My name is Jung SooHwan. Until yesterday, I was a regular twenty-two year old, recently graduated, college student in Seoul, Korea. I live in a small two person apartment with a single roommate. He is pretty out there and rarely comes out of his room, he mostly just stays inside and plays video games all day. Somehow he seems to have a steady income…. Lucky. Even after a full year of job searching, I have been unsuccessful and continue to wonder the worn unemployment path of despair.

Reality has been so stressful that I find myself returning to the comforting embrace of video games. Unfortunately reality is the place that I have to live in, so a job was necessary. After another morning of an unsuccessful job search, I silently walked down an empty back road. It was a shortcut that I usually took to get to my apartment so that I wouldn’t have to interact with people after getting shot down by business after business. As I wandered down the street, a weather torn flyer pasted on an old abandoned bakery’s window caught my attention.

“How would you like to earn money playing video games?! We at the Pink Sones have finally developed a game to conquer them all! The game is “King of the Dragons” and it is without a doubt  the most in-depth, real-life, open world game to even have been made. We are desperately searching for people to test our game! Become the person you always wanted to be! Meet the people that you always wanted to meet! There are no limitations! Rip off one of our address strips below and come by in two weeks.”

Luckily there were  several strips left, not many people would voluntarily walk around this part of the town. Still confused by the almost “too good to be true” situation occurring, I reread the flyer for the original date so I could figure out when two weeks later would be. Across the top in a big bold print read, “January 8th! See you January 22nd!” I laughed at myself from missing the most obvious and necessary information. Pulling out my phone, that was almost unrecognizable, and looked through the screen full of cracks and scratches to see the time and date. “3pm January 21st.”

“Hmm… It doesn’t say what time to meet there… I guess I’ll just go at 8 in the morning. Seems like a time when most workplaces start their day,” I thought to myself as I walked back home to my unwelcoming building.

The next morning couldn’t have come any sooner. Filled with excitement and honestly a little skepticism, I rushed to the address early in the morning. The building looked like a giant warehouse, definitely not the appearance of a high tech game developing company. It was a large tan colored building with no windows and only a single door. Slightly taken aback, I hesitated before walking to the small door. As I drew closer the building seemed to tower over every other building in the area, emitting an intimidating aura but the promise of money moved my body forward.

I carefully knocked on the door three times, that way I wouldn’t seem too eager. The metal door slowly opened and a medium built asian man stood before me.

“Ahh. You must be someone who saw our flyer. Please come in” He said with a friendly smile. The man silently led me to a small capsule that looked like it would barely even be able to fit me. His expressive hand motions told me that I was supposed to lay down. “It’s for the money,” I thought to myself as I laid down in the capsule. Suddenly the roar of a machine rang in my ears as a lid rose up from the bottom and sealed me inside. Everything went black.

I opened my eyes as if I was waking up from the best sleep of my life. Large letters flew in front of my eyes and caused me to fall backwards out of shock.

“Welcome to KOTD! Would you like to go through the tutorial? Please use your hand and press the ‘Yes’ button or the ‘No’ button.”

Confused by the odd situation, I moved my hand and firmly pressed the ‘Yes’ button.

An old man dressed in a suit appeared in front of me, “Hello! I am Reginald, a butler character for this game that will help you throughout the game to the best of my abilities. Allow me to help you learn the basics of the game.”

Currently you are asleep and your mind is controlling your actions in this game. Swiping an empty hand across the screen will bring up a menu bar. The first button is your stats/inventory screen, which has things like health, stamina, strength, dexerity, etc. Also you can view the items that you have in your inventory and also the items you have equipped on your person. Switching them out is as easy as pushing the item and then pushing equip. The second button is the skill tree, which will give you a wide range of abilities as you level up during the game. The third button is the friends screen. On this screen you can view any friends that you have and you can find out where they are at any point in time. Pressing their name will give you information about them and also the ability to send them a message, invite them to a party, or jump to their location, if they are not surrounded by enemies. Frequent stores to make sure that you have up to date equipment at all times and also have a chance to learn the trade of that specific store.

I squinted my eyes as I read the large word balloon that had popped up in my face. I tapped the balloon with my hand and it popped, disappearing my view.

“Sir. Is there anything else you would like to know about the game before starting and joining the other players currently online?” Reginald said politly.

“How do I log out?”

Reginald’s character flicked and then disappeared from sight while sending me into the real game, “Have fun.”

Swiping across the menu, I looked for a logout button but could not find one in any of the drop down menus. I decided to search for another player to try to find out more information. As I walked through the seemingly empty town, I looked at my reflection in one of the store’s windows. It was unbelievable that they were able to make such technology that they can recreate my exact image in a game. “Yeah a strong jawline, medium length black hair with the bangs pushed to one side, athletic build. Yeah that’s so me.” I thought proudly. However, I was disappointed in the default clothing that they had me dressed in.

“Who wears denim shorts anymore? And why a button down shirt? I look ridiculous. Should’ve just put me in the clothes that I wore here.” I thought to myself as I continued to look for a fellow player. Passing a clothing store, I decided to buy some clothes before meeting any new players. It would be embarrassing to be seen like this, I’ll just look like a noob. A shopping menu came up in front of me and the amount of “qim” I had in my inventory appeared in the bottom left corner.

“I guess ‘qim’ is the name of the currency in this game. It’s pretty cool how the clothes cost about the amount that they cost in the real world.”

I pressed on a pair of black pants, a pair of black and white shoes, and a plain black hoodie. The amount was deducted from my orginial balance, “1000- 40(For the pants)- 75(For the shoes)- 50(for the hoodie)= 835 left.”

With the assumption that there were also monsters in the game, I entered the nearest weapon/armor store. Now was the hard part, deciding what class to become for the rest of the game. I always prefered stealth builds, but a build with more health like a knight class would no doubt be benefical. As I entered, I saw hundreds of weapons line the walls of the room but there were no guns.”

Remembering Reginald I gave him a call, “Hey Reg. How to I find out what class I am? Do I just choose or what?”

“Sir. There are no classes in this game. Everything is determined by your allocation of attribute points and your own decisions throughout the game. If that is all I will take my leave.”

I grabbed a pair of, what looked like regular kitchen knives, and a long bow. After looking at these prices, I figured out how the game was going to make their money. 350 for the knives and 400 for the bow. Suddenly I was at the bottom of the barrel money wise. Equipping both of my new weapons, I headed back out into the town.

While I was looking at the many stores around, I literally ran into another character. We both fell backwards rubbing our heads from the quickly disappearing pain from headbutting one another. I looked up at the other character and almost had a heartattack.

“You… you… You… are Son Naeun from A Pink aren’t you?!”