Twitch streamer The Darkness is a leader in Brazil’s thriving gaming community

Alessandro Antóquio calls it a “revolution.” The popular Twitch streamer, known to thousands as The Darkness, is talking about Brazil’s booming gaming industry, which is expected to reach $1.84 billion in the country in 2022 and is projected to see an annual growth rate of 11.04% through 2027, according to Statista. Since 2017, the gaming population in Brazil has grown by 39.5 million, and today, the nation is among the top 10 gaming countries in the world.

He’s watched the gaming industry flourish since he was captivated with playing 8-bit consoles as a kid. But back when he was younger, the gaming landscape looked very different in Brazil than it does today.

“Here we had game rental companies that mounted TVs and consoles where the public paid a few coins for a few minutes of play, and with that, everyone had access and could play consoles they didn’t have the money to buy,” Antóquio remembers of the early days of gaming in Brazil. “I think that all this contributed to the industry becoming as popular across the world as it is today.”

Today, he has nearly 700,000 followers on Twitch, where he uses his platform to participate in the expanding gaming community in Brazil. He’s also leveraged his popularity into collaborations with multiple global brands.

Born and raised in the city of Osasco in the state of São Paulo, Antóquio had his first experience with video games when he was 5 or 6 while playing Atari at his cousin’s house. “It was love at first sight,” he says. “I didn’t want to do anything other than play Frostbite or River Raid. I always told my mother that I ‘wanted to live playing video games.’”

But gaming wasn’t his first career. Instead, Antóquio graduated with a marketing degree and spent his early professional life working in IT. He got a job as an office assistant and worked his way up to marketing manager at his company. But everything seemed to be moving toward gaming.

“Deep down, I think the mission was somehow to be a video game player as a profession and have my own business,” he says.

Before he got into streaming, Antóquio was already laying the groundwork for his public gaming persona. Playing Counter-Strike: Global Offensive with Voice Over Internet Protocol, a social voice-chatting feature for the game, he’d experiment with different voices, jokes, and antics that have become the hallmark of his Twitch livestreams today.

“When I had my first experience participating in a friend’s livestream, seeing the audience’s reaction in real time touched me in some way, and I felt that I needed to do that,” he says.

He first went live on Twitch in 2012, and in those early livestreams, he would use a computer he’d borrowed from work because his personal one was “weak,” he says.

“I took the computer home every day from about 6 kilometers away, on foot,” Antóquio says. “It was insane, but I was really interested in making it work. My first lives were in 360p resolution with 400 bit rate. It was horrible, but the jokes were the most important thing, so it worked fine for a while.”

Since then, the quality of his stream has improved along with his standing in the worldwide gaming community. Playing games like Grand Theft Auto V and Fortnite, he’s known for his comical voices (one of them is a high-pitched, computer-manipulated alien-like voice), general hijinks, and lighthearted trolling.

“I’ve always had a great sense of community, and I’ve always thought a lot about making my content—remembering what it was like in childhood playing with friends, sitting on the living room or bedroom floor, eating candies, and having fun. I think a lot of people identified with that and came along,” he says. “I think that my incessant search for quality in broadcasts generates interest from the public and from other streamers as well. This helped me solidify myself.”

For Antóquio, Twitch has been part of this gaming revolution in Brazil.

“I think Twitch is the portal that makes everyone aware of the possibility of becoming a professional gamer. The casual gamer who lives in isolated cities, for example, and enjoys games can interact with other gamers in real time,” he says. “Gamers know that appearing on Twitch can help them grow professionally in this career.”

That success as a popular gaming personality on Twitch has helped Antóquio turn his passion into a lucrative career, thanks to collaborations with global brands. Every day, after a breakfast of bread with butter and local coffee, Antóquio sits down for brainstorms with brands as part of the work he does with companies and streamers to create advertising campaigns.

Today he works with brands including Corsair, Paramount+, Xbox, Dell, Alienware, Nvidia, Intel, and the coffee brand 3 Corações (3 Hearts).