I wish I'd had a better handle on obsolescence, both hardware and software. I still have floppies full of games I'd never gotten around to playing, a few of which I was able to eventually find here; and I even keep one old laptop with Win XP installed, to play those games (like Stars!) that never successfully migrated to newer operating systems.

Time is more precious than money.

Image

To not buy all those DRM games (mostly on disc) that I still haven't gotten around to playing ... most of which I have now bought again at GOG DRM-Free ... could have spent that money on something else back then ... when I was poorer.

The most important one for me is to not let gaming come before spending time with family. After my father passed away I had major regrets of not spending more time with him. You don't really expect people you know to pass away, even when they are sick you still cling to hope, but when they do pass you don't get that time back. So I do wish I would have spent less time on gaming and more on spending time with my parents.

Less profound, I wish I would have focused more on certain genres. It's a strange combination but I like strategy games, sim games and racing games the most. There are enough games in these categories to keep me busy for a very, very long time.However, like many others here I too have fallen prey to buying lots of games I don't actually have the time for, and games on PC get cheap rather quickly, so I have a huge backlog. It's OK to enjoy lots of genres but you have to factor in "time" when you buy games, I've been really bad at that.

Lastly, not saving my old boxed PC games. Well it wasn't my fault technically, since my parents threw them away when they were just collecting dust on my shelf.

I wish I would have known the direction Hearthstone would be taking, and by extension all on-line focused games. I've never started another game as a service since Hearthstone, and I never will. Whether that's because I'm still playing Hearthstone or because I actually learnt my lesson, I don't know.

Basically, Hearthstone began with the promise that you could "play longer" or "pay for cards" to get the same experience. Which was a lie even in the beginning, since only the whales could possibly get all the cards for a complete card collection. At the time I had plenty of free time so I got into it. Since then Blizzard has been taking every step they can, to make the game more and more expensive. Currently, I think they are releasing about 50% more cards each year, than they were in the first two years. And also the card rarity became utterly skewed, to the point that they've reached the point where there are about 50% legendary+epic cards and 50% rare+common cards, which was unheard of, when they launched.

Initially the cards added by each expansion were just added to the card pool, but after a while Blizzard decided the model was unsustainable, so each year the cards people have worked hard to get, are removed so that you are forced to get new cards. That's right, currently you need to spend about $1500 each year, if you want to buy a complete collection of cards, and at the end of the year you have nothing to show for your money.

Initially they were releasing free singleplayer content, but after a while they claimed that it was unsustainable, so instead they introduced another paid expansion(up to 3 each year) with the promise that they will also be releasing singleplayer content each expansion, which has been gradually shrinking is play time. Well, the singleplayer content today is like 30 minutes long every 3 months, with the added $10 paid DLC, for a cosmetic hero skin and 5 card packs.

I'll stop here since I'm already stating to get angry just thinking about it. I'm convinced that as soon as I manage to break my addiction with Hearthstone, I'll never try another game as a service again.

Same for me... sadly