Welcome to Streamers on the Rise, where we find streamers who are growing their channels, content, and audiences in extraordinary ways. Each week we’ll talk with a creator about what goes into livestreaming–both on and off camera.
If you encounter Michelle Statham in Call of Duty, there’s a very high chance you’ll be KO’d before you ever see her coming. She excels at quick-hit fights with fast TTKs, and she’s a crack sniper, too.
She’s also a 58-year-old grandma.
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Statham, who goes by TacticalGramma on Twitch, has loved video games for as long as she could remember. Both her parents were gamers in the very earliest days of gaming, and she has fond memories of family nights on the Atari 2600. When she grew older, she kept gaming as a hobby while raising her family and occasionally working side jobs like bus driver and Taco Bell manager.
Four years ago, things changed. Statham has always been a controller player, but after developing arthritis in her thumbs, she could no longer operate joysticks.
“My husband said, ‘We’ll get you a PC since you like to game and you can just learn mouse and keyboard and have fun,'” she explains. To help her learn mouse and keyboard, “I just started watching streamers,” she says.
Her husband chimed in again, this time with her son as co-conspirator. They both urged her to try streaming.
“I was like, ‘There’s no way I’m going to stream. No one’s going to want to watch someone–‘ at the time, I was 54 ‘–they’re not going to want to watch a 54-year-old play video games,'” she says. “They’re like, ‘Then you don’t have anything to worry about, no one’s going to be there.'”
At first, that was true.
But not for long.
We’ll let Statham tell you the rest below.
Tubefilter: Hi there! I’m really excited to get to talk to you. For those not familiar with you, give me a little bit of introduction about you, your background, and how you got into gaming.
TacticalGramma: Well, I’m 58 years old. I started gaming when I was seven and Pong came out. I remember having Pong separate than Atari 2600, that might be kind of fuzzy but then we had Atari 2600. My mom and dad liked video games so we all would play the Atari 2600 together as a family. Then as I got older and married, we had all the Nintendo systems in play, there was our date nights, Xbox, PlayStation and now PC.
Tubefilter: Amazing, and then tell me a little bit about your life before Twitch. Did you have a profession? What’s your family like?
TacticalGramma: I’m a mom of three kids, gosh, can I remember ages? 34, 31, 29. And I was pretty much a stay-at-home mom. There was a stint I was a bus driver just to help supplement income, I managed a Taco Bell for a little bit to supplement, but for the most part, I was just a stay-at-home mom. I wasn’t working prior to when I started streaming, which is almost four years coming up next month that I have been streaming.
Tubefilter: What originally prompted you to start streaming?
TacticalGramma: I never wanted to stream, to be honest with you.
Tubefilter: Oh, interesting!
TacticalGramma: No, I’m an introvert. I’ve grown a lot, I’m less of an introvert now than I used to be, but because I have arthritis in my thumbs and I couldn’t use a controller, my husband said, “We’ll get you a PC since you like to game and you can just learn mouse and keyboard and have fun.” I just started watching streamers, I didn’t even watch them prior to that either. Then once I got it, both him and my son are like, “You should stream.” I was like, “There’s no way I’m going to stream. No one’s going to want to watch someone–” at the time, I was 54 “–they’re not going to want to watch a 54-year-old play video games.” They’re like, “Then you don’t have anything to worry about, no one’s going to be there.”
I’m like, “Okay,” and I did it.
Tubefilter: That’s so weirdly comforting. And obviously most people start out with no one there. How did your audience growth go?
TacticalGramma: Right, yes. We started basically we had two watchers which was my iPad and my husband’s iPad. [laughs] The first stream, it was horrible. It was like 30 minutes, no sound. I played Apex, it was a terrible stream and then I got nervous and didn’t do it again for two weeks, but then after that, I just kept going. For me, I think because I was an older gamer, playing first-person shooter, I started with Apex, and then as soon as Call of Duty came out that year, I played it.
I think because of my age, people were curious to see someone my generation playing video games, since most of them had heard their whole lives “Video games are stupid,” especially from people of my generation, right?
Tubefilter: Yes, absolutely.
TacticalGramma: Then what about the next year, so that was October, and then by February the next year COVID hit. Everybody was home, everybody was lonely, they were separated and they were just trying to find a place to be. I tried to create a community where people could just come and hang out, just be who they are, no judgments, no nothing and just get that camaraderie that they weren’t getting because they were so alone, right? We grew pretty big through COVID, and this was all on Facebook. I started streaming on Facebook.
