I feel like if I never played games, it would have been harder for me to be empathetic to people, or to see from others' perspective. Even back when stories in games weren't so well executed, I think I grasped a lot from the experience of being put into various situations and having to deal with obstacles to progress. I think the biggest example of this is that I tend to think a lot about how people would feel about something I might do, and that's related to my experience with RPGs like Dragon Age Origins and Mass Effect, and a bunch of visual novels, all of which I played at a pretty young age.
With games, even if I'm only there to act things out without making real choices for the story, there's just so much more that I can take away from the experience, and I have rarely been as engaged when I'm watching movies or reading books. It's like when you learn how to do things better if you actually try to do them, instead of just watching or reading instructions and calling it a day.
I also got into photography because of the photo mode trend that started during the last gen, which is honestly one of my favorite parts of that generation. I found out that I really like messing around with view angles, composition, and all of those other technical stuff, and games are so perfect for it because it's so easy and immediate to see the results of what I played around with. I was gifted a mirrorless camera not long after I really got into photo modes as well, which pretty much seals the deal on my love for photography.
