Gaming, usually a fast paced hobby is focused on playing video games through your PC, Mac, Wii, Xbox, Playstation etc...

Ask any A/V guy for advice and you will rarely get the same answer as the next. They all have there personal favorite component types and manufacturers. Step into a Best Buy, Radio Shack, Circuit City, or Sears etc... and you will see hundreds of brand names and components. How does one make sense of it all. The best way is to break it down to the basics of your needs. Remember that the system is series of connections. DVD, BluRay, turntable, stereo radio audio cables connected to the amplifier. Amplifier sends sounds to speakers. You have sound. Woo Hoo!! Now you can send all those video cables to the TV. Now you have a picture. Woo Hoo! Wait, you can send the picture through some amplifiers then to the TV. Uh Oh. You just got your cable or satelitte receiver. Where does that go?

As a hobby, this is extremely rewarding because you get to optimize something you will be using daily. Your system brings you laughs, news, music, history, education. It is a world of information, and your desires bring it bigger, richer, fuller than ever before. With the technology we have today it is as if you are right there in the action.

Gaming has been growing in popularity since early 1980's. Yes there was "Pong" in the 70's but the real explosion started with the home computer. It grew in popularity due to the crash of consoles in 1983. The business of electronic gaming has gone back and forth between personal computers and console gaming for years. Today it seems that electronic gamers have both. Some will even have multiple computer platforms such as PC and Mac as well as a couple of the console systems. It is the only way to get all the games you want since they will be developed for one system or another.
The ease of this hobby is that you can do it alone or with thousands. You can play at 5am or 8pm, whenever. Almost too easy. But the skills that you can develop from mastering the live action games has led to some serious future endeavors. A friend of mine played so many games that he tested for flying drone aircraft in the military.
I have another friend that gives seminars at conventions on the subject of World of Warcraft from Blizzard Entertainment.
So you only have two choices in this hobby. What kind of system and what genre of game. Below are lists and reviews of the most popular.