Come rain or shine, Twitch streamer and gamer Mayichi always welcomes her community with the same message: “Hi beautiful people. The stream is starting.” The message, simple and sweet, largely reflects the philosophy she applies to her channel, where she aims to make people feel like family and have a good time while playing video games, chatting about the day, and joking around.
The 29-year-old, whose legal name is Maite Carrillo, is one of the Spanish-speaking world’s top female Twitch streamers, and she’s definitely having a moment. Earlier this year, she was appointed the president of 1K, a female soccer team in Gerard Piqué’s Queens League, alongside former Real Madrid goalkeeper Iker Casillas. When Carrillo’s not watching her team play, she’s playing games like Minecraft or Red Dead Redemption 2, or boxing to prepare for her upcoming fight against U.S. streamer Amouranth in La Velada del Año III, Twitch’s biggest live event of the year.
Many fledging streamers aspire to have a career like Carrillo’s, who’s a content creator for KOI, the esports team of Twitch megastreamer Ibai Llanos. Carrillo’s been a full-time content creator for about four years, although she’s been streaming for much longer, and has amassed 1.8 million followers on Twitch. However, turning her childhood passion for video games into a career has required years of hard work and countless battles, especially as a woman in the male-dominated gaming industry.
Her struggles began in high school, she told Gizmodo, when she didn’t have any friends because her classmates thought she was the “weird geek” who liked video games. When she first started streaming herself playing video games, she received a barrage of attacks from people who came to her stream with the sole purpose of saying nasty things.
“You always get comments for simply being a woman,” she said. “But over time, as my community started growing, those attacks started decreasing. So, although there’s always one person who insults you on every stream, it’s like your daily bread, there comes a moment where you become stronger, and the comments don’t affect you anymore.”
Online comments and harassment aren’t the only thing she’s had to deal with, though. In one case, Carrillo had to report people to the police for doxxing her address and creating online groups dedicated to attacking her in person. She’s also had to suffer through horrible comments people made about her father, who died from cancer three years ago.
Yet, despite these turmoils, Carrillo has remained steadfastly determined to continue doing what she loves, and refused to allow others to bully her away from the space she wants to be in. When you speak to her, she’s positive and warm, and speaks endlessly of the good things streaming has given her. One of those is her community of followers, which she misses on the days she can’t stream. She looks forward to playing games with them and telling them about the latest thing that’s happened to her because of her “eternal” bad luck. They’re her family.
“In the end, I’m living a dream, I’m dedicating myself to something I always liked, but never thought could be a job. I never imagined it, and I feel really fortunate to be able to do it,” Carrillo said.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Gizmodo: How would you describe yourself and your channel for people who aren’t familiar with your content?
Carrillo: I’ve always tried to make sure my channel feels like you’re with your family, for every person that watches to feel like they’re at home and comfortable. So, I would say that I try to create an atmosphere that’s as warm and close as possible with the people who watch me.
Gizmodo: How did you end up with the name “Mayichi”?
Carrillo: It kind of came from my name. My name is Maite and they called me “Mai.” My friends and everyone would call me “Mai,” so it was something that I identified with and that felt very representative of me. From there, I got the nickname “Mayichi.”
Gizmodo: How did you get started with gaming? What caught your attention?
Carrillo: I’ve always liked reading and I liked being part of the story I was reading. With games, what I liked was the feeling that you were the protagonist of your own story. You could live out the entire story and feel it in first person. That’s when I started playing videogames and started playing one after another and I liked it. I still like them.
Gizmodo: What would you say is your absolute favorite game?
Carrillo: To this day, it’s Final Fantasy X because the story is one that really impacted me. Without a doubt, I’d say that one.
Gizmodo: Back when you were starting out, was there any other female streamer or gamer in the industry that you looked up to?
Carrillo: When I started out there weren’t a lot of us, and we all knew each other. It was complicated, but over time I’ve had two role models that have really made an impact on me.
On an international level, I would say it’s Pokimane. I really like how she streams, how she communicates, and how she does everything. In Spain, it’s Cristinini. But like I said, at the beginning when I started there weren’t that many of us, so it was difficult to have a role model.
Cristinini has an amazing gift when it comes to communicating. I loved how she communicated, how she expressed herself, how she made her streams enjoyable. And with Pokimane, I really liked the sweetness she conveyed when she did things and how she explained them. Both of them are such good communicators and I really liked that about them. I hope to be able to communicate as well as they do and most importantly, be able to deliver my message in the best way possible.
Gizmodo: When was the first time you went viral?
Carrillo: It was with a Minecraft series, and it was very sudden. I remember that I started to play the series and in a very short amount of time we went from 300 people to 1,000 people on my channel. It was really crazy. It also happened just before the pandemic. During the pandemic my channel started growing more and it was really crazy.
Gizmodo: How did you manage to turn streaming into your full-time profession? Did you have another job before being a streamer?
Carrillo: Yes, I worked all types of jobs. I worked selling fruits and vegetables and as a sales associate in a luggage store. I’ve worked at a rotisserie cooking chickens, preparing croquettes, and preparing all kinds of things. I’ve also worked at a bakery while I was living in Germany. I’ve worked in many, many things. I’ve worked as a commercial representative for creams and makeup. There are so many things and I’m sure I’ve forgotten one.
It was when I started to do better in streaming, when a brand trusted me, that I decided to take that step and dedicate myself to content creation. It would also allow me to take care of my dad. So, I left the luggage store and started doing being a full-time streamer.
Gizmodo: Before taking that step, did you stream and work other jobs at the same time?
Carrillo: Yes. I would go to work and when I got off work I would start streaming. I would always start streaming at night because it was when I would finally have time at home. I would stream every day after work. At one point, I was studying, working, and streaming at once because I was trying to get my nursing degree. So, I was studying nursing and then working to be able to pay for university. I was also streaming because it was my hobby, and it was what I liked to do.
Gizmodo: It seems like you’ve always had a lot of things on your plate. I definitely understand, I’m the same way.
Carrillo: Yeah, I’ve always tried very hard to support myself and I’ve been working since I was 16 years old. I was always working at one thing or another.
Gizmodo: Tell me a bit about your community. How would you describe it? Is it made up of people primarily from Spain or do you also have people from other countries?
Carrillo: I would say that I have a lot of viewers from Latin America, as well as from Spain, but a lot from Latin America. I really love that because we exchange curiosities. For example, there’s one thing we’ve talked about: the word “socks” in Spanish (“calcetines.”) I called ankle socks “calcetines” but my viewers from Latin America tell me, “no, those are medias” (“tights” in English). We exchange things and curiosities like that. They love telling jokes and playing jokes on me. We’re always joking around and messing with each other.
Gizmodo: Globalization has impacted gaming and streaming and the culture around them. Are your interactions with your fans from Latin America different than those you have with fans from Spain?
Carrillo: In fact, fans from both regions share a lot of things, like for instance, their passion for video games. It doesn’t matter if you’re from Argentina, Spain, or China because in the end, what we share are our hobbies. We like video games, we like making jokes, we like having a good time. So, my interactions with fans aren’t really that different.
It is true that you learn new things or new words from other cultures. For instance, there are a lot of expressions from Latin America that have stuck with me because I’ve read them from my fans. There are also some words that I wasn’t too careful with using before, like the word “coger” (“take” in English). In Spain, you use “coger” for everything. Like saying, “I’m going to take this” or “you take that.” But of course, in Latin America, you say “coge Source: Gizmodo