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regret spending so much time/money on video games/pc stuff when you were younger?

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Deeply regret all the time I spent playing video games when I was younger. Today I spend 2-3 hours a week on video games but it's more during downtime rather than neglecting responsibilities like my teenage self did.

I tell my kids all the time "which is more likely? That you'll look back on your life and feel proud of all the time you spent watching TV and playing video games or that you'll look back with regret and wish you spent more time with your family and friends?"
 
Fire&Blood said:
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Bought many games that weren't worth it but there are worse ways to spend money and a lot more of it. My first water kit was junk but other than that, no regrets with hardware either. I've already set some money aside to make the 4K jump.

I regret buying a luxury sedan 10 years ago and not buying my place sooner...
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child of wonder said:
Deeply regret all the time I spent playing video games when I was younger. Today I spend 2-3 hours a week on video games but it's more during downtime rather than neglecting responsibilities like my teenage self did.

I tell my kids all the time "which is more likely? That you'll look back on your life and feel proud of all the time you spent watching TV and playing video games or that you'll look back with regret and wish you spent more time with your family and friends?"
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you didn't spend a lot of your time gaming with friends and/or family?

most of the time when i was younger doing anything i was doing it with family and/or friends. video games, biking, basketball, hide and seek, everything.
 
purbeast0 said:
you didn't spend a lot of your time gaming with friends and/or family?

most of the time when i was younger doing anything i was doing it with family and/or friends. video games, biking, basketball, hide and seek, everything.
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Back in my day (obligatory old guy statement) we couldn't play online. We would play locally together on the Sega Genesis, Super Nintendo, or Playstation 1 when we could, but most video games were played at home alone. It wasn't until college that I could play Diablo or Command and Conquer via the local network with other friends in the dorms.

I did play a lot of board games and D&D with friends, but I was such a shy loner back in my teenage years that I never really opened up. It wasn't until the last 6 years that I've been forcing myself to get more social and have been improving in that area substantially since.

Shit, now I'm a sales guy!
 
I probably would of made close to $ 200,000 working in McDonald's with all the time I spent palying PC games.

Do I regret it? Yes and no.

Yes because well, that time could of been invested in more beneficial things like school, work, social life, health, working out, etc.

No because I do have good memeories from playing games with all my real life friends, and having a blast with other.

I'm not a fan of negative thinking, but if I could go back in time and do it all over again, I probably wouldn't play as many games as I did.

Then again, my lifestyle now is totally different. I'm active, I travel, I'm always out and about. Maybe playing all those games taught me to now appreciate all the other and more fun aspects of life that I missed out on when I was younger.
 
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I would regret spending long enough at McD's to make $200000. Working at McD's is HORRIBLE. How long would you have to work there to make that? A decade of full time work? Even 2 years at McD's would be horrible.
 
I don't feel guilty at all. In fact, BECAUSE of games, I learned a lot of the skills and thought processes that are giving me a decent living today.

Things I learned from games:
- Hardware troubleshooting
- Networking concepts and troubleshooting
- Resource management
- Problem solving
- Attention to detail
- Coding
- Multitasking
- ...probably a dozen more things I can't think of

Not to mention all of the stories and online friendships giving me inspiration on other aspects of life.

You can call game playing a waste of time, but I'll call it a huge source of experience. I grew up playing games in the 80's and 90's all the way to now. You don't have to work nearly as hard to get a game fix these days, but there are still skills to be learned.

Netflix binges...now THOSE are a waste of time.
 
I put probably $1500 into WoW from expansions and monthly subs. In college, I passed up selling my account in vanilla for $2k ... I had a local offer on the table from a friend of a friend, which would have been a safe transaction. I didn't sell, which turned out to be a good thing because I met my wife on WoW (been married 5 years next month). Totally worth it, obviously no regrets about that.

On the other hand, my Steam library sits at ~220 games from various bundles, sales, and "WOW I MUST HAVE THIS" purchases. They're all installed on a 2TB drive, but I think I've actually launched maybe 20 of them, and actually completed maybe 8-10. I think the average is less than $5 game because I only bought on sale or in bundles, but even 200 games at $4/game is $800 I could have used elsewhere.

I've also bought & sold Xbox 360's twice, before buying a 3rd one when Halo Anniversary was announced. That got played for maybe 3-4 hours. I bought a PS3 for God of War, then sold the console & game without playing it. A year and a half ago, I spent $350-375 on a CH stick/throttle/pedals for Star Citizen, but have since completely lost interest in PC games, so that's going up on Craigslist at some point. Hopefully I can get at least some back. And last summer I bought a PS4 for Bloodborne & Xbox One in anticipation of Halo 5. I put 90 or so hours into Bloodborne (platinum'd it) and maybe 5 hours into Halo 5. Neither console has been turned on for anything but media streaming in over 2 months; and we just got an AppleTV for HBO Now, so now the consoles sit unused again.
 
