Sanctum of Nine: Member 01 Crimzon

My name is Dana Fukushima and at forty-one years old I still play video games. At the age of eight gaming became a coping mechanism in dealing with family issues and eventually my parents’ divorce. However, by 1997 in my senior year of high school, I was struck by depression and had no desire to live. Graduating was very anti-climactic after enduring bullying, rejection, and fear of poverty. 

 I attended college and worked every type of job that was available both in the food industry and retail. I endured working two to three jobs just to pay bills and still ended being in debt. My mom was a firm believer of education but my parents couldn’t afford to pay for college, so I kept working multiple jobs to help contribute what I could to my own bills.

Later in 2007, I transferred from the community college to the university where I fell in love, but everything with it quickly fell apart. My ex-girlfriend went on a study abroad trip to China where someone else gained her attention and our already fragile relationship, turned to ash. My luck with women never panned out and rejection became the norm in that category of life. I was seen but not chosen, I was always passed on for someone more attractive, more talented, and someone with more money. Shortly after I was struck with depression again due to accruing financial debt with student loans and empty promises of financial support.

Cigarettes, whiskey, energy drinks, adrenaline rushes, constant working and cutting were my coping methods. All became addictions that planted itself in my mind and heart. The cutting gave me a reaction to feel something from being ‘numb’ to life and the deeper the cuts went the more blood came. 

 Among others that did cutting we always joked about ‘Going across the street’ versus ‘Down the road’. Cutting ‘Down the road’ was the worst of the two as it was cutting deep down the inside of your forearm to the wrist effectively cutting arteries that will bleed out and cause death. In fact, many times dead was the more accurate description of how I felt I was living, an invisible no one. A walking dead just trying to rise back up to live above debt, insecurities, and lacking. How do you live when you hate your very existence and don’t love.

After a bad cutting experience, I decided to redirect my coping mechanism to running and the more I went running the more enjoyable it was. I used to run in high school and forgot how naturally I felt awake in life doing so. When I began to run again it felt like I couldn’t breathe and had to stop frequently. 

 But every day I ran, I kept building more stamina and endurance. My body was getting stronger, and I pushed till I couldn’t breathe. Slowly, day by day I could go further, and my breathing got easier. Every day I just wanted to push myself to run until I couldn’t breathe, and without realizing it I was building a different version of myself and my reflection changed.

I returned to gaming as another coping mechanism for my life. In games you could be anyone, you could be the main character pushing the story through, the anti-hero, the ‘sweaty’ shooter in FPS (First Person Shooter) games or choose to disappear in the background like an NPC (Non-Playable Character) of everyone else’s gaming experience or life for that matter. For me it always felt like I was just an NPC and never really seen. It’s true, most of the time I wanted to be invisible to everyone but there are times when you want someone to see you for who you are.

In fact, that parallel resonates with me to my core. We’re all living our lives, and ideally you are the main character but, to everyone else you’re a side-character or assist character helping to push their story forward. Then one day you either become a permanent character of their story, family or clan or we become the main villains of their season or chapters in their life. Some of us become an NPC in their life, we’re just there until the character moves forward in their story or by certain events, we disappear from the story completely without a trace. But some NPCs can be found again; you just have to go back to where you find them in the game.

I made some changes, but life hits the hardest. My father got ill and later found out it was cancer. He was told he wouldn’t live more than two months after his surgery to remove the tumor. Well, they were wrong, he lived an additional five more years as I was his caretaker with my siblings. My father’s last five years was credited to his faith in God and his acceptance of Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior. Shortly after I began to become the caretaker of my mother until she passed. For over fifteen years I was the caretaker for both my parents, and it just felt I lost so much time. The biggest change that I was able to make was learning about God and reading the bible. A relationship with God…who would’ve thought that you could have such a thing.

Things began to change, and opportunities started to come into my life. Landed a new job and was still paying off the debt from my student loans but at least now I could see a difference in making the amount go down. I was able to buy a new car recently and paid it off, found a new place to settle into and began to meet people again. I met some great people online as well when I purchased the new gaming system and game by Bubblegum, Freedom.

This game was unique and reminded me of some other games I played in the past, but the customization of it all is just on a whole another level. In game we can customize all of the parts of our gear and manipulate the stats with precision. I decided to choose soldier as my class among four total classes. Soldier had a nice balance of attributes to start off with, and as you leveled up with changing gear you could increase the attributes as needed. The other three classes were pathfinders, guardians, and empyreans. Pathfinders were more like scouts and had a faster speed attribute, Guardians had more durability attributes and Empyreans had higher intellect attributes to start with.

The weapon load outs are wide open for the players to choose but also needed to acquire comprehension skills for the weapons the chose to use. For my character I grinded out as much comprehension skills to utilize a majority of the weapons in game, and could switch weapons loadouts with players I defeated in PVP modes. When I played with Big Boi and the Shadie Hostile-808 clan, he always wanted to go into PVP battles. Most of the clan chose the Pathfinder class for its speed but would get wiped out easier due to their build.

For my character I decided to create a build that is really fast but also cause a lot of damage, which is unheard of for the classes gameplay. At the time we all chose the alignment for The Wicked as most players did want the perks for damage and to discover unique skills based around it. As I played in PVP and the main campaign story I was able to unlock three unique skills for my character as I changed jobs under the classes.

The first unique skill revolved around the speed attribute called Phasing and with this skill came an enhanced jump Flash Step. Phasing allowed the character to perform a teleportation kind of movement through walls and jumps, while the Flash Step allowed for temporary platforming as the character jumped to get higher.

 The second unique skill is called Nova, this skill was like a super ability that allowed my character to launch an energy lance-bomb toward its enemies and explode creating an Area of Effect (AOE) where players or enemies in the game are affected by the explosion. The third unique skill unlocked is called Devour and Absorb. This unique ability allowed my character to take a character’s abilities for a short time and use it through Devour as long as I caused damage to the character. The absurd part of the skill temporarily disabled the character’s use of their skills if my character caused damaged from a melee attack or were caught in the Area of Effect caused by energy lance-bomb.

These skills for my character made it difficult for other players to kill in PVP modes. Often times my character would be considered a ‘Bomber’ and one that most would want to have killed right away. To counter that strategy I built the speed attribute to the maximum I could to constantly get away from players cornering me and putting me into a kill box. The best weapon loadout that benefited my characters build is the auto rifle for primary weapon slot. For the Secondary weapon slot, I had a player with a unique blacksmith skill build an enhanced accessory for my characters’ equipment that allowed the use of a sidearm pistol and two-barrel shotgun in this slot. The third weapon slot I often equipped with whatever I needed during the different types of gameplay which was either a grenade launcher, Light Machine Gun (LMG) or a sword.