Sure, but the possibility was there. I was given a ZX Spectrum clone and started coding, my brother only played games. I am not sure I would work in IT if that didn't happen. We were pretty much poor by today's standards and probably could not afford another such device, never mind that we would not know what to buy (as nobody in my family had any IT experience and there was no IT shop in our small town).

Exactly this. My brother only played games on our C64 and Amiga, while I did nothing but program on it.

Games were in some way 99% of my use of the Apple IIc we had, which was my first computer. Original Bard's Tale in glorious green screen. Good times.

However, I also spent a lot of time painstakingly copying BASIC games, line by line from magazines, then figuring out how to expand upon them for additional features. Gaming was just the gateway drug.