When players of the famous video game Free Fire face “Mami Nena”, few know that behind this warrior character, there is an 81-year-old Chilean grandmother who has swapped solitude for a new passion.
The old lady has had up to four million subscribers on TikTok and 650,000 on YouTube, where she notably shares her advice for improving her game. “I never imagined that. I played for the sake of playing, just to be there, waving my finger,” she said at a recent ceremony where she received an award as one of the hundred most important people elderly people in the country by the newspaper El Mercurio and Catholic University.
“I didn’t even know what a mouse was”
It was to remedy the loneliness she felt in 2020 after the death of her husband, to whom she was married for 56 years, that she turned to video games. Three years after being introduced to the game in her house in Llay-Llay, a town 90 km from the capital Santiago (Chile), Maria Elena Arévalo assures that solitude is no longer a burden for her.
“I didn’t even know what a mouse was,” remembers Maria Elena Arévalo, introduced to the game by her grandson Héctor Carrasco, 20, who helps her manage her social networks and broadcast her games online. video games. “He taught me everything I know. Without him, I wouldn’t be here,” she says with emotion.
With her persona of “Mami Nena,” as her grandson calls her, she became known as a fierce rival dressed in a short kimono, black gloves and a fanged mask. “I didn’t want to hurt anyone” at the beginning, says the Chilean grandmother, before explaining with a smile that she began to “follow and kill” her opponents without scruple.
“I love what I do. I will continue as long as I can.”
Thanks to her success, Free Fire made her an official ambassador for the game and invited her to Mexico in 2022 for the brand’s anniversary. His only trip outside the country’s borders. “All the children asked me to sign autographs (…) It was very nice. The day I leave, I will leave with that,” she assures.
The “gaming granny”, as her fans call her, is today less active in the game due to scleroderma, a serious illness which causes hardening of the skin. However, she does not plan to stop playing. “I love what I do. I will continue as long as I can,” she says.
More and more older people around the world are passionate about video games, like the Japanese Hamako Mori, 93, the oldest “streamer” in the world according to the Guinness Book of Records.