The Story of Jackwander

From 2001 to 2003 I just played PlayStation 1 and offline PC games such as GTA: Vice City, Red Alert, Counter-Strike, and Battle Realms. But then the interest of Filipino players in MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game) games rose and took the Philippines’ internet cafes by storm in 2003.

I saw a lot of people in Marby (a famous computer shop in Bacolod City in 2004) enjoying their favorite games such as Ragnarok Online and MU Philippines. As an 8-year-old kid I was amazed and also curious about their excitement. I asked myself: why are they enjoying this? Is it more fun than playing Counter-Strike with your known friends? Also in the same year, a newly opened small computer shop appeared in front of my house (it became my second home for almost a decade, and it still exists). I was elated because I no longer needed to walk 936 steps (yes, I counted) from my house to the downtown area (sorry mama nga naga pa downtown ko nga wala ko ga lisensya) just to play PC games.

Here’s when my IGN was created. I asked our “kuya” in that shop to help me sign up for a game named Gunbound, so I filled out a registration form in Mobius. As I typed my information, such as first name and last name, there was a field labeled USERNAME. I asked my friend sitting beside me what “username” means, and he answered, “It’s USER + your name” — like USERJERWIN. But I wasn’t satisfied with that kind of answer, so I asked our “kuya” again what a username means and for some tips on how to create one. He gave an example: use the name of your idol. That year there was a famous action TV series, 24, and the name of the protagonist was JACK BAUER. Because I loved playing Counter-Strike and counter-terrorist games, JACK BAUER was to me, that year, just like ALL MIGHT is to DEKU in My Hero Academia. So the username I wanted was JACKBAUER, and I started to input it. I typed JACK — then I stopped, because I didn’t know the spelling of BAUER at the time. My friends asked why I didn’t completely enter the JACK BAUER name. I didn’t want to humiliate myself for not knowing the spelling of BAUER, so I gave them an alibi: “I should change it so that it will become unique.” At that time, the Banaue Rice Terraces was called the Eighth Wonder of the World, so I decided to put WONDER after JACK — but the result was still a misspelled word, because I typed WANDER and not WONDER. A stray, not an admiration. But I proceeded — I submitted the form and played the game. Since 2004 until now, I’ve been using JACKWANDER in every game I’ve played, and it eventually became my nickname in our computer shop and my real name to my close friends. I have no regrets about creating it, even though it always reminds me how poor I was at 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 someone approaches me and calls me JACK, don’t WONDER — it’s not a hidden name on my birth certificate but my In-Game Name, JACKWANDER.

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

Photo grabbed from Facebook.