Jin, BTS's biggest gamer

If there's one member of BTS whose love of video games has long become part of his public persona, it's Jin. He's gamed during livestreams, talked about games in interviews, collected gaming merch, and shown without a hint of shame just how seriously he can take his favorite virtual worlds. And one game holds a special place: MapleStory.

Jin's love of video games started long before BTS. As a kid he played Super Mario, and Nintendo and Mario have stayed among his long-running interests. But if there's one game fans associate him with most, it's the Korean MMORPG MapleStory. And this isn't a celebrity who's played a popular game a few times for the cameras. Jin is a longtime player who knows the systems, characters, and issues of the game well enough to discuss them with the people who actually develop it.

Just how much MapleStory means to him became especially clear in 2022. Jin showed up at Nexon, the company behind the game, as their new "employee." He got a badge, went through a job interview, and joined the MapleStory planning team. Of course, the whole thing was filmed as entertainment content, but Jin didn't treat his part of the job as just a sketch. He prepared a presentation and brought the developers concrete suggestions from the perspective of someone who actually plays the game. Some of his ideas were later actually implemented.

It was especially fun watching the conversation shift the moment it became clear how well he knew the game. Jin didn't have to act like a gamer for the cameras. He could talk with the developers about things the average viewer probably wouldn't even understand, and his MapleStory character was already at a very high level by then. At one point he even suggested they pay his salary in Nexon Cash, the virtual currency used to buy in-game content.

Gaming has made its way into BTS content over the years too. One of the best examples is Run BTS!'s crossover with the professional players of team T1. The members took on a few video games together with Faker and the rest of one of the most famous esports teams in the world, and Jin finally got an episode where his love of gaming was an advantage, not just another reason for the others to tease him.

His gaming livestreams are their own story. Probably the most famous one happened in September 2022, when he started up Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy. The game is deliberately designed so a single mistake can wipe out a huge chunk of your progress, which made it a nearly perfect match for someone as stubborn as Jin. The stream ran for more than three hours, full of falls, backtracking over already-cleared sections, and Jin's increasingly loud reactions every time the game decided to test his patience.

Streams like that might show best what kind of gamer Jin is. He doesn't particularly care about looking cool while doing it, and he isn't trying to turn his gaming into serious esports content. He can spend hours trying to get past the same section, getting mad, laughing at his own mistakes, and continuing to try long after most people would have shut down the computer.

And the MapleStory story didn't end in 2022. In March 2026, Nexon announced another collaboration with Jin, four years after his first "work day" at the company. This time the project brought new in-game content and events, turning one of his longest-running hobbies into an official partnership once again.

Maybe that's exactly what makes gaming such an endearing part of Jin's story. Behind the world tours, albums, and stages is a guy who can get just as excited about new MapleStory content. And when the company behind a game you've played for years eventually lets you sit down with their developers and pitch what should change in it, it's hard to imagine a better version of being a successful fan.