With only having a few hours of schoolwork each day, I now have a tremendous amount of time on my hands, with more time to kill each day. The last time I have felt like I had an endless amount of time was when I was in fifth or sixth grade, at a time when school seemed secondary to video games and I would spend hours each day online with my friends. With the shelter-in-place protocol, I have gained an opportunity (if one can call it that) to relive this leisurely lifestyle.
In my time of quarantine, I have spent a considerable amount of time playing video games from my early childhood and absorbing myself into the games that I fell in love with years ago. I have rediscovered one of my all-time favorite games — Minecraft. This is the popular adventure game, where my friends and I would create a world to build massive structures in the day, then fight the monsters that lurk around at night. I used to play Minecraft in my elementary and middle school years where, after getting home, I would run up to my mom’s 2009 iMac and go into the game with my friends. Experiencing this again has been just as fun as ever — my friends and I would build anything from a log cabin to a supreme court, exploring our creativity while bonding over a game that we all grew up on.Â
I also began playing games that I haven’t picked up in a few years, such as Call of Duty — a first-person shooter game where the player defuses bombs, goes to war or even kills zombies. I recall playing this game for hours at a time, as the mixture of breathtaking graphics and fantastic gameplay kept me glued to my seat. Rediscovering this game was a blast — I got some of my friends to join and pick up where we left off as young students and we have been as addicted to this game as we were in middle school.Â
I even must admit that I have become once again obsessed with a game I played excessively when I was in third grade. Club Penguin, a kids game where one would make pizzas, adopt pets and decorate an igloo for your penguin avatar. The game was shut down in 2017 after a decline in players, but third-party developers relaunched the game, with a recorded 6 million players. While there may have been some new players discovering Club Penguin for the first time, most are returning players who, like myself, wish to re-enter the virtual world we had come to love years ago. When I first logged on and my character popped up in a town square that included a coffee shop, dance club and clothing store while surrounded by other penguins that were dancing, walking their pets and throwing snowballs, a massive wave of nostalgia hit me. The game brought back an immense amount of memories I had of decorating my igloo and playing the minigames offered on Club Penguin. The game also included a dojo, where I could train to become a ninja by fighting other penguins and eventually receive a black belt once completed. Accomplishing this task once again felt as exciting and fresh as it did when I was 10.Â
I think staying at home certainly brought some positives for me. It has been a time to reminisce and indeed even relive for a brief moment the many things I enjoyed when I was younger. It has given me a chance to look back at and revisit the diversions that had a part in molding me into who I am today.
Jacob Lubarsky is a junior at Burlingame High School. Student News appears in the weekend edition. You can email Student News at news@smdailyjournal.com.
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