I am currently participating in the [Nexon PEAK Post Challenge].

The biggest reason I started playing Minecraft was simple. I wanted a home of my own, a space of my own. More than any other game, it let me really feel the process of arranging furniture and shaping a place that belonged to me. The only difficulty was that, to build that home, I first had to survive in the wild, gather the wood myself, fire the clay myself, and collect every material on my own. So in the beginning, what you end up with is usually just a house built for survival.

A space of my own, a home of my own, the home I dream about. There is something deeply romantic in those words, and perhaps because they are not so easy to fulfill in real life, I want to experience them even more inside games. I feel that way too. A long time ago, I even played a mobile game called 놀러와요, 마이홈, though its service has ended now. Beyond that, I worked hard to pay off my debt in Animal Crossing on Nintendo so I could have a house of my own, and in Palworld, I spent a lot of time searching for the right plot so I could build a cozy home for my Pal and me.

There are plenty of games about building and decorating all kinds of homes, but the one I have been most absorbed in lately is, of course, Mabinogi Mobile. It cannot be helped. It is the game I spend the most time with. Since the My Home system was added, even though it was not there at first, I have been slowly bringing those old dreams to life. There is a real pleasure in renting a house in Dunbarton or Emain Macha and decorating it with furniture I made myself.

In Minecraft, I choose the materials for my home myself and place them one by one, while in Mabinogi Mobile, I rent a house and fill it with furniture, which makes decorating much easier. Minecraft may be better suited to creating something closer to the ideal home in my heart, but once I start building and decorating, I am reminded that this also takes skill. Even when the amount of empty space is the same, the empty space in homes I visit looks stylish, while the space I leave somehow ends up feeling merely empty. Even with the same furniture, the mood can change completely depending on how it is arranged.

But I cannot just stand back and admire. I have a space of my own now. Even today, I find myself thinking about how I want to decorate it. I want to place flowerpots, and I want a beautiful bed. Then again, maybe bedding spread out on the floor would give it a slightly old-fashioned feeling after all. Spending time in those thoughts, and visiting friends' homes for inspiration, is surely another kind of joy this game offers. I hope that you, too, can feel the quiet fulfillment that comes from simply having a space of your own. Then, hoping everyone reading this today will be happy as well,