Surprisingly, I didn't spend that much time on PCs or video games because my parents couldn't afford them. I owned less than 10 video games throughout my childhood. I did spend a lot of time playing soccer (the real kind). It was my obsession. I also read a lot.
 
regret spending so much time/money on video games/pc stuff when you were younger?

Since when you have money when you were young? Well I didn't. My parents bought me everything when I was young. I tell them.
 
I once spent $100 in quarters on street fighter 2 turbo, over a couple days. I had huge regrets about the waste of money afterwards, because it was a lot of money for 15-year old me.

Now? I look back and laugh at that silly time, $100 isn't anything today, no regrets.
 
actually fritzo you have a good point

i learned so much about pcs just trying to get games to work, and so much about programming just by writing games

so i think it did help me in my career
 
Eug said:
I would regret spending long enough at McD's to make $200000. Working at McD's is HORRIBLE. How long would you have to work there to make that? A decade of full time work? Even 2 years at McD's would be horrible.
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I know, I probably wouldn't last that long either, but just an example, there are other minimum wage jobs that maybe aren't as challenging.
 
nah; what i really regret is never reading that user manual that came with the C64, and eventually going into IT/design. i was born in the perfect year to go into IT, and instead i decided to do audio, a technology which now has near zero value.

i was also really good at C&C95 and WipeOut2097 (XL), if anything i should have played more.
 
No regerts here, I still game a lot to this day.

And I agree with all of Fritzo's points. Gaming gave me the passion and interest I needed to get into the IT field. I love PCs.
 
Not really. It was money well spent. Learned a lot and a ton of it I still use to this day. I never bought bleeding edge stuff but higher end current stuff. Dabled in water cooling (before this off the shelf all in one stuff, when you had to piece it together) among other things so spent some good money but still feel it was worth it for the most part, with the exception of video cards. Never really got into computer gaming so that money was a waste.
 
Hell no! I eventually got a software QA testing job from the contacts I met from online gaming, which helped me get my first real full time job in IT.
 
Not me. Some of those years were the best of my life and I'd do it over again.

BlitzPuppet said:
No regerts here, I still game a lot to this day.

And I agree with all of Fritzo's points. Gaming gave me the passion and interest I needed to get into the IT field. I love PCs.
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Video games and computers in the early 80s are what caused me to start programming and eventually get a EE degree. I've been in IT the past 20 years as a result of my passion for computers. Honestly, though, it just isn't fun anymore. 🙁

child of wonder said:
Deeply regret all the time I spent playing video games when I was younger. Today I spend 2-3 hours a week on video games but it's more during downtime rather than neglecting responsibilities like my teenage self did.

I tell my kids all the time "which is more likely? That you'll look back on your life and feel proud of all the time you spent watching TV and playing video games or that you'll look back with regret and wish you spent more time with your family and friends?"
Click to expand...

Or, you can kill multiple birds with one stone and play video games WITH your friends and family. :awe:
 
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Now that I think about it, I spent very little actual money on my two main time wasters, Quake III Arena and Unreal Tournament 2003.

The games themselves were like $50 each, and my PC was a franken-upgraded PC all the way from a Celeron 366 to a Celeron Tualatin 1.4 GHz, with a few video cards along the way.

All said and done, I think I spent less than $1500.
 
Thinking back, I mostly spent time that would have been useless anyway to play games. I've never been a day-time gamer. When I was in grade school I played a lot of split screen games with friends after biking, sports, and running around. I got out of games in high school. In college I only played during low-load times and at night to wind down. There may have been a month or two sprinkled in there where I got deep into a game, but it wasn't a consistent thing. Now, I mostly play games with friends online while chatting after work. There are a few I play alone, but it is during a wind down.

I don't feel the time playing games was "useful" time in my past. If I hadn't gamed, I would have likely dumped that time into another form of entertainment like reading or shows.
 
Fritzo said:
I don't feel guilty at all. In fact, BECAUSE of games, I learned a lot of the skills and thought processes that are giving me a decent living today.
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Yeah, the only reason I got into tech at all was because I saw someone playing Wolfenstein in a computer lab. Eventually got a PC to play Doom, and spent a lot of time learning how to optimize the system to get it to run smooth. Beginnings of networking came figuring out how to get wads from BBSs and connecting two PCs together using null modem cables, then hubs and IPX, then TCP/IP. It really put me in the self reliant DIY mindset, which has served me well ever since.
 
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