By Nanditha Krishna
As I approach my 25th birthday this June, I find myself reflecting on my journey through my turbulent teenage years to the even more tumultuous twenties, with an evolving sense of self-awareness. Over the years, as I have started living my twenties, I have begun to walk down the rather ‘deep alleys’ of my formative years, revisiting and exploring the patterns I picked up as a child, in order to understand why I function today the way I do and how they shape my present self. It’s quite interesting, because the corpus of data one has of childhood memories is not really extensive, leaving one to make sense of whatever little memory exists.
One intriguing realisation that I have come to terms with is my complete lack of childhood friendships, with very few or no memories of companionship with kids my age, simply due to their absence. However, on the brighter side, I also vividly recall moments of joy that I experienced during all those times when my family would gift me toys and puzzles to play with. I would spend countless hours crafting stories, immersed in my own little world playing with these imaginary characters I had created in my head. While the world saw me engrossed with my toys—jigsaw puzzles, trains, doctor play sets, building blocks and LEGO sets (plus countless other play sets)—to me, I was deeply engaged in storytelling, worldbuilding, designing narratives, and weaving tales with my toys. I neither craved nor felt the need for friends; my solitary play was fulfilling enough for me to stay in my shell. Another distinct memory that strikes a chord with me is that of my parents once taking me to a kids’ park, hoping that this attempt of theirs would make me socialise with other children. Their efforts did prove very futile, and I would always swiftly retreat back to my own world upon returning home. Despite my parents’ attempts to encourage social interaction, my aversion to forced socialisation reinforced my preference for solitary play. In hindsight, I now recognize this tendency as introversion.
As I grew up into my early teens, my passion for video games only intensified—Counter-Strike, Mount & Blade, Hitman, GTA, Need for Speed, Road Rash, Rollcage, historical narratives in Age of Empires, Diablo, SWAT, and other gamified narratives; you name it, I played it all. My fascination with narratives deepened as I grew up and matured, intensifying my further immersion into interesting stories. I would eagerly collect video game CDs from my extended family whenever we visited our hometown during vacations. Unfortunately, it was also during this period that societal pressures convinced me that it was time to become ‘serious’, prioritising ‘seriousness’ over playfulness. In retrospect, I realised the world held me back, urging me to suppress my playful self in favour of a more serious demeanour and outlook on life. Looking back, I strongly believe that I lost a significant part of myself to this misguided notion of viewing games with negative connotations, rather than seeing them as interesting pastimes and a natural part of life. This misconception led me to forsake gaming and focus solely on the demands of life, causing me to lose a significant part of myself.
Cut to my 20s now. As I transitioned from my teenage years to my early 20s, what earlier seemed to me like loosely connected abstract events in the last five years now make so much more sense to me. I interned at the Empathic Computing Laboratory, an academic research laboratory at the University of South Australia in Adelaide, Australia and the University of Auckland in New Zealand, where I assisted PhD students with empathic interactional and conversational design in a context-aware empathic virtual reality (VR) photography environment. Additionally, I interned at The Verse, a startup focusing on games and well-being, where I contributed to worldbuilding, narrative design, and community development initiatives. I also freelanced with Playwell Bricks Design Studio providing creative editing support. Furthermore, I served as one of the editors of Media, Arts, and Design (MAD) Anthology-II: MAD Pandemic: Stories of Change and Continuity published in association with the Center for Applied Game Studies at the University for Continuing Education Krems, Austria. It has taken me a while to connect the dots and realise that the common thread linking these instances is, in fact, games. Today, I find it heartening and encouraging that despite conforming to societal norms that emphasise cultivating ‘seriousness’ for a period and losing some years to them, I have not entirely lost my passion for games.
As I now learn to let go of the ‘seriousness’ I previously embraced in life due to social pressures and re-embrace my lost playfulness, I am also consciously unlearning, relearning, and reframing the notion that being playful is not a trait inherent only in children but meant for everybody, regardless of age. I am learning that there is something deeply creative and fulfilling about immersing yourself in games, stepping into the shoes of characters, and, above all, being introverted with a deep passion for games.
Of course, I have carried a sense of solitariness with me from my childhood and teenage years into my early adulthood. However, I am also aware that correlation doesn’t imply causation. In my 25 years of existence, I have realised that while gaming was NEVER the reason for my limited social skills, it did help me a lot in coping with the growing pains of life and the intense loneliness I have experienced over time. In fact, playing games helped me feel a lot less alone. In short, books, stories, art, music, films, and games have been constant presences in my life and indeed helped me unleash my imagination. I have come to believe that introversion and gaming can truly be a highly creative combination.
Learning social skills still remains a challenge, but a great deal of happiness comes from relearning and knowing that it’s okay to be into games, and it doesn’t have to hinder my ability to form connections with people. Instead, it can be a topic of great conversations. Especially knowing myself all too well—that I usually bond through activities with people, and that games could be one of them too. As I also find my way through figuring out failed friendships, forming and sustaining meaningful connections and friendships in my early 20s, figuring out how to retain my highly sensitive, introverted self in this world, it helps to recall that I was okay as a kid and a teen, in my own little world, and that I will be okay as an adult too, no matter how hard adulting right now seems to be.
Nanditha Krishna
Integrated Masters (M.A) English Language and Literature (2019-2024)
https://nandithakrishna.home.blog/
Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham
Amritapuri, India