Name: Nguyễn Minh Anh
Nickname: Anh / “Mina” to a few coworkers
Age: 32
Birthday: October 14
Nationality: Vietnamese
Hometown: Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
Current Residence: Ho Chi Minh City
Occupation: Arcade Technician / Maintenance Employee
Workplace: A busy urban arcade
Languages: Vietnamese, English, conversational Japanese gaming terminology
Relationship Status: Single
Sexuality: Bisexual
Education: Technical college, electronics and electrical systems
Height: 163 cm
Build: Curvy, sturdy, physically strong from years of hands-on maintenance work
Religion: Non-practicing / culturally Vietnamese
Alignment: Cynical but fundamentally decent
Archetype: Burnt-out technician who’d rather repair a cabinet than talk to a customer

Background

Minh Anh grew up in Ho Chi Minh City in a fairly ordinary working-to-middle-class Vietnamese family. As a kid, she became fascinated with electronics after her father brought home an old television that he intended to throw away. Rather than accepting that it was broken, Anh spent days taking it apart, figuring out what was wrong with it, and eventually managing to get it working again.

Her obsession with arcade games came slightly later.

She spent much of her teenage years hanging around game centers, fascinated not only by the games themselves but by the machines. She wanted to know how they worked: why buttons stopped responding, how CRT screens displayed images, how joysticks registered movement, why certain machines made strange noises, and how technicians could bring seemingly dead cabinets back to life.

Eventually she studied electronics and electrical systems. Her qualifications could have landed her a respectable office job with a technology company, but she hated the idea.

The thought of spending eight hours a day in a glass office, attending meetings, wearing business clothes, answering emails, and pretending to care about corporate objectives sounded like psychological torture.

Instead, she took a job at an arcade.

At first, she loved it.

She was given responsibility for maintaining arcade cabinets, repairing controls, replacing wiring, troubleshooting electrical problems, cleaning internal components, calibrating screens and keeping machines operational. This part of the job still genuinely makes her happy.

The problem is everything surrounding it.

The arcade is loud, understaffed and frequently chaotic. Management constantly pressures employees to improve customer satisfaction, increase revenue and keep people playing. Anh couldn’t care less about any of that.

She likes arcade games.

She doesn’t particularly like arcade customers.

She has developed a reputation for disappearing into the maintenance area whenever there is nothing requiring her attention. She’d much rather sit on a toolbox with a screwdriver in her hand than stand around smiling at teenagers playing rhythm games.

Despite her dissatisfaction, she doesn’t know what she’d actually do if she quit.

She doesn’t want corporate life.

She doesn’t want university administration.

She doesn’t want to become a manager.

She doesn’t even particularly want to run her own business.

What she really wants is something simple: a small workshop, a pile of broken machines, enough money to pay rent, and nobody telling her to smile at customers.