Learned extroversion

I’ve always been very comfortable in my own company, so much so that I seek it out. I feel drained if I’m not able to be alone enough. Perhaps you find yourself feeling the same way at times.

Where an introvert may feel exhausted from prolonged social situations, an extrovert often craves them, so I’d very much see myself as the former. This may sound odd to say, given my willingness to sing in front of large numbers of people or socialise with groups of people I don’t know, but it’s certainly not something that comes naturally.

This post isn’t really looking to offer any advice - it’s more of a reflection on some of the points in my life that helped me overcome the social anxieties that all-too-often come with being an introvert. Hopefully you find some value in them.

Stepping up on stage

I don’t really come from a musical family, but I found myself writing music in my early teens with some friends that lived across the street.

By secondary school, I was playing guitar and had formed a band with two other friends. We did originally have a singer, but a month before our first gig, she decided she didn’t want to play in a band any more. Neither our bassist or drummer¹ wanted to sing, so I said I’d take a crack at it.

We used to rehearse in the drummer’s house, which was a very old cottage with extremely thick walls. Something about knowing it was hard for anyone outside to hear us made singing whilst we practiced more approachable for me. The big day rolled around quickly and I felt anything but ready. I’d really struggled with remembering lyrics, and trying to remember them whilst playing meant I couldn’t focus as much on playing guitar at the same time, which in turn made that harder. I remember pacing back and forth for about an hour before we were due on stage, doing my best not to talk to anyone, and reciting the lyrics to some of the trickier songs over and over.

“You’re on in five.”

I suddenly realised I had no real choice: this was happening. It’s not like I could just walk out now. Our friends and family had all come out to support us. My bandmates were counting on me and it was too late to back out.

The actual gig went extremely fast. It turns out they often do. Despite that, there are three things I distinctly remember: standing up there looking at the crowd before we started, the buzz I felt when we’d finished, and forgetting the lyrics to one of our song’s verses. I remember the internal panic as my brain desperately scrambled to find the words, the disappointment as time ran out, and sinking feeling as I found myself instinctively singing the words from a different verse instead. But most of all, I remember my eyes darting around the room, looking at the faces of everyone as we played the final chorus: no one even seemed to have noticed that I’d messed up.

Something changed in me on that day, the second I stepped on stage. I still get butterflies whenever I step on stage², but having been through it once I know that if I can just get over the hurdle of standing up there, within a few minutes the feeling will subside and everything will be okay.

Saying hello to someone new

I owe a great deal to a life-long interest in games: it’s why I took the A-levels I did, it’s why I started coding, and it’s the main reason for learning so many different skills.

Although I was drawing Sonic the Hedgehog levels during break at primary school, it wasn’t until a few years into my first job that I managed to start building games of any reasonable scope or polish. Within days of officially forming as XMPT Games³, we had entered a game pitch to a competition run by Sony. Somehow we made it to the final three.

The three finalists had been invited to attend a gaming conference in Birmingham where the winner would be announced. The session to announce the winning pitch was at the end of the day, so we had a full day to explore the expo and (ideally) gain some contacts in the industry.

There was one problem: none of us had the confidence to walk up to a group of people we didn’t know and introduce ourselves.

We spent the first hour or so standing by ourselves and chatting in the middle of the room. I spent that time looking around at all of the potentially-interesting people, wondering what it is they did, and trying to will myself to go and speak to them.

Eventually, I took a deep breath and walked over to the nearest person I could find.

It turns our he was an indie recruitment rep for Microsoft. Lovely chap and very friendly, despite my very clumsy introduction. That talk ended up being the start of our route in to Microsoft to pursue development kits and publishing on XBox.

For the rest of the expo I continued to bite my lip, take a breath, and introduce myself to new groups of people. Every time it got easier and easier. It opened up a whole host of interesting opportunities too, from investors and publishers to AAA developers and fellow indies. And now, after years of introducing myself to new people at conferences and events, I no longer have that deep-seated discomfort in the pit of my stomach whenever the need arises to introduce myself to a new group of people.

Presenting confidence

By far one of the hardest things I’ve had to do is stand up on a stage in front of a room of a several thousand or so people, and do a 15 minute presentation about one of the worst games I’ve made in my life⁴.

We’d been invited to be one of four teams that participated in a one-day game jam at the Rezzed expo. We had eight hours, sat on the expo floor, to produce a game from scratch around a specific theme. The day after, we would present on stage in front of the entire expo and a winner would be crowned. The theme was announced as “retro” and we’d decided to make a platform themed around VHS and BetaMax. Every time you beat the level, the VHS tape rewound and you played it again, except this time the world had slightly degraded. We named it “Beta to the Max”.

Creating a full game in only eight hours is extremely difficult. We’d chosen a complicated concept. We’d chosen to write everything from scratch instead of using a pre-existing engine like Unreal or Unity. The wifi on the show floor was not good and we were having issues getting code into our version control. About 15 minutes before the end of the jam I lost a huge chunk of my code as I tried to check it in and couldn’t recover it. We scrambled to recover it, but the game was a glitchy mess.

I had the entire night to think about how to handle the presentation. It was a long night. But in the end, I had no choice. I had to get on that stage in front of all of those people. Like many times before I stood backstage, took a deep breath, and just went for it. We managed to joke about things and not take ourselves too seriously, and in the end, it wasn’t so bad.

The trick

There’s no magic bullet when it comes to building confidence or breaking through social anxiety. The moment before can be crippling, terrifying, paralysing. But that’s the worst point - the moment itself is never as bad as the build up.

For me, it helped to just switch my brain off and go for it, but whatever you can find which works for you, it’s worth trying to push through that first time. If you can break through that fear the first time, the second time will be easier, and the third easier again.