Meet Lucy James, one of video games’ cultural champions

Lucy James is a Geordie, but you wouldn’t know it unless you got her drunk. When she talks now, sometimes an American accent creeps into the vowels, her native tongue twisted over years of presenting videos with and for Americans, to an audience of over 100 million video gamers worldwide. But before that, there were Slipknot hoodies. James was a typical British teen and spent most of her younger years hanging around the streets of Newcastle, UK, with her mosher pals. She didn’t grow up with a games console and most of her early memories of playing video games are from playing Sega Genesis at a friend’s house, where she developed a deep dislike for a certain blue hedgehog. When her dad bought a PC, the trajectory of her life changed. “My dad is very… He loves a gadget,” James says. “He loves the process of researching something, comparing everything, and then eventually pulling the trigger. Every time you go around, he's like, ‘Here's my new thing’.” James’ parents were separated as early as she can remember,