There was one game that started it all for me: Pokémon Sapphire. I don’t even know how old I was, but it was when the Game Boy Advance SP came out and I got one for Christmas. I immersed myself in this game so much that my parents had to hide it from me.

From there I moved on up to Xbox. I became obsessed with Halo—it was just so different from Pokémon—and that’s when I realized I liked shooter games. (Later, I moved on to even more immersive games, like Fable, and these days I mostly play on my PC.) I wanted to play it every single day when I came home from school, mostly with my brother. I remember him being like, “Okay, I need a break,” and I’d say, “No. What? I need you to play with me!” I was definitely the better gamer. As the older sibling, it’s normal for me to beat him at everything, but gaming was definitely a bonding experience for both of us.

I’ve always been in my head a lot, and when I played games it loosened me up. At first my mom would scope out what I was playing and ask, “Is that violent?” But eventually she saw that video games made me happy and that a community came with it; parents are usually kind of shocked to find that out. You learn a lot in gaming, especially through the community. I don’t see how it’s any different from playing tennis or whatever sport or hobby you’re into. We all find joy in different things.

My screen name used to be Zovirae, which is just kind of weird and you can’t tell what gender the player is. That definitely stemmed from a place of insecurity. Once I started streaming on Twitch and building my own online community, I decided to change my username—for the first time ever—to Megskii, so my name is there and you can tell it’s a girl’s name. From there I started feeling a lot more accepted as a female gamer. It’s the norm now.

Do I see myself as a gamer for life? No question. You can be any age, any gender. When you’re gaming, it doesn’t matter. That’s what I love about it so much.

As told to Gil Macias