporary gpu shortages due to crypto at this point. This current shortage is agrivated by the chip shortage. The majority of the crypto part of the shortage is already over, and now it's almost entirely a shortage of memory chips that is driving it. Once that is resolved things will be back to normal.
There are Ryzen APUs which are still widely available and will run most games perfectly fine.
https://youtube.com/c/LowSpecGamer
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isn't there initial costs for other hobbies as well? you need camping equipment to camp, musical instruments to play music, hiking equipment for hiking.
my cousin plays gta on his 300 dollar laptop that his dad bought for online classes. while it won't get a billion fps or look photo realistic, it works fine for him. gaming can be expensive or cheap, like almost every other hobby.
the budget pc+pirated game combo i mentioned is very popular in "developing" countries.
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Low end games uses hardware people generally already have for the purposes of living in society. In a way that regular shoes cant be used for hiking.
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A long ass Ethernet cable is $10. Garbage headphones that at least allow you to hear are like $20. Most low end games are $0-20. For $40 you can play CS:GO and the only thing preventing you from being able to keep up might be your mouse, depending on how shitty your existing one is.
You can't go camping for a few hours after work.