BENGALURU : When asked about the longest time he spent gaming, Krishna Prasad didn’t miss a beat before saying, “Forty-eight hours. I was home alone during my second year of college and had all my snacks and drinks arranged around me. I just kept gaming and didn’t even realise it had been two days until my friend pinged me in the game informing me so. I then slept for nearly nineteen hours.”
Krishna, who prefers to go by his gamer name Gravity, began gaming when he was in third grade. “My cousin took me to a gaming store and bought me some games. He introduced me to a game called Diablo 2, which is a role-playing action game. I began to play it on a daily basis and eventually got hooked to gaming,” he says.
The Mechanical Engineering graduate enjoys playing Call of Duty and DOTA.“I love playing games that are Multiplayer Online Battle Arenas and first-person shooters. I used to visit Arknemesis in Nungambakkam, but realised it was too expensive owing to their high-end systems. I don’t even care how basic the medium is as long as it runs smoothly on my laptop after download,” he says.
Of the many gamers he follows, Krishna is a fan of the streamer Dr. Disrespect and adopts many of his tactics while gaming. Krishna is especially a fan of those gamers who double-cross their opponents. “I know a gamer who makes all his fellow players feel like they are about to win until the last minute. Right when they let their guard down, he makes a move no one noticed and wins,” he says.
While he plays for nearly 12-14 hours a day during holidays, the 22-year-old spends only 4-5 hours gaming otherwise.“I am neither an outdoor person nor a party animal. Gaming is engaging and helps me to connect with a lot of people. Gaming is like partying from home, and it has become a daily routine for me and my community of gamers. They are people from my locality who love the same games as I do, so we began to bond and co-ordinate our timings. We are a strong team and have won gaming tournaments at DG Vaishnav College,” he says.
“It’s not like I play games in between studying. On the contrary, I study when I take breaks from gaming. I get this nagging feeling at the back of my mind that doesn’t let me sleep if I haven’t played at all in a day. But I always ensure that I compensate for it by playing a bit extra the next day. But I know where to draw the line; I take breaks and go for walks to get a breath of fresh air often,” he says.
Now, Krishna knows how to balance his work and his gaming life, but when he was younger, he did run into some health troubles.“I used to game for nearly 10-13 hours a day when I was in sixth grade. This left me with a retinal problem, as the over-exposure to radiations burnt my retinas. I was asked to stop gaming for a while and rest my eyes. It was never the end for me, merely a temporary break before starting again. I have worn glasses ever since,” he says.
Thinking ahead, Krishna doesn’t wish to pursue gaming as a profession, although he is confident that it will be a good source of income.“I know a lot of people who have made a profession of the domain and I am sure I have the skill set to make it happen. But look at it this way. I can continue gaming as a hobby even if I become an automobile engineer. But if I take up gaming as my profession, I can’t pursue automobiles as my hobby. Therefore, gaming will always be a secondary escape mechanism for me,” he says. Krishna also hopes to pursue his other passions of photography and table tennis in addition to his love for gaming.