Stephen King has two great rules for anyone aspiring to be a writer: Read a lot & Write a lot. (This is slightly apocryphal, as he has quite a few rules/tips/suggestions, but these are important ones, and I was trying to be dramatic.) These very same rules obviously apply to any creative endeavour. If you want to be a composer you should definitely be listening to lots of music. And if I want to make board and card games, it follows that I should certainly be playing plenty of them.
With that