There's a tldr below,
I'm 35 as of writing this and I spent my formative years in the 90s playing stuff like Final Fantasy, Double Dragon, Megaman, Tribes, Counter-Strike, Diablo 1/2, Command and Conquer, Star Craft, Warcraft, MUDs, The Legend of Zelda (like all of them), Masters of Orion, Civ, etc etc. Looking back it's kind of disgusting how much time I spent playing all this stuff hah (don't regret a moment of it). Anyways, in college I really picked up CS and then spent a good deal of time with WoW and Final Fantasy XI and some Initial D in the arcades. From then until now, I've been playing a smattering of games but mostly indie titles as AAA titles have kind of lost my interest or disappoint me.
As for board/card games, I played some Magic the gathering and Risk in middle/high school and then kind of fell off the board games thing until a little after college with lots of Dominion and then Agricola and then Race for the Galaxy. I've played lots of other stuff but really those 3 represent the bulk of my time playing board games.
tldr: I've learned a few things about myself and maybe games in general from all this..
- When playing games with friends it's always a good idea to be at the same or similar level/learning rate.
- Fun is very abstract. Even the most arbitrary thing can be fun if I'm convinced it's worth it.
- Inconsistency is annoying.
- Build mechanics and intent into the theme. I want to know what I'm doing and why I'm doing what I'm doing.
- Trust the player to bridge gaps
- Give me something to think about
- Don't add things just for the sake of adding them