Articles WinBack: Covert Operations

The first games in their genres — 40 projects that did something for the very first time what now appears in every other game. The first shooter, the first fighting game, the first Battle Royale, the first minimap, the first QTE, the first dialogue tree. The history of the gaming industry is the history of who invented what first. Did you know that the first first-person shooter wasn't Wolfenstein? That the color-coded loot rarity system was invented not in Diablo but in a text-based ASCII roguelike? That the Battle Royale genre was born from a zombie simulator mod, not from a marketer's head? Most of the mechanics we take for granted were invented by someone for the first time — often by accident, sometimes out of laziness, almost always in a game you've never heard of. This piece covers more than 30 such innovations. The first fighting game, the first stealth game, the first open world, the first character progression system, the first dialogue tree, the first online multiplayer, the first co-op, the first Battle Royale — and the games behind them. Some will surprise you, some will make you laugh, but every single one deserves to be known.