Interestingly, your question of
"How would you get someone into video games when they've never played video games" has been covered by this Youtube video:
A major problem the guy addresses is that video games are conceptually very different from an outsider's perspective than from a player's perspective. For instance, we all understand that video games all have limitations and established rules. He uses
Mass Effect as an example, where the whole
"building relationships and exploring the galaxy" concept boils down to
"dialogue trees in a linear story" in our heads, but it sounds way more epic and larger to his non-gaming wife.
Overall, he discovers that in order to take someone who never touched a video game before and put them before a video game, one needs to teach someone "video game literacy." We all know that a HUD marker on the screen means
"Go here, you dumbfuck," but to someone with no prior knowledge or information, it just seems mystifying.
Knowing this, I think it would be best to get someone started on video games with simpler concepts and less distractions. Games whose ideas that could be picked up in seconds, like early arcade games such as
Pac-Man and
Galaga, before increasing the amount of complexity of mechanics as they become more acclimated towards playing them.