Digital Personas - Vanishing From Reality

Shawn King talks about how games helped him stay centered despite deteriorating familial relationships, and aided him in the process of coming out. 

My love for video games began when I was fairly young. I remember being around 4 or 5 and playing one of the older Final Fantasies on my SNES and not understanding what was going on, but loving it regardless. Back then, it was all about how new and exciting it was, and how it drew me in with all those different, impossible worlds. Games also had me trying to get these imaginary people through their lives, levels, quests, and trials, and I enjoyed helping them, even when frustrated.

However, when I got older, and my life changed in earth shattering ways, games became something different for me. These changes took awhile to affect me, nothing really happening until I hit puberty. It was at this point that everything took a nose dive. My home life had been unstable for years, and would remain so until college, my self-esteem dropped severely due to weight gain, an abusive older brother and a working single mother left me torn and battered with only my games.

They let me escape that life that I hated so much, and allowed me to become another person whose life I could totally handle. The Legend of Zelda transformed me from a timid, socially awkward child into the silent, fearless, and paragon of heroism that is Link. Pokemon gave me an alternate universe where kids my age went on amazing adventures with powerful creatures with an infinite amount of unconditional love. I found myself drawn into these characters and began caring for my Pokemon as if they actually existed.

Eventually, things started evening out in my life. I gained amazing friends and grew physically and emotionally. The more I grew, the less important video games became; I branched out to other forms of media, music, literature, etc., and thought I was truly finding myself. More time passed and Link and my Pokemon simply became what they were, digital characters meant to entertain and pass time, and in typical roller coaster fashion, life threw me into another steep dive.

Relationships bloomed and died, everything changed drastically. I started pushing people away, trying to be alone as much as possible, even though I utterly despised it. It stemmed from me trying to find my true self; I was tired of lying to myself and to everyone else, but was far too scared to say anything. So I simply passed myself off as weird and strange, using games and media to feed who I really was, to keep it hidden as long as possible.

Fable was an extremely important game in staying “weird.” It helped me, a closeted gay boy, live out my dreams in an alternate world. Being able to marry men gave me a sense of kinship, something I had been needing, with the protagonist, and let me live my dreams. Though I would remain in the closet for several more years, Fable was the first step in slowly accepting myself for who I was.

Eventually, I learned to combine everything in my life that I loved. I no longer played video games by myself, often I would join friends or play music and get even more sucked into the world than before. At the same time, I still needed to play just for myself. It remains this way now, where sometimes, everything just gets to be too much and I need to get away. Nowadays, I am people like Hawke, and Chell, among others; their worlds put mine into perspective even as I feel Hawke’s depression and Chell’s total determination to escape. Once I become them, I draw on them to make it through those trying times.