Listen up, future fans: my name is Aiden and one day I'm going to be a top game streamer, when my Moms let me start broadcasting and they remove their parental locks. They said I'm allowed to when I'm 16. Right now I'm ten, so that gives me six years to get good.

  Now I am a prodigy, and I don't mean just my Moms are great gamers, no, my great-granddad played MarioKart. Not MarioKart 6 or 8, no, he played the original MarioKart, when it was invented. Yeah, my gaming lineage goes that far back. It’s in my blood. One of my Moms even has a Pokémon tattoo, her first shiny Pokémon, Screechy the Noivern, is emblazoned on her right shoulder. Like I said: real gamers.

  One thing my Moms taught me is that power-ups, levels, and strength are all fleeting. They don't transfer between games, heck, sometimes they even get nerfed or patched, making your flame mage of destruction unable to set even a barrel on fire. What matters is skills, what you can do when you have no power, low stats, and can still do amazing things. Skilz.

  They teach me this lesson on family game night all the time: focus on improving yourself, not your character. Don't be afraid of losing, or redefine winning. You may have lost 6 to 20 in low-gravity hockey, but they had to use all their power-ups and you didn’t use a single one, and you learned to utilize the walls as targeting aids.

  I may not be the best student, but I am a genius in my own way, which is why me picking Coro?en to play was a dev-level move.

  1. It’s free.

  2. It’s not blocked by my parental locks.

  3. And this one’s important: you only level by killing, but skills can be practiced.

  4. Some skill levels don't make things easier but affect the outcome, like pickpocketing.

  Yeah, I know the world will end soon, but hey, that’s how the net works. Since I’m working on my Skilz, not just in-game skills, I can go to any net world after this game dies and still be able to pickpocket, lockpick, and hide. After I can do something epic like pickpocket the magic orb out of a lich king's robes, I'll start working on more Skilz like sword fighting, hand-to-hand combat, or martial arts, something that will benefit me no matter what game I'm in.

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  All this means to steal an NPC shopkeeper's wedding ring you have to actually be good at pickpocketing. The skill level just means I get the ring, some gold, part of their lunch, and a lucky rabbit's foot. It fills up inventory fast, but some things I put back, because who steals a wedding ring? and other things I sell to save inventory space.

  So that's what I do. Currently I'm working on my rogue skills: pickpocketing, lockpicking, and stealth.

  Here's a day in the life of your favorite skill grinder:

  I wake up, Mom makes breakfast, and insists we sit and eat. She’s sappy like that. I get a kiss from both of them still, and then I go to our immersion room where the benches and equipment sit. My equipment is the best, they work out the muscles I use both in classes and in-game, which means my legs are ripped and there’s no pudge on my belly, unlike some of my magic-class-playing classmates or skill-using sword swingers.

  I check my homework is done enough not to be griped at by my teachers, and I log into school. After school I do the minimum amount of homework I can get away with, and then it’s time for my day to truly start.

  Check my jail timer has run out, pick the lock (skill XP), leave, wave to the nice guards, stealth, then pickpocket players, NPCs, even a random squirrel. Sell the useless junk so my inventory isn't clogged, then pickpocket city guards ‘til I get caught and put back in jail for the night.

  Log out, have dinner, game time with my Moms, bed, repeat. Easy.

  Why a jail cell, you ask? Why purposely get caught? Because then I never have to fully log my character out, and I have skills I can grind once I log in, like my lockpicking, or I could stealth my way out of the guard’s office.

  The only problem is I've almost maxed out my pickpocketing in this game. All that's left is stealth, so I either need to figure out how to better practice my other skills or find a new game.

  Then everything changed.

  I log into Skidmark, my amazingly named rogue goblin, and see a bunch of weird adults waiting outside my jail cell.

  A cat, a bunny, a priestess, and a mage with rainbow shoes.

  I stretch, twitch my goblin ears, and give a smile.

  "Sorry, folks, no autographs. I'm not famous enough yet."