Narrating Personal Interest

Gaming has always been a part of my life. I remember the first game I played was at my grandma’s house when I was about 10 years old. It was a bar style shooting game where robbers would throw plates at you and you would have to shoot them before they hit you. After each level was a duel between the leader of the robbers and yourself. If you won, the next level would be faster and harder to complete. I remember spending hours sitting around with my sister trying to beat each other’s high score.

In primary school gaming was huge. In early primary school all of my friends had digimon. We’d all sit around at lunch time and battle to see who the best in our class was. We also had competitions to see who could get the best creatures.

It wasn’t until around year 6 that I discovered the world of MMORPG’s. Runescape was the first one I played and to this day is probably still the most memorable. Every day after school my whole class would log in to Runescape and we’d run around completing quests and exploring the world. The next day at school we’d talk about what we’d done and what we planned on doing the next night. It was great fun and I believe it really bought our class together. Even the “popular” girls would play, which as I learned later, wouldn’t last forever.

Around the same time I remember playing a lot of Age of Empires with my dad. We’d sit down for hours building up a strong empire to defeat our enemy. As well as this, my sister and I played a lot of Playstation together and I think it bought us closer.

When I hit high school my gaming habits dropped until the end of year 12. I was still playing single player games, just less frequently, as I was concentrating on my studies. At the end of year 12 I found an MMORPG called Ragnarok Online. I met some great people on there, including my girl friend. After my friends and I grew tired of Ragnarok, I began game jumping.

I always try to convince myself that I’m going to stick with the next game I play only to find out that there is something bigger and better coming out soon. I love pushing my hardware to play the latest games, even if it’s just to see if my computer can handle it. This, mixed in with my short attention span, is what makes me a game jumper.