Just how is this a mistake?
Well mistake is probably not the best word, but it could potentially have been unnecessary. I suppose it depends on whether you use a "top down" approach to software development or a "bottom up" one. I can see how tracking down a rogue pointer might be a problem.
Oh the horror stories I could tell. It's not so much a problem if you're doing the one man army thing, but once you go above 3 or some programmers working on the source code, you'd be surprised how often one of these babies gets through, even with an experienced team, and reasonably good documentation. managed or unmanaged, a language which does not allow the use of "delete" results in more confusing and complicated code (IMHO).
4 years ago, I would have agreed with you completely. Today however my approach to problem solving is more about finding the right datastructure to solve a problem, as I find it often offers the more elegant and/or flexible solution. Still I don't have any insight to what kind of problems you're normally working with, but I'm sure your approach works just as well. In either case, my nephew really enjoys BT II and is freakishly good at it, so I think you've demonstrated that your way works, regardless of whether I think it's the smart thing to do or not. I'm sure there are several others here who have completed full polished 3D games with a GC language ;)
I think the reason we're not seeing more games written in GC languages is more because many of the companies producing said games have a lot of assets tied up in legacy, unmanaged software. Hopefully XNA will help address some of these issues. I mean the video game industry isn't exactly known for their embrace of new stuff (with the possible exception of graphics hardware). According to Daniel Irish (and I'll take his word for it), most companies are still using code & fix as their development process. Which is just sad, I reckon.Sorry about the rant BTW.