I can almost believe I’m doing it for real. It’s such a rush to see my avatar leap effortlessly across ledges and climb sheer cliffs. There’s a lot that I can’t do in real life because of my disability, but the game lets me experience some of these things vicariously through my avatar, from doing parkour to scooping animal dung into buckets (yes, you read that right). I can fish, chop wood, cook, grow crops, breed animals, run obstacle courses, brew potions, and of course, fight a dizzying array of monsters. In the game, I take on a wide variety of activities, improving or “levelling up” the associated skills as I go. There are many other reasons why RuneScape will always be special to me. Most actions are performed by mouse clicks, and the game largely proceeds at a sedate pace. These limitations rule out a huge swathe of games.īut RuneScape is incredibly easy for me to play.
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I lack the manual dexterity required to use game controllers and keyboards. Having spinal muscular atrophy, a neurological condition which causes me to lose muscle control, makes playing video games hard. It’s more of a stable, lasting commitment. So my relationship with RuneScape isn’t an addictive one.
Now that I’ve graduated, I have the autonomy to play a bit more - a couple of hours each night, more on weekends.īut the discipline instilled in me as a child remains, and I always finish my work first. Nearly 15 years later, my peers have moved on to more modern, flashy titles, but I’m still clicking pixels in this plodding 20-year-old game. Who could forget the quintessential 2000s kid experience of rushing madly through your homework so that you would be allowed to play on the family computer? I created my first account in 2006, when I was just nine years old. It is a mediaeval-fantasy multiplayer online role-playing game which took the world by storm upon its 2001 release. If, like me, you grew up in the noughties, chances are you would have heard of RuneScape.