Tubefilter: Yes, I know you’re moving away from Facebook now.
TacticalGramma: Yes, this is my last month doing anything on Facebook, livestreaming-wise. I’ll still post content, but we have switched over to Twitch, we’re a Twitch partner now and I’m loving it.
Tubefilter: That’s great, I usually try not to get too personal during interviews, but Apex is a huge part of my life. I’m curious what mix of games you play. Do you still play Apex, have you moved on to other games?
TacticalGramma: Apex gives me complete anxiety.
Tubefilter: [laughs] Oh no.
TacticalGramma: I wasn’t as good at Apex for one thing, like Call of Duty I’ve played it for so long, I get it, but Apex, I just struggle to actually down people, because you have to do more in and out of fights. I just wasn’t as good at that, so it really just stressed me. I felt like I wasn’t creating great content with it because I was dead most of the time. Once Call of Duty came, I think it came out like November after I started streaming, I was doing both for a little bit, and then just switched straight to Call of Duty.
Tubefilter: Got you, yes, Apex definitely has tough gameplay.
TacticalGramma: I do play Escape from Tarkov as well now.
Tubefilter: Okay, now that I can’t do. I don’t know how you can be so good at that.
TacticalGramma: It’s like, for four years, I’ve played it just offline by myself, really haven’t streamed it, now but on Mondays, I stream it.
Tubefilter: It must be stressful too, especially a game like Apex, where you’re learning the entire game and then also trying to make content at the same time, whereas like you said with Tarkov you have that background experience. I would imagine it’s not as anxiety-inducing to show yourself playing it on stream.
TacticalGramma: I was learning mouse and keyboard at that time too, because I was always a controller player, so when I first started streaming, and I had only been on mouse and keyboard for like a month, and you don’t learn mouse and keyboarding in a month. I was learning that at the same time so it made it hard.
Tubefilter: That was so brave.
TacticalGramma: I was forced to, trust me. I’d love to be on controller, I miss playing Madden, I miss playing FIFA, I’ve tried to do it on mouse and keyboard and it doesn’t work, you can’t.
Tubefilter: Yes, that’s certainly something to be said for disability in gaming, it’s a the complete lack of accessibility. Especially for physical disabilities, I know there’s modified controllers, but they’re just so hard to get hold of.
TacticalGramma: They do have, because I have a friend that plays who’s Deaf, she has cochlear implants. She was able to get a thing that hooks in with them. She has to wear actually her headphones over the actual hook into her cochlear implants so she can play the game.
Tubefilter: That’s so cool. Hopefully we get more solutions like that. I wanted to go back to how you didn’t want to stream, and then your husband and your son made you stream.
TacticalGramma: Pretty much.
Tubefilter: Then when did things go from, “I am reluctantly doing this,” to, “This is going to be something I’m going to continue doing”?
TacticalGramma: In the beginning, I was only doing like three days a week because I watched my grandbaby two days a week, because my daughter was teaching up until when COVID hit, then she wasn’t teaching anymore. She was teaching from home, but anyway, I don’t know, I think probably about a year in I was like, “Wait a minute, this is kind of going somewhere.” It was probably more the encouragement from my family because I was still like, “Okay, this is just kind of a fluke. This is just kind of a flyby, it’s just going to go away. It’s not really anything.” But they were encouraging, like, “No, you’re really doing good. You’re really growing an audience.” My husband made me start a TikTok and then that just took off like crazy. I started to see that it was growing–and not only that, that I was able to actually make an impact in people’s lives and just be a positive impact in people’s lives. I think probably about a year in I started to realize, wait a minute, this maybe could do more.
Tubefilter: And then this is your full-time thing now?
TacticalGramma: Yes. So when I was on Facebook I streamed way too much because I was on a contract, you had to get so many hours in. They’re doing away with those, which is probably the best thing. I felt like I couldn’t take a day off because I had to get my hours in, but now it’s like if something comes up, if I want to go watch the grandkids or do something, I can say, “We’re not going to stream this morning. We’ll just come back tomorrow.”
Tubefilter: Yes, you absolutely don’t have to talk about this, but I was on your Twitter earlier and I feel like you’re facing some difficulties with Facebook, like some negativity? I don’t know if there was something you want to talk about.
