What Does Your First Game Say About You? Nothing at All

Firsts are important. First day at school, first kiss, first time you threw up on one of your friends ‘“ these experiences remain vividly imprinted on your memory. So, to mark this first brain dump, I thought I should tackle a first that isn’t important in the slightest: the first videogame you owned.

They’re sporting the opposite view over on the Guardian Gamesblog. Jack Arnott argues that while the first album you owned was often something bought for you in the vague hope of instilling some good taste, the first game you owned is most likely the result of much parental begging and cajoling ‘“ and therefore says a great deal more about you. Except that it doesn’t, or at least not in any way that can be taken as an accurate indicator of your future gaming tastes any more than eating baby food makes you regret moving onto solids. Really, your first game is directly dependent on a much bigger choice: your first console. Or rather, the choice of which console you harangued your parents into buying for you.

Your choice of console is far more likely to affect your gaming preferences in later life than the first individual title. Getting a console in the 90′s was a commitment. Arnott talks about being stuck with a game until Christmas; with a console you were stuck with it for years. But it was a commitment you made on the back of the promise of things to come. You could be sure that the platform holder had a string of exclusives up its sleeves to stop you from wondering if the grass is greener, and you were buying into those titles as much as whatever came with the console in the first place.

What’s your poison?

Personal preferences also count for a lot. My MegaDrive came with four games: the first Sonic, Super Hang On, World Cup Italia ’90 and Columns. Sonic was the one I knew, the one I was excited about, the one I eagerly snatched out of the box first, but to this day I’ve never been inspired enough to finish it. Super Hang On and Columns got brief runs, and then pretty much ignored. World Cup Italia ’90, however, I became entranced with. I poured hours into it, despite it being an awful game. It had sluggish, unresponsive controls and a birds-eye camera so low you couldn’t see where most of the rest of your team was to make a good pass. Half of the time, the only way it was possible to make any progress up the pitch was to force throw-ins all the way. Who the hell puts up with a half-baked game like this?

Oh wait, that would be me. The reason why was because, at the time, I loved football, so much so that knowing where all the opposition teams played was how I first learnt about the geography of the UK. What I loved outside of gaming came to influence which games I loved.

But even this pales against that second defining step ‘“ your first personal purchase. This to me says a lot more than the first game you ever owned. It’s the boiled down culmination of (potentially) years of gaming experiences; not just the games you owned but the ones you borrowed from friends or played with them.

Building preferences

One game that I borrowed in high school was a DOS title called Genesia (better known as Ultimate Domain in some quarters). It had a simple premise: take four or so settlers, set them to work as woodcutters, architects, warriors and what not, manage resources, expand and protect your village and scuttle your way up the tech tree until you could steamroll your neighbours by chucking bombs out of a hot air balloon. It was a bit like Civilization, and I enjoyed it immensely. I discovered I liked the micro-management and constructive elements that I found sorely lacking when playing platformers like Mega Man. It is little surprise then, that the first game I bought myself was SimCity 2000, and proceeded to get hooked on a grind-tastic cocktail of JRPGs without ever having owned a SNES.

But looking back, none of the games I first owned had any lasting bearing on my gaming tastes now. When I stopped playing football in my mid-teens, my interest in football games evaporated with it, and despite my fondness for the horrible mess that is Italia ’90 I was never under any delusion that it was better in form or function than Sonic.

You could consider this cynicism, and I’m sure there are some people out there who still identify with the first game they owned. Good for them. But more important in my eyes is the first game you played, not necessarily owned. If you call yourself a gamer, it did the same thing to you as it did me ‘“ showed you there was a lot more to come from this medium, for fanboys and cynics alike.