From year 2001 to 2003 i just played Play Station 1 and pc offline games such as GTA: vice city, red alert, counter strike and battle realms. But when the interest of Filipino players to MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game) games rises and took the Philippines Internet Cafes by storm in the year 2003.

I saw a lot of people in Marby (A famous computer shop in Bacolod city in year 2004) enjoying playing their favorite game such as Ragnarok online and MU Philippines. As a 8 year old kid i am amazed and also curious of their excitement. I asked myself why are they enjoying? Is it more fun than playing counter strike with your known friends? Also in the same year there’s a newly opened small computer shop in front of my house (then it became my 2nd home for almost a decade and still it exist), i’m elated because i don’t need to walk 936 steps (yes i counted it) from my house to downtown area (sorry mama nga naga pa downtown ko nga wala ko ga lisensya) just to play PC games.

Here’s the time where my IGN is created, i asked our “kuya” in that shop to help me to sign up in a game named Gunbound. So i fill up a registration form in mobius. As i type my information such as first name and last name then there is a field labeled as USERNAME, so i ask my friend sitting beside me, what is the meaning of username, he answered, “its USER + your name” its like USERJERWIN. But I’m not satisfied with that kind of answer so i asked again our “kuya” what is the meaning of username and some tips on how to create it. So he gave an example, use the name of your idol. So in that year there is a famous action TV series, 24, and the name of protagonist is JACK BAUER. Because i love playing counter strike and playing some counter terrorist game, just like DEKU on ALL MIGHT in My Hero Academia, for me on that year is JACK BAUER. So now the username i want to use is JACKBAUER so i decided to input it. So as i typed the username, i only typed JACK then i stop because i didn’t know what’s the spelling of BAUER in that time. My friends asked me why i didn’t completely entered the JACK BAUER name. I don’t want to humiliate myself because i didn’t know the spelling of BAUER, i just gave an alibi to them “I should change it so that it will become unique.” In that time, The Banaue Rice Terraces is the Eighth Wonder of the World, so i decided to put the WONDER after JACK but the result is still a misspelled word because i typed WANDER and not WONDER, a stray and not an admiration. But i proceeded, i submit the form and played the game. Since 2004 until now, I’ve been using JACKWANDER in every game that I played and it eventually became my nickname in our computer shop and my real name to my close friends. I don’t have any regret of creating it and even though it always reminded me how poor i am in correctly spelling some words in the past. And now, i’m using it as my professional handle. I also created my website named jackwander.pro.

So when you’re with me and when someone approached me and calls me JACK. Don’t WONDER because it’s not my hidden name on my birth certificate but my In-Game Name, JACKWANDER.

I decided to share this because a saw a post on facebook titled “Anong kwento ng IGN mo?” (English: What’s the story of your In-Game Name).

Photo grabbed on facebook.