TacticalGramma: I can generally talk about it. I’m under NDA, so I’m not going to talk about so many things. It’s just Facebook is a big platform and when it’s a big platform like that, if they want to make changes in other parts of the platform, it can affect the part that’s livestreaming and gaming. That’s what’s happened, and it’s just made it harder for us to actually get our audience, get noticed. Things just don’t work right now. There’s a lot of us that are leaving or have left.
Tubefilter: Understandably.
TacticalGramma: I have a partner manager, she’s doing all she can to help us. The gaming side wants it to work, but they can only do so much because it touches everything.
Tubefilter: Gotcha. With switching to Twitch, I know you’re Twitch partner now. What’s your stream schedule going to be on Twitch?
TacticalGramma: I’ll stream usually like 9:00 to 1:00 or 2:00. Sometimes my friends get on play Search & Destroy in the afternoons. If I don’t have anything, I’ll join in, be on. I streamed 12 hours on Friday, which was so unlike me. I was just having fun, which I haven’t had fun in a long time like that. I didn’t even notice it had been 12 hours. It’ll pretty much just be like 9:00 to 1:00, 2:00, and then have the afternoons. I need to be better about planning out content and planning out content for other platforms like YouTube and TikTok instead of just highlights.
Tubefilter: That was something else I wanted to ask about is, I think everybody I’ve spoken to for this column expresses a difficulty with growing on Twitch and says that you have to be making stuff on other platforms in order to grow on Twitch. I was curious about how you feel about audience growth.
TacticalGramma: I’ve grown on Twitch without even trying to grow on Twitch, when I was on Facebook, because of my TikTok. I have 1.6 million followers and because of that, people wanted to see where I livestreamed, but TikTok people won’t go to Facebook. I had a Twitch just to make sure I had a backup plan, and so people were following without me even actually streaming there very much. Obviously, it’s not through Twitch. It is through another platform. I think people need to have other content on other platforms to grow on Twitch for sure.
Tubefilter: Do you have a weekly goal for how many videos you’re posting across other platforms outside of streams, or is it just what you can manage?
TacticalGramma: It’s what I can manage. Right now I don’t have a plan and that’s not good. I need to have a plan. [laughs] That’s what we’re working on in this next year as we’re moving away from Facebook and to Twitch and trying to grow YouTube and have more of a plan on YouTube where I’m doing videos instead of just Shorts or just highlights. Try to create more interesting content. My goal is this year we are working on planning better instead of just streaming, if that makes sense. Now I don’t have a contract to work around.
Tubefilter: That must be a lot more freeing for you to be able to control your own schedule now.
TacticalGramma: It’s so much nicer. It’s so much less stress. My mental health is so much better.
Tubefilter: Good. I’m glad. I’d love to hear what your chat is like. Do you notice that you draw an older audience or do you still feel like it’s mostly the “typical” gamer audience?
TacticalGramma: My demographics are males 18 to–was it 30? 35?
Tubefilter: Really!
TacticalGramma: That’s the main, but I do have a lot of females that are in there as well. Some older, not as many as old as me, but in their 30s, some 40s. They’re like, “I started gaming because I saw you play,” or, “I started playing Call of Duty because I saw you play.” I do have that as well, that maybe some of the younger guys don’t have, but my main demographics is just like everybody else’s.
Tubefilter: Interesting. What is special about Call of Duty?
TacticalGramma: My husband and I were talking about this the other day. I grew up a competitive soccer player. I was a goalkeeper. I’ve been competitive my whole life. My whole family, we were competitive against each other, even back at Atari 2600 days. We were competitive with each other. Because I played soccer until was 39 and hurt my neck and I just couldn’t play anymore. Being able to do this and play Call of Duty, for me, I think gets that competitive side, especially with the VR now, because it’s high stakes. If you die, you’re out, kind of thing. I get a little bit of that competitive spirit in that.
Tubefilter: Yes, absolutely. I was also a competitive soccer player as a kid and now I now play FPS.
TacticalGramma: We still need to compete. We do.
Tubefilter: It’s just very exciting.
TacticalGramma: That adrenaline. But I won’t jump off out of a plane. I don’t like that adrenaline.
Tubefilter: Yeah, that’s too exciting. This is such a broad question, but I would love to hear about your experiences being an older woman in gaming.
