I quite often feel that gaming is very often overlooked as an art form, even scoffed at by various groups of people as connoisseurs of art and I feel it is unfairly so. As a medium, I believe it can explore all the themes traditional art styles do and add interesting perspectives to them as they games allow players to experience them for themselves from a different perspective. Yes, there are games that are just silly fun, but there are plenty of games that explore a wide variety of subjects in interesting ways.
My name is Duncan Ainsworth, I'm 29, and I have Asperger's Syndrome.
So, I've decided that I'm going to write a book. I think it will be an interesting journey, a way to keep me busy, and a potential income stream in the future.
About seven years ago I started taking photos using a Bridge Camera, something of an in-between a point and shoot camera and a fancy DSLR camera. I thought I could do with a creative outlet and photography came easy-ish to me. It didn't feel like a major effort to teach myself the basics; it's all I needed to know really. I knew I was never going to be a professional or full-time photographer. I wanted to have some fun and see where it took me. I have had fun learning how to use cameras and how to shoot the best shots that I can. Today I’ll be writing about my experiences as a hobby photographer, things that I’ve learnt, and things I want to try.
I've been enjoying video games in some form or another for almost two decades, but more prevalently since I bought an Xbox 360 in 2007. What started out as an occasional hobby became something that I love doing, a place where I made friends and somewhere to distract me from suicidal thoughts and to make me feel happy. They are something I can do to focus on something other than how I feel; they can make you feel so many different things over the course of a story. They also allow you to go places you wouldn’t ordinarily go, places you wouldn’t imagine, both real and fictional.
This picture is of me (on the far left) and my siblings at a family wedding in October 2017. What you won't necessarily be able to tell but will have probably guessed from the time of this post is that I have depression. I was diagnosed with depression at the end of May 2012, about 3 months before I was due to go to university. I was on a college course, not failing, but not meeting my expected grades either, although that statement probably underestimates how badly I was doing within myself. That particular episode was not the worst depressive episode I've had, those came later, but I was far from alright. I now feel it is important to discuss mental health openly, particularly for men and men my age, as suicide is a highly prevalent problem for my age (mid to late 20s).
