A Little White Lie and a Jump Straight into the Gaming Zone
Illustration for A Little White Lie and a Jump Straight into the Gaming Zone.
Videogames have always been fascinating for me. The music, the art and the characters intertwined with gameplay? That just seemed to come straight out of a fantasy book! What brought me specifically into videogames was actually anime. My sister has always been an avid fan of anime as far as I can remember, where she would drag me into watching some weird Japanese-animated shows with her. At first it wasn’t up to my tastes. Why should I even bother about romance? I wanted to see fights, especially if I wanted to be seen as a tomboy who wasn’t girly or into pink.
However, this fake resistance of mine did not last long and I fell into this rabbit hole myself. The pandemic was a situation where everyone was locked up in their homes for God knows how long. As I was running out of anime that piqued my curiosity, a Chinese company named miHoYo (HoyoVerse since 2022) released their new fantasy game in 2020. Now I was aware of games like the Persona series (a JRPG), Devil May Cry (an action game) and Resident Evil (survival horror), I even played Minecraft on my phone for a few days, but I couldn’t play these games because I did not have a laptop. But this new game was compatible with mobile phones.
After mulling it over for a few days and scrambling to free up storage, on one fine Thursday, I grabbed the chance and downloaded Genshin Impact. It was a wonderful experience for an eighth grader who was bored out of her mind. The scenery was breathtaking and the story was very gripping. Most importantly of all, it resonated with my need to try something new which still retained the spirit of anime. I was addicted, I tell you. My maa was eventually fed up and said I needed to practice and improve my designing skills, since I was glued to my phone all day.
I decided that this was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity of goading my maa into buying me a gaming laptop. I mean, which thirteen-year-old would actually sit down and think about what is beneficial for the future? Certainly wasn’t me. Smartly enough, I used half-truths to get what I wanted—a gaming laptop—by telling my mother that I need it for designing and editing. Finally, with the weapon to combat storage problems and bad graphics, I wasted no time getting to work.
Over the years, I’ve played many games from almost every single genre. Though I no longer pursue art and design as a career, and am not getting enough time to play videogames like before, they are still a crucial part of my life because I have learnt a lot about art, physics, politics and even life as a whole. I don’t think I’ll let go of either as my hobbies anytime soon. And the best part is that my little lie actually worked very well in hindsight because I do use it for designing and editing work along with my gaming pursuits.
Mrinmoyee Roy is pursuing her Bachelor’s in Media and Communications at Symbiosis Centre of Media and Communication. Formally trained in Art, Taekwondo and Kathak, Mrinmoyee has also worked on several projects as an illustrator, graphic designer and production assistant. With a strong passion for creative endeavours, an entrepreneurial bent of mind and deeply intertwined with the humanities, she wishes to incorporate all of these aspects of her life into her work.