In a room lit with purple light, Ritalucia Henry-Andoh, 25, hunches over her keyboard, eyes glued to one of her three computer monitors, seemingly conversing with herself.
On screen, the battlefield of the video game Valorant unfolds: characters dart and weave through corridors, bullets flying as virtual avatars battle for kills and wins.
Equipped with a camera, headphones, and a microphone, Ritalucia, also known by her gamertag LLegasus (or Reverse Legolas), multitasks by chatting with her online viewers on the streaming platform Twitch while racking up kills and wins with her character.
Her small online community of followers occasionally joins in to watch her livestream, sending messages into the chatbox.
The Ghanaian-Nigerian gamer started streaming about five years ago and has found a supportive community in the online gaming world.
Her early video game experiences started with the Nintendo Wii when she was 10. Growing up with three brothers, they’d play it constantly—mostly Wii Sports, focusing on bowling and tennis.
“It was very fun,” she said, noting it sparked her love for gaming.
From there, the family progressed to a PlayStation 4 (gifted by their mom).
“We played Call of Duty a ton. My brother had a PlayStation Portable (PSP) and we would play games like Prince of Persia“.
Now a fully fledged gamer, her sessions consist mostly of first-person shooters and a few story mode games. She occasionally plays other games like The Sims.
“I’m going to start playing Little Nightmares 3 because that comes out very soon“, she said on what’s next on her gaming radar.
Her path to online game streaming seemed inevitable, but a global pandemic and personal loss led her to find solace in her newfound gaming community.
Path To Streaming
Ritalucia began her streaming journey in 2020, after the COVID-19 pandemic broke out, and everyone was isolated during lockdown.
Her boyfriend at the time, who couldn’t physically visit due to lockdown restrictions, gave her the idea of streaming her gaming sessions.
“He’d text, ‘What are you doing?’ I’d say, ‘Playing Apex Legends.’ He’d go, ‘Stream for me.'”
So she did, firing up Twitch for an audience of one.
Later in the year, her mother passed away due to an illness. Soon after, her relationship with her boyfriend also ended. During that time of grief and loss, she was able to find solace in her online gaming community.
“I was very lost and confused. But the one thing I had was my games. So I just kept playing.”
Typically a console gamer, she fully transitioned to gaming on PC, streaming games including Valorant, Marvel Rivals, and Apex Legends.
Her gaming setup includes a custom-built PC gifted from Arena 233, a gaming center she visits often.
The PC, which features 32 GB of RAM and an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070, was gifted as a birthday present for her continued support of the center, which opened in 2022.
They offered a generous payment plan to pay off the unit.
“I had to pay it off over time because there was no way I was going to drop a stack. So they trusted me and gave me the PC. I paid it off and now it’s all mine.”
Ritalucia compares her online streaming sessions to a TV channel or program, using it as a metaphor for how she structures her content.
“My entire channel is a TV channel. When you put on your TV, you can go to Cartoon Network and watch Steven Universe, and then after you might watch something else.”
Most of her streaming is done on Twitch, a popular streaming platform used by many other streamers, including the popular US-based Kai Cenat.
Currently, she has 2,000+ followers, including 500 Discord members (up from a scrappy 10), and 5,000 TikTok followers.
“It feels like a great big family,” she says. “Everyone’s not there all at once — people have lives — but they show up.“
Although she doesn’t describe herself as a Pro gamer, Ritalucia attended the Gamers8 esports tournament in Saudi Arabia with a group of other gamers in 2023.
“It was a great opportunity,” she said about the experience, but doesn’t think Pro gaming is her speed.
“It’s very stressful. And as someone who’s very competitive, I do get in my head when I lose. So I’d rather just not have that in my area.“
Online Gaming Hurdles
For many gamers in Ghana, internet infrastructure can be a huge challenge for gaming online. Ritalucia is not immune to those challenges.
At the moment, she uses two separate routers from two different internet service providers (MTN and Telecel) for her online gaming.
For competitive matches, strong ping performance is crucial for smooth gameplay.
Mostly used in online gaming, ping is the time it takes for data to travel from a gaming device to a game server and back.
In Ghana, ping performance can hover around 100 – 120 milliseconds (ms) while gamers in the US can see performances closer to 20 ms, a far better experience.
In Ghana, gamers like Ritalucia constantly have to deal with slower pings, which makes online competitive gaming a harder experience.
“Even if I peek and shoot them first, they’re still going to kill me because they have faster ping,” she said about playing against other online players.
The variety of competitive games in Ghana can also be limiting. The country, which is big on the popular sport of football, is also big on sports games like FIFA.
Finding local players with more affinity for games like Valorant or Marvel Rivals can be hard. But that doesn’t stop Ritalucia’s gaming experiences.
Last month, she completed a 24-hour gaming marathon where she played games Marvel Rivals and ended with Valorant matches.
“I had to go to my friend’s house to stream because I didn’t think I would be able to last the whole 24 hours alone at my place,” she says of her initial planning.
“This is my house”
Like many female gamers, Ritalucia gets her fair share of toxicity and trolling when playing online.
“As a Black queer woman who plays games, it’s not great for me online. They have so much to insult me with.”
She’s had gamers “raid” her stream, typing and sometimes yelling racial slurs during gaming sessions. She’s also had her fair share of the condescending “Are you a girl?” comments from male gamers.
“You can’t give a troll attention,” she said, discussing how some teammates online place the blame on her in a losing match, just for being a different gender.
“It’s not encouraging at all because I can’t imagine if you’re not someone as resilient as me or someone who’s used to insults.”
She says the experience can sometimes be demoralising.
“It can mess with your gameplay a lot, especially if it’s a team game that requires communication. You cannot speak without being insulted, so you just don’t talk.”
Thankfully, she uses online tools and features, including muting and outright banning people from her sessions, to give her peace of mind.
“This is my house. You’re in my house. So if you come in here and you’re gonna talk shit or be horrible, I will ban you. I will remove you instantly because you don’t deserve to be here.”
Future Plans
Being a full gamer can be lucrative if the stars line up and brands and companies come knocking with sponsorship deals. But in Ghana, getting traction as a gamer can be difficult.
“You need a lot of followers and a lot of people watching you,” she said about the constant grind of getting followers.
“The bigger you get, the more brands want to work with you. That leads to more people flying you out for gigs and paying you to promote their game.”
Online gaming is not a full-time gig that she wants to pursue. Right now, she’s enrolled in school and hopes to graduate next year with a degree in Communications.
She hopes for future employment that gives room to stream games in her spare time. Thankfully, her current job allows her to do just that.
“Right now, I’m working in social media for Arena 233, and that’s a hybrid onsite role. So I don’t have to be on site all the time.”
At the moment, she’s juggling school, social media management, online streaming, and hanging out with her gaming community, which has grown into somewhat of a fanbase.
“I’ve met a lot of them in real life now. They keep finding me. And it’s nice. Right now we’re at 500 members on Discord, and that’s insane.”
When asked about her plans for online gaming, she says she has no intention of quitting anytime soon.
“I’ve been doing this for five years now, but I’ve only really been doing it properly for three years. I want to give it at least 10 years before I say I’m done.”
For new gamers who want to jump into online streaming, Ritalucia hopes that they research and get the right equipment when starting. But most importantly, she hopes that they have a mindset of just having fun.
“Play what you enjoy. Because if you’re not having fun, no one’s going to have fun watching you.“
