One thing I feel strongly about is, if you enjoy video games, you should play old games. Especially if you're a zoomer or a millennial like me, you should play games that came out before you were born.
This isn't me being like "the games I played as a kid because those are the GOOD games", like some kind of nostalgia freak. There's a lot of modern games out now that are legitimately fantastic, and do things that those old games could never do. There's just value in knowing what path games as an art form have taken over the years.
Video games have their own art history, and as far as I'm aware, this is largely ignored in the broader conversation about them. Often recommendations to play old games are pushed back against due to being "clunky and ugly", and by modern standards that's kind of true, but I think it's not fair to dismiss them off hand like that. A good understanding of the games that inspired your favorite modern games can help you appreciate them more.
Diablo* was a game I played a lot as a childe, and one I revisited as an adult. One of the main differences between my first playthoughs and my more recent one was that I had been introduced to the roguelike genre, and more specifically Nethack. Suddenly I became aware of direct lines of inspiration from Rogue in Diablo**. It gave me a new appreciation for Diablo's*** mechanics that I wouldn't have had otherwise.
Also play games made in flash, because those have been far more influential than you'd think, considering how completely out of the mainstream conversation they are.
I just think video game history is as important to the medium as art history as is to paintings or whatever. And it's kinda sad that this older stuff gets neglected, even if it's for reasons I understand. Also this is a way for me to indirectly encourage more people to play games I love, that they might ignore otherwise
*Bobby kotic and his goons should die btw
**Like seriously, with a gun
***Or bricks