Fell in with a bad crowd who introduced me to the ZX spectrum.

From there it was a natural progression. When I wrote my first game on the device I was hooked.

That's when they introduced me to my first PC and Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards.

It was all downhill from there... Day of the Tentacle, 7th Guest , Wing Commander, MDK, Diablo.... the cycle just kept repeating...

I am now a husk of a human...

You are aware that now we all want to see this picture?

I think in my case it was simply that I grew up around them

In the late 1970's my friend's older brother had an Atari 2600, which we were allowed to play sometimes. Later, in the early 1980's my family had a Colecovision and we also had the ultra-rare Nabu Network, and eventually a C=64 for which I amassed 100's of games. Of course, there were also arcades which were prevalent in those days.

If I could find it in the mess I call home, I'd even upload it XD

That's pretty simple, the arcade that was across the street. 25 cents to play a game = lots of wasted allowance/school lunch money. From the pinball machines to my first gamer love Centipede. Yeah Pacman came out first, but I liked Centipede. And then Galaga showed up and I was hooked.

Bard's Tale on the C64 probably helped.

Actually now that I think of it, the Atari that I had predated most of the arcade games I remember. But, perhaps I didn't get it until much later. I seem to remember pinballs, arcades, atari, C64...

My older brother was into computers and games as soon as they hit the market for home use. To no one's surprise at all, he ended up going into computers as his career. I watched him play when I was a very little thing, and eventually inherited his Commodore 64 (complete with ugly ass amber monochrome monitor) when he upgraded to the 128. My earliest memory of gaming on my own was playing Zork on it. This began a long sequence of me inheriting his outdated systems and software until I was old enough to buy my own, finally current, set up. You can't imagine the joy of that happy day: oh the luxury to buy NEW games, games that weren't found in the bargain bin or handed down to me, but could run on MY machine!

Needless to say, we never had console games when I was a kid. My brother played them at friends' houses but never seemed all that interested in having his own. My husband was my gateway into console gaming, but PC games will always come first in my heart (and wallet). Ironically, our own kids prefer the console games and would pick X-Box over PC any day of the week, but there you have it, that is how THEY became gamers: it was genetic in their case. ^_^

Both, I think. Playing games allowed me to not think about my problems and on the other hand, being a gamer made me feel special, that I was good at something. Nevertheless, I finally overcame my insecurities only after I moved from my parents, started to study in a bigger city and found a job as well. I worked with customers daily so I couldn't afford to by shy or insecure. So it's ironic - the real life actually helped me when it caused the problem in the first place ;)

My dad sat me in the PC chair when I was 6, opened Wolfenstein 3D, showed me the controls and so a gamer was born.

I grew up around computers. The first we had was a Commodore Vic 20, that my uncle taught us a little BASIC, (now long since forgotten, unless I wanna make the computer scroll LIQUID OXYGEN IS AWESOME, a billion times,) we had versions of Asteroids, I played around with Turtle Grafix and made a few very generic, very basic games with it. (Oh, dem cassette drives.)

First real console was a Vectrex. I had a blast with that thing, and we had a pretty decent array of games with it. (Spike, Scramble, Berzerk, Minestorm, Star Trek, Money Chase, Web spinner thingie, and Dark Castle.) I was dumb and sold it in a garage sale when I was 13, for much less than it was worth, and even less for what it and those games are worth now. X_x

Everything changed once my Dad brought home the IBM compatible 8088 with the Hercules chip. Monochrome graphics, but man, did I play the fudge out of some early Sierra games, as well as clones of arcade hits. I can remember my Dad finally replacing our monitor with an EGA version and being blown away, and even more so when things went to VGA.

It's always hilarious to me to see how my young mind looked at things back then, versus how things are now, and how easy it was to just let things go and PLAY GAMES, rather than have to worry about whether or not a publisher should get my money.

Anyway, I was pretty much born into a family of gamers, even my Mom played Tetris, Road Rage and a bunch of games, and we always board gamed as well. My sisters and I were the closest in age, so we always gamed together and competed for high scores, speed runs on Mario and the like. There was no way I was ever NOT going to be a gamer, haha.
That's hilarious. My mom has a picture of me in diapers with one of those very old electronic handheld games that used to run on 9 volt batteries, just playing away!

Several friends had C64's.

I think the first game i possibly played was Airborne Ranger...and when you think about it - the gameplay isnt actually all that bad even today. The mechanics. I mean its helluva more complex than most AAA games today...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rlgF4lSatPM

not bad for game released in -87

You are aware that now we all want to see this picture?

:-)
The first C64 I ever played was First Strike. A classmate had a legal version, which was pretty rare at the time.

Lucky bastard, I only started gaming at the age of 6 on the NES, though I started with a vengeance.

Clearly, I had a lot of lost time to make up for :P.

NES, SNES, then everything changed after I played Wing Commander, Wolfenstein and Kings Quest.

Recently I have an Xbox and PS3, but hoping the steam boxes come down in price and developers embrace it.

Was bitten by another gamer maybe?