It's often distraction. If someone was talking about the Xerox star as the first desktop computer, then someone interrupted with talking about the hp 9100a, it's kinda derailment. The point is it was one of the first to it still had to establish a lot of things
What people mean is "before it was an established thing" "before parameters were known" or "after it was an established thing"
Like "tallest building" what they mean is "challenging to construct vertical structure that needed special considerations"
It's mostly used figuratively as a narrative backdrop like it is here and not as some indisputable factoid
I disagree respectfully. I feel that if one is going to be documenting or discussing "the very first" of something, then it should actually be documented as the very first. I prefer the term "first known" or "first documented" when it comes to something with as spotty a recorded history as video gaming.
For years, people thought Warren Robinett had made the first video game easter egg in Adventure for the 2600. Turns out there have been three other contenders for that title. The first contender was Video Whizball on the Fairchild Channel F, from 1978. [1]
In 2017, Ed Fries learned of the existence of an egg in the 1977 Atari arcade game Starship 1, and did the legwork to determine a more accurate release date, as well as the egg's trigger method. He dated it to August 13, 1977 (release date, so egg would have existed prior to that date while in development and production). [2]
Guinness even currently recognizes the Starship 1 egg as the first known video game easter egg [3]. While this is currently the first known arcade game easter egg (therefore Ed Fries' claim is accurate), there was an even earlier egg found in Spitfire on the Channel F. Someone even found a newspaper ad claiming Spitfire was available for purchase on April 16, 1977, making it the earliest known video game easter egg. [4]
And with that I have spent way too much time putting together an HN comment lol
Guinness style (and other types of) facts can be unimportant, hence the term "trivia", but they need not be, that's all I'm saying. Similarly, the disputation of these facts can be pedantic quibbling or interesting and informative.
I think what's much more interesting is instances before it became a "thing".
Before things get a name, culture, rules of what it is and is not, there's many instances that are close to it. Those are interesting as a collection but drawing the lines between the isolated elements can be a bit dubious. Ideas are communicative but also come out of thin air.
We have an unprecedented amount of knowledge at our fingertips these days and can cross correlate vast expanses of say, music. You can hear say some song from 1960s in peru and then see how similar it was to something in japan in the 1980s but actually showing that the second creators even knew of the first, that's the part that I think is hard - it has to be demonstrated.
Just the other week I was talking with some artist from northern england who sounded like legowelt (danny wolfers) telling him how much I really liked his legowelt-style song - danny is a minor figure generally but pretty well known in the subgenre of electronic music he works in. This guy honestly said "who's legowelt" and got back to me the next day "wow, this guy's amazing, never heard of him".
So even today, with the internet, you can have someone essentially sound like the exact style and still have never heard of the person they're supposedly "influenced" by.
It expunges the tidy narrative where we want everything to have a clear delineated beginning. "Rappers Delight began the 80s rap formula" - that one super clear, yes, hard to argue against - but most things are not so clear.
What people mean is "before it was an established thing" "before parameters were known" or "after it was an established thing"
Like "tallest building" what they mean is "challenging to construct vertical structure that needed special considerations"
It's mostly used figuratively as a narrative backdrop like it is here and not as some indisputable factoid