For Christmas whenever I was 9 years old, my dad bought me a Nintendo Switch. The first game I ever downloaded was Fortnite. Before I had my own console, I had to play games on my brother’s Xbox, and he’d barely even let me do that. My favorite game out of all his was always Fortnite so I had always wanted my own console to be able to play it whenever I wanted, so I was excited to get my own. Whenever I created my account, it was in 2018, chapter 1 season 7 and I immediately bought the battle pass. I also needed a username, so me and my brother came up with the name “bonecrusher0076” and I thought the name was the coolest. After, that’s where my grind began. Every single day I’d wake up at 7 AM to do my daily challenges and gain levels to complete the battle pass. At this point I was already quickly attached to the game, having no life at all.
Early on after I had gotten my Nintendo and had a crazy obsession with gaming, my eyesight began to worsen. Since I played the game all the time and my eyes were so up close to my screen, it damaged my eyes and cost me my vision. My mom had told me several times not to play with my face close to my screen, though I never listened because of the fact I didn’t believe it wouldn’t affect me. Well, it DID end up affecting me and now I need to wear glasses/contacts.
Playing Fortnite brought out the anger issues within me that I never knew I had. I wasn’t always the greatest at the game, especially whenever I was younger so I would always get eliminated. All the time I was angry with the game, yet it was just so fun to play. After all, I didn’t have much else in mind to do anyways. Eventually, the rage caught up to me because of the amount of switch controllers I broke from throwing my Nintendo so many times. My mom was constantly mad with me for all the money she had to spend on new ones, the amount of yelling I did, and the fact that my Nintendo was so wrecked from throwing it. Honestly, I’m surprised she never grounded me or stopped buying me controllers.
Whenever I turned 13 years old, my dad gave me his Xbox Series S, bought me a mic, controller chargers and charging ports. Finally, I switched over to a bigger console like I had been wanting forever. I obviously had much love for my Nintendo, but the idea of an Xbox was so much cooler, especially since my older brothers both had one. Whenever I switched to Xbox, my skills for the game grew significantly.
Though, soon my fun had come to an end. I was trying to trade accounts with someone, and they had taken my account in the process. I was so bummed out, and my grind was over. While scrolling on Tik Tok, I found a Telegram server that you could buy Fortnite accounts off. Obviously, me being as young as I was, I didn’t have the money, nor did I want to get scammed again. However, the server held giveaways where you could win a free Fortnite account. After finding this out, I became extremely watchful over the servers and won quite a few different accounts. All of them had some decent stuff on them, though they were relatively smaller accounts. At the end of the day, it was better than nothing which is what I had before.
Eventually I chose an account with my favorite skins and emotes on it. It was a nice account, and I quickly began to love it. It has Chapter 1 Season 1 items on it, so it was pretty OG. I’ve wanted an OG account forever, so this was a nice thing for me. Especially because it has the iconic “Take The L” emote on it and I’ve always wanted that emote. Such an unfortunate loss turned into an amazing outcome for me in the end and I was so happy about it. However, I still mourned my old account because that was my first ever account and I had many of my greatest memories on it. Although I eventually had to come to an acceptance that I’d never get that account back and began building up the items on my new account while also making new memories.
During this time of switching to a new account, I also wanted to improve my gaming set up because of my older brothers DJ and Jaeden. They both inspired me because of their L-shaped desks with keyboards and mouses. I just thought it was the coolest thing ever and I aspired to be like them. Plus, my setup was terrible, it was great having an Xbox, but the rest was monstrosity. My original setup consisted of a brown desk that was supposed to be thrown out to the trash with LEDS (I thought it looked cool), a LED headset holder, my homeboy’s old cheap keyboard and mouse, an old mousepad, a dining table chair, my regular TV, and of course my Xbox Series S.
The start off to my setup improvement journey was to get a new desk. Both of my brothers had black set-ups, so I wanted to be different and go for more of the whites, greys, and a little bit of black. Already having a white Xbox made things less complicated for me. For my birthday, I asked my mom for a white L-shaped desk and my dad for a monitor. After, I used my birthday money for a white keyboard, mouse and a grey Logitech mouse pad. Still, my setup wasn’t where I wanted. I wanted to get better branded pieces to make it cleaner. So, I ended up trading in my switch, apple watch, and Xbox to get more money to buy new things for my setup. With this money, I bought a white razor brand headset, white 60% razor brand keyboard, white razor brand mouse, black headset holder, grey gaming chair and finally, a new Xbox Series X. I also bought purple Xbox controller pieces because my favorite color is purple and I wanted to have some pop out color t my setup instead of a boring white controller. After buying everything I had finally put together my “dream” setup and was so happy with the results.
After building my setup, I was on the game more than ever. It was such a nice feeling playing on a clean setup. Although, as time went on, I began going out more and hanging out with friends barely having any time to hop on. It was the downfall of my gaming life because the thought of gaming never crossed my mind and my setup just sat gathering dust. During the summer, I got bored and tried to hop on again and it lasted a couple weeks, but it was just like any other phase I’ve had with the game. I realized that I started to take interest in other things such as the gym because of the fact I’ve always wanted to put on some muscle, so I began focusing on that instead of playing the game. This change in mindset of wanting to go to the gym more instead of playing the game has been extremely beneficial, though I still miss the old days playing with friends and siblings with no care in the world before we all began growing up. I know it’s better to focus on improvement and to grow up, though somedays I wish I could go back. Growing up with this game has been great and influential in many ways oddly enough. I’m forever grateful that this was my start off to my gaming journey and that I got to make these great memories with everyone.