How video games helped me come to terms with male pattern baldness

The onset of hair loss was devastating to writer Joe Donnelly - until a game called Dark Souls arrived and changed his perspective

"Screw you, you baldy bastard," cried the man I'd spent the last 15 minutes alongside, slaughtering Russian mobsters and seizing bag-loads of drugs. We were at the end of a Grand Theft Auto IV online mission and things had gone wrong; somehow, I was getting the blame, despite the fact that he was the one who nearly blew the plan by leaving me behind at the helipad. Nonetheless, a belligerent grenade, tossed at me in spite, marked the end of our contemptuous partnership. It was his words however, not the explosion, that cut deepest.

He couldn't have known it of course - we spoke over headsets, and his remark was aimed at my onscreen character and not at me - but I was going through the early stages of male pattern baldness and the associated dawning denial that accompanies the ordeal.