TacticalGramma: It’s two-sided. I get a lot of positiveness through it, especially with females because they’re like, “Wow, I can keep doing this,” or, “It’s okay to do this.” Even some of the guys are like, “Wow, you’re pretty inspiring,” or, “I love that you still like to play games.” We still have the negative side that women have, but mine’s just different because I’m older. It’s always like, “Shouldn’t you be playing with your grandkids? Shouldn’t be caring for your grandkids. Shouldn’t you be knitting?” They still come in with the sexist comments. Mine are just different because I’m older. They think I should retire, I’m too old to play the game. It’s mixed. There’s some positives from negatives, just like everybody else’s. I don’t know, I feel like if I can stay in this space as long as I can and show that it doesn’t matter how old you are, you can still play games. That’s my goal.
Tubefilter: I always wonder about people who make those kinds of comments. It’s like, so at what age are you just going to stop playing video games?
TacticalGramma: That’s exactly what I say. They’re like, “Aren’t you old?” I’m like, my whole thing is like, “Do you have a hobby? Do you think when you get older you’re just going to stop your hobby because you’re older?” I’m like, “If you’re going to do that, that’s going to be a pretty boring life. Keep doing your hobbies. This is my hobby. It turned into something more. I enjoy doing it.”
Tubefilter: The fact that it turned into a career for you is really incredible.
TacticalGramma: Especially, 54, I got a new career. It’s crazy.
Tubefilter: You mentioned COVID earlier, just because of the time period, but I know COVID caused a massive surge on live streaming traffic. Do you feel like that played into your ability to do it full-time?
TacticalGramma: I didn’t have to make money, so I was still going to keep doing it, but I believe COVID had played a part in the quick growth I had because people were just lonely and looking for a place to be.
Tubefilter: Are there any other games you’re interested in getting into? What’s your mix of games these days?
TacticalGramma: I’ve tried other games. Pretty much Call of Duty and Escape from Tarkov. I see everybody playing the top-down games and I’m like, they just don’t look fun. I’m hoping maybe some other first-person shooters can come out to maybe rival some of these. That would be fun.
Tubefilter: I can’t get into top-down games either. What has been your number one favorite or most memorable thing about this whole journey?
TacticalGramma: Most memorable thing about this whole journey? I don’t know. I would just say, the people I’ve met through my community and people I’ve met through streaming, like other streamers, those relationships to me are the most memorable. I know it sounds cliche, but it’s true.
Tubefilter: It’s totally true. I’m really glad, I feel like the gaming community, it gets such a rap for being toxic, but when you have friendships in the gaming community, it’s a strong bond.
TacticalGramma: There’s toxicities, but I feel like it’s only 15% to maybe 20%. I think the rest, you got 80% that I think is pretty much positive, at least for me.
Tubefilter: Any cool projects or cool goals that you want to talk about?
TacticalGramma: I’m excited. I get to go to COD Next, which is October 5th. I got to go last year when they released the last game. I get to go again this year. I think it’s amazing that they’re inviting someone of my generation to these things. I got to go last year, and they were, they were amazing because I’ve played with Swag. I’ve done a video with Swagg and a lot of the other streamers, they were so kind and like, “Grandma!” and came up to me and I was surprised that they would actually interact. This year I’m excited to go because now I’m not wondering what’s going to happen. That’s always fun to get to just play with a bunch of different other content creators in one big room with a brand-new game. The excitement is so much fun.
Also, my husband and I are working on trying to get a podcast started. We want to do a podcast together where we interview other content creators and stuff. Gosh, I wish I could remember. It’s in the style of this guy that he watched. I can’t remember. This guy who interviews people finds out information about them and then surprises them with that information. I forget what his name was. Anyway, he wants to do it, my husband, it’s his idea, but we’re going to do it together. We want to do a YouTube series that’s based on TacticalGramma and then some characters, but more education-based, it’s geared towards kids. It has to start as a book first. I knew I was going to forget the name of this, but we’re in the works with that. We’re talking with someone about it, and my daughter who’s a teacher will be the education lead on it. Just to have a different kind of YouTube content out there, and something for kids that is safe, and they can watch, and their parents don’t have to worry.
My son-in-law did my logo. He’s a graphic designer.
Tubefilter: Oh, you just have it all in-house. Very cool. Is there anything else you want people to know about you?
TacticalGramma: A lot of cool things happening soon.
Tubefilter: No spoilers?
TacticalGramma: Sorry. NDAs are fun!
