This 84-Year-Old Gamer Has More Than 900,000 ‘Grandkids’ (Published 2020)

Shirley Curry has clocked thousands of hours of gameplay since the 1990s. She’s been a gamer longer than many of today’s top competitors have been alive. Still, when people rave about her charming walk-throughs of the blockbuster role-playing game The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, she feels their praise is out of place.

“When people say things like, ‘You’re a legend!’ it embarrasses me. Because I’m just a newbie old grandma,” Ms. Curry, 84, said. “I try to just be honest and be me. I sit here in my apartment and dream up stories. That’s all I do.”

She starts every day at her home in southwestern Ohio perched in front of the computer with her camera on, ready to guide her “grandkids” — the term she uses to refer to her more than 900,000 YouTube subscribers — on another journey through the 2011 video game.

There’s a dungeon to conquer, or a town to explore, or a new codex of spells to master. She reads aloud all the in-game books, basks in the cozy ambience of the roadside inns, and carefully outfits her inventory with swords, axes and daggers. At the end of each video, she sends her viewers off with the same salutation: “Bye-bye grandkids.”

She first got into gaming when her son taught her how to play the 1996 strategy classic Civilization II. “I’d play so much, day and night,” she said. “I’d just go out and conquer continent after continent and I loved it.”