Do you ever feel guilty for not doing something more productive with all the time you use up playing a game? (Serious. Not meant to offend/attack).

I never really have a single answer to any particular question. There are levels of me that feel the deepest failure, and others that are glad to enjoy a bout of hedonistic pleasure and they are totally unapologetic. My ideal life would be meditating 8 hours per day, sex for a half hour or an hour, work for 6 hours, sleep for 8 hours and shower and eat in the remaining time. I am not there yet whatsoever and much of the meditation time is instead put into computer and organizational time, but that is a start I think. Because the thing about computers is that they operate in a logical way, they put things in priority sequences and start at the top of the list and work to the bottom. So that is what I am trying to learn how to do, to control myself like a machine when it comes down to getting things done, then when I am able to manage that consistently it will really open more time up because I will be accomplishing the daily necessities.

As for that time gaming, it is often a creative or strategic time for me. Civilization, Minecraft, some battlefield. Varying levels of skill required, various faculties being utilized, it is a waste of time to some extent, but it also can boost my mood to another extent where I do not mind the various problems that arise in my real life. So time spent gaming could be considered a currency to spend on difficult real life problems, without losing a good mood.

I like the occasional escape into a virtual world (the whole MYST series!), but adding up the hours and thinking of aaallll the things I could have learned/done/read/made in that time instead... It always makes me regret playing that 'much'. To me it feels as much like wasting time as it feel like relaxation.

I don't like to compare activities. You have to decide from the start what you are going to do, and after that stick by your decision. The problem is that people aren't very smart when they go to make a decision. And their reviewing process just isn't there, not during a day, not during a week or a month or a year. They are not reviewing the timeline and seeing where things are going. Everything should have been scheduled ahead of time, including gaming time. If one really had the innermost desire to read, they would have planned for it and made time. Forcing oneself to read because it is "productive" is fairly absurd and superficial. The learning itself is going to be contrived and inefficient. If a real drive to read is there it can be planned and time made for it, and it combined with an activity like a short burst of gaming, and no guilt is obtained from either.

I actually just deleted Watch Dogs without finishing it - the "134 hours played " in Steam was getting too much for me. And that is over almost a year of playing, with WD being the only game I was playing. (I have the option of reinstalling and continuing where I left off; cloud save and local backup.)

Games like Battlefield and Watchdogs etc are very graphical but lack creative or strategic aspects. Civilization and Minecraft are much more interesting as far as gaming is concerned. I still play quite a bit of Battlefield, but I know deep down that it is lower in terms of value than time spent playing other games. This knowledge turns into action and it's fallen in priority compared to playing the former two.