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“I thought about RuneScape everyday,” they wrote.
Never found it."
I’m still on a break myself.
“I thought he said Room Scape,” Hearsey recalls to me.
“And so the first thing I did, I went and typed in Room Scape.
And it was some text-based escape room or some crap.
Anyways, nah, he told me RuneScape.
So I got on and got stuck on Tutorial Island.
Literally, I played Tutorial Island for like two months straight.
I got like 40 Woodcutting, 30 Fishing.
I was just skilling on Tutorial Island.”
Welcome back
What keeps them coming back to OSRS?
“It’s the only game like that,” Hearsey reckons.
You know how TikTok is getting banned because of the dopamine, the addiction and stuff?
“Some nights, I wouldn’t go to sleep.
We had this extra room in the house.
We call it the computer room, and there was a bed in there.
And one night, my stepdad, he’d get up for work at like 5:30.
He saw me, he opened the door.
He’s like, ‘What are you doing?
Go to bed.’
I was like, ‘Oh, my bad.’
Acting like I didn’t know what was going on.
“I don’t know how to explain that feeling,” they say.
“And it feels nothing like a drug addiction.
I may play for like an hour a night.
Me and my girlfriend, we go out every weekend, hang out.
I was like, fuck it, I get to play more.”
Their perception is a fascinating time capsule of the classic MMO’s history and culture.
“I have to wiki everything, everything that I see people wearing,” they say.
“When I left, I want to say I knew everything about the game.
I’m a freaking noob right now, and I played for that many years.”
However, they’re mindful of becoming too hooked on the game again.
“If I don’t accomplish XYZ before I get out, I’m not ready to get out.
I really got my mind right.
“But gaming, there have been nights.
They re-released some Nintendo classics on the tablet right before I got out.
Oh my god, they finally got good games.
I probably spent three days non-stop, day and night, playing the first Zelda.
I felt so disgusting.
I haven’t been reading, I haven’t been writing.
That actually made me start questioning.
“All she does is babysit and play on her Iron all day long,” they say.
“And it kind of gives me hope.
It’s really a comfort.
I can go look at the RuneScape login.
You just go and hear that RuneScape main theme.
You hear that and it’s just more of a feeling than anything you could describe.”
Just food, for example.
I will literally eat anything.
I was on a super organic vegan trip before I went to prison.
Now I will eat anything.
I mean, I know it’s not recommended, but I just enjoy it a lot.
I just enjoy stuff.
I just enjoy everything so much more now.”
