I dreaded the upcoming next week. Why you may ask? Well, next week is the fabled graduation for seniors at Kingdom High School, which is where I, Kogen Yoshino, attend. Kingdom High School was a decently sized school that my parents decided to enroll me in when I was a freshman. My parents wanted to move away from Japan and move to the United States for a myriad of reasons. One, it was too crowded. We lived in Tokyo. Second, the rent for the apartment we stayed in was starting to become a problem. My mom and dad's measly salary combined could not pay for even half the rent. We could've relocated, but my mom and dad decided not to since they were sick of the depressing atmosphere that was Japan. Third, my dad, mom, and I wanted to go to the United State because we heard from passing relatives that there were a lot of job opportunities and affordable apartments over there.
And so, we boarded a plane using some of our savings and flew to the United States. After going through the immigration process, we settled down at one of my dad's friends house. My mom found a job as an accountant within the next few weeks. My dad also found a job as a video game designer for some video game company. My dad, in particular, is awesome. He introduced me to video games and made me appreciate games a lot more then I used to. He is a total nerd when it comes to video games but becomes super embarrassed whenever I mention it.
When I moved to Kingdom High School, I really had trouble with making friends as I was never fluent or good at all with English. Throughout the years leading to senior year, I learned a lot more English and got better at it. I could communicate fluently with English by the end of junior year and I made a couple of awesome friends. My best buds were Zach, Bruno, and Robert. These three guys made the new American high school experience enjoyable, and they really helped with introducing the culture in the United States to me. We also always played games together every day after school. One of our favorites was Raid Online. It was an MMORPG game playable on PC and Console. It was a game with dungeons, magic, pvp, and more. The gameplay content was immense and there was no end in the fun it generated when my friends and I would enter a dungeon. This was my first introduction to MMORPG games.
Anyways, coming back to the original topic, graduation was coming up next week for seniors at Kingdom High School. I dreaded this because I was a senior at Kingdom High School with no goal in life. I spent most of my years playing games with my friends. They had already chosen a career to go towards in their life. Zach wanted to be a pilot, Bruno wanted to be a civil engineer, and Robert wanted to be an actor. One of the careers that I wanted to pursue was professional gaming. I've had my share of competitive gaming when I joined an event hosted by Raid Online which was to get the most kills in a special Christmas dungeon within 24 hours. As this was during Christmas break, I had nothing better to do and grinded this event. Little did I know, I was competing against the top 10 PVP players in Raid Online to get the most kills.
The mechanics in Raid Online was pretty complex. Mostly everything in the environment (including inside dungeons) could be used to your advantage. I experimented with this mechanic for years before this event even started and loved it. You could make countless things using this mechanic. I came up with a genius trap where one of my skill abilities, a taunting drone, would fly around mobs in the dungeon and lead them to one big trap. One may be thinking, "Isn't this what most players would do?" Well, the twist here is that the taunting drone eventually goes on a cooldown of 2 hours. This would be extremely detrimental in a 24-hour grind fest to kill the most mobs. So, I decided to do two traps. The mobs in this dungeon were intentionally made dumb. However, they were tanks and had a crap ton of health. I made a trap to lure in the mobs into this hidden hole I made. The mobs would try to get out of the hole and fail. And so, what is the most logical way to get out? For these mobs (which were tanky goblins), it was to call for help. This is where the second trap comes in. I use the mob's help call to lure in even more goblins. They don't even realize it's a trap and drop into the hole. I waited for around 3 hours per time and killed the goblins in the hole using a bucket of lava I had in my inventory. After this, I just drain the lava (as simple as clicking a button) and restart the process. By the end of the event, I completely decimated the top 10 PVP players I was talking about by thousands of mob kills. I obtained the special event item which was a set of one of a kind Santa-Claus cosmetic armor and 1 million silver, which was the currency used in Raid Online. After the event, I was swarmed with private messages; some questioned how I did it and some straight-up denied my legitimacy and accused me of cheating. It was bothersome but luckily there was an option to turn off private messages.
My friends were amazed when I told them the tactic I used. They said that they would've never thought of it and that I was a complete troll for eating snacks, taking naps, and watching YouTube videos in between the 24-hour session.
Sadly, Raid Online closed just a few months into my senior year and I no longer had a strong connection with my three friends. They had all moved on from games and told me that games were childish and it was only just for fun. Sure, it was just for fun. But it was the only way for me to have fun with friends and by my self. I was pained by their response when I said that I would be pursuing a career in professional gaming. They said that I would never make it. And, I felt like I wouldn't. The chances of me being even in the professional scene were slim. I didn't have any actual professional gaming experience in a team or something like that. I was just known to be a winner of a now-closed game event.
During times like this, sometimes it is best just to ignore what people say. I still wanted to pursue a professional gaming career. My dad, whom I mentioned was awesome, supported me completely, and even said that he would buy whatever I needed to become a professional gamer. An expensive gaming keyboard to a semi-unnecessary gaming chair, my dad said that he would buy it. I knew we weren't in a good place with money, so the only thing I asked from my dad was a better computer. He bought all the parts for me and I built it near the ending months of my senior year. I loved the computer and I would spend every day on it. But, I still had no experience with professional gaming or e-sports and the computer my dad bought for me seemed to be all for nothing.
As next week approached, I graduated with a decent GPA of 3.0 and an ACT score of 22. College was not a choice for me since I did not have any redeeming qualities a scholarship offerer would want. I also hated assignments and testing. I really didn't feel at peace for a degree in college.
The only choice I had was to find a way to get into the professional gaming scene. During graduation week, an MMORPG named BATTLE released. Surprisingly, it had similar mechanics to Raid Online. An environment where everything and anything can be used to your content.
I bought the game on its release date after graduation day and started it up.
