Rising Stars: Meet Luis Arroyo

Today we’d like to introduce you to Luis Arroyo.

Hi Luis, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
My name is Luis, but they know me on the internet as “Wicho”… I am 23 years old. Nowadays, I am a Mexican full-time streamer/YouTuber on gaming content as a Gears of War ambassador for all the Hispanic community with most of my audience in Mexico, Spain, Argentina, Colombia, Brazil, and several countries of LATAM. I think I got invited to this interview because I recently had the opportunity to meet Cliff and Lauren Bleszinski in Raleigh. Which is a cool story cause he created that game that allowed me to make a living of the content creation. I’ll explain my story… I officially started this career on November 2015, but I began playing video games since I was 5 years old because my dad used to like video games too, and he bought me several gaming consoles as the Play Station 1 or a Nintendo Game Boy Advanced, but when I was 8 years old, my cousin married a guy who had an Xbox 360. My cousin’s brothers and I used to play there every weekend during the summer; we were in love specially with game named Gears of War back in 2006 that was the ultimate gaming experience because it was one of the first full Spanish-translated games. Eventually, they bought an Xbox for themselves, and they started to get better and beat me in every match we played. My parents didn’t want to buy me an Xbox cause it was expensive and they did not want me to pay more attention to video games than school, so I decided to go to work selling candies at my school with the money that my dad used to give me to buy food, so I preferred to stop eating at school so I could save money to buy those candies and sell them to my classmates. Eventually, my dad noticed this, and he decided to help me buying me the games for the Xbox and gave me money for it because of the amount of effort I put to have that Xbox. After 3 months, I was able to buy it, and I started to play more and improve with the only reason of being better than my cousins. I met the gaming side of Mauricio, another cousin from my paternal family this time, but the interesting thing is that we were never close in person until one time we met ONLINE and created a strong relationship. He played too well and taught me how to play better because we were a really good player on those games. With the time people that used to see me online asked me to upload tutorial or gameplays of the kind of thinks that I was able to do in the game with my skills, so I began saving money and my dad helped me again to buy a capture card, and that’s how I began uploading several things to my YouTube channel, specially fun matches with my Friends cause we wanted to have a place that we could visit when we grew up as a time capsule project. But with the time it became something else, especially when Gears of War 4 from The Coalition came out back in 2016 because there were a lot of new gamers getting into the community that were looking for people on the internet that could teach them how to play so I began uploading all my knowledge and people began finding me out. A couple of years later, The Coalition studio contacted me to create a partnership with them to be able to have several opportunities as being part of the test team for the next Gears 5 game back in the day. I have several hard moments on my personal life that put me into this path, but one of the main reasons I became a full-time content creator was because I began having issues at school with teachers when this internet thing had a big hate from adults back in the day cause they couldn’t accept that kids were making good money while doing videos or playing video games so I began having low grades at school, and I decided to end my academic responsibilities with extraordinary tests. When I had to present one of my last exams, I had an invitation to fly to Vancouver, Canada to test Gears 5, and my family wanted me to prioritize school, but while that was happening, Mauricio got cancer which was a hard moment for all my family because he was very young for that. When I talked to him about this opportunity, he told me that if he had the time that I had in this world, he would have taken that opportunity and then he asked me to take that opportunity because he loved the game, and when the game would be out, he wouldn’t be able to play the game and see what was next with the game characters. So, I had my mission clear; I needed to play that game before anyone else to be able to tell him what happened on the game cause time was not enough for him. That decision put me into this path on a professional way. When I am writing this, I’ve had the opportunity to achieve several things while creating Gears of War content as having the world record of live current viewers on a stream while playing Gears of War with 9,100 viewers. I’ve had a lot of interesting opportunities while I was creating my career on the Internet. I’ve been doing this for the past 8 years of my life, and I´ve had amazing life experiences while I’ve been following this path; I’ve worked with some of the main entertainment companies in Mexico and some other places of the world, thanks to my work as one of the 2 main TV companies in Mexico named as TV Azteca, an important global movie theater Mexican company, Cinepolis. I had the opportunity of working with the studio that works behind Gears of War in Vancouver, Canada. I´ve worked with a lot of important gaming brands as Logitech, Astro Gaming, ASUS, Intel, Activision, Epic Games, BENQ, Xbox, Republic of Gamers, etc. I had the opportunity to become an official/exclusive Twitch streamer, and with all my work and resources, I’ve been able to help every year several foundations that help fight against kid cancer in Mexico and around the world with my community. I also had the opportunity to connect with a lot of amazingly interesting people all around the world thanks to my social media presence on the Gears of War and Gaming industry, and I cannot avoid mentioning that thanks to this work, I have known love in many ways, including my girlfriend. It’s been an interesting story with a lot of moments, and I would like to tell more of it with personal details that I have never said, but I can tell this is a good summary behind my story. 

We all face challenges, but looking back, would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
When I was 12 years old, my mother gave birth to my sister, and this caused her problems because she acquired a disease known as fibromyalgia that put her in a serious depression that caused my mother to apologize to me at the age of 13 because she was sure she would die. Fortunately, that was not the case, but that was leaving sequels as time progressed. In 2019 my cousin Mauricio passed away from Cancer, an event that changed my way of seeing life forever, and it has taken me years to get over that event. In 2021 I went into a deep depression without realizing it because I had love problems along with a series of events such as family problems added to 3 accidents that changed my life during a streak of very bad luck. In May 2021, my father had an accident in his car. In July, I fell and broke my foot. In September, my girlfriend at the time started having many problems in her life that impacted my life as well. In February 2022, I was hit by a car. I lived all this bad streak in a depressive limbo for a long time, but with a lot of effort and a lot of help of my friends, I was able to get out of that hole. Specially a friend of mine named Pau, she was like a sister for me during those days, and then in May 2023, she passed away, a very sad moment for me. During the same dates, my grandfather began having a lot of health issues, and it has been hard times, but every day, things are improving, and I have good people at my side helping me during this thought times that I am thankful to have. 

Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
I am a professional full-time Gaming Gears of War content creator and streamer on Twitch, YouTube, Tik Tok, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. I create entertainment content based on the game that I love the most, and I’ve been able to create a great community thanks to my videos, clips, and live streams for the Hispanic community, 

We’d love to hear about any fond memories you have from when you were growing up.
Growing up while the internet was being created and chaning the world and being one of the last generations that knows how the world was before having a smartphone as part of our daily life. 

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.twitch.tv/elgamerwicho
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/eg_wicho/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100057645961023
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/EG_wicho
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@ElGamerWICHO