Every Rocket League player knows all about the grind. It's the uphill battle to climb the Ranks that begins at Bronze and slowly progresses to Champion and beyond. The grind comes with setbacks and sessions where you wonder if you'll ever win another game, but those challenges are what make it even sweeter when you pull off a five-game win streak. Miramasa, the Spacestation Gaming content creator who's been on the rise in the past year, has been on that uphill grind off the pitch long before Rocket League's first kickoff.
Miramasa (or Mirella, or Mira for short) had something to prove even from a young age. She grew up in a small village in the Netherlands with her parents and brother, and video games were always a constant. She started on the Super Nintendo with games like Super Mario World and Donkey Kong, and eventually progressed to the PlayStation and Xbox. But, before her hobby would evolve into her job, Mira, like most children, had to focus on education, which came with its own hurdles.
In the Netherlands' education system, children take an aptitude test called Cito Eindtoets Basisonderwijs (translates to Cito final test primary education) after elementary school. This test determines the level of education that is suitable for the child's intelligence. At a young age, Mira was diagnosed with attention deficit disorder and dyscalculia, a learning disorder that makes it difficult to perform tasks involving math. It's like the numbers equivalent to dyslexia. Naturally, this disorder made it difficult to perform well on the aptitude test. It resulted in the education system determining that Mira wasn't a good fit for higher education.
"They put me in the second-lowest level of education," Mira recalled. "It was pretty hard. I started from the bottom, and had to work my way up. I knew I could do better. Everyone was always telling me that I was dumb, but I was convinced that I could do more."
That test result can be appealed with strong performance in school, so Mira spent the next six years working her way up the education system. The eventual goal was a career in law.
"I try to be a righteous person," she explains. "I can't stand if the voiceless are treated unfairly. It honestly drives me crazy. If I see that happening on my timeline, I'll always stand up for people. I don't care if it's considered controversial or political. I had that mentality at a very young age. I just wanted to do something where I can help people."
With no money saved for higher education, Mira worked two jobs to pay her own way through law school. After a total of 13 years of high school and higher education, she earned two master's degrees in law — one in private law and another in criminal law. Even before completing her education, she got a job at a law firm. Between her education, her new job at a law firm that came with a two-and-a-half hour commute each way, and the resurgence of her video game hobby, Mira was sacrificing her happiness for her professional life. She still wanted to help people with her legal knowledge, but she didn't find fulfillment in the work she was doing at the law firm.
"I wasn't getting much sleep. At a certain point, I had to go into therapy. I had trouble going to school and going to work, and started getting panic attacks. I had to quit my law job after two years. That was the last year of my bachelors. I still did legal counseling and some law services for some organizations on the side, but I just couldn't keep up that schedule."
That's when video games came back into play for Mira. Her roommates at the time were heavily into video games, which she started playing more to unwind from her busy schedule. That's when she discovered Rocket League, and eventually Twitch.
"I just fit into that social experience of video games and Rocket League. Streaming never once crossed my mind when I worked in law, but my friends told me that I'd be a good fit for this thing called Twitch, since I have the tendency to just never shut up [laughs]. My friends told me they'd hop in those early streams and hang out in the chat so it wasn't awkward. So I tried it out."
Mira started streaming in early 2020 and never looked back. Since then, Mira has amassed 35,000 followers on her Twitch channel, a growing following on Twitter and other social media platforms, and signed with Spacestation Gaming. Most recently, she just wrapped a subathon. For those unfamiliar, a subathon is where there's a countdown timer for the stream to end, and time is added when someone subscribes to the channel.
Mira signing her bachelor's degree
The stream took place at her boyfriend Max's parents' house where she currently resides. She talked to Max about the idea and went for it. Mira wrapped her subathon at the staggering 1000 hour mark, and earned more than 18,000 new subscribers to her channel. When Mira and Max first planned it, she just wanted to stream for one full day just to be able to say she did, but then it quickly became something bigger.
"I got through day one and it went well," Mira says. "Then, we moved onto day two and I slept on-stream. We just assumed it was going to end the next day, because the timer was below three hours at one point. But then the community came together and got it to the third day. Then it just kept rolling. By the end, I streamed for 41 days in a row."
Mira celebrated the end of the subathon with a vacation — her first in several years.
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Despite Mira's quick success and rise within the Rocket League community, she still has a hard time convincing her family that this is the right move, and a career path that makes her happy. She's been working on explaining content creation to her father, but it's been a challenge.
"My dad is quite old fashioned," she says. "When we have family parties or something, he still tells people that I'm going to go back into law and says he doesn't really understand what I do. It sucks. My village is so tiny and old fashioned. They don't understand what Twitch is even if I try to explain it to them."
Mira hasn't given up trying to convince her family that content creation is the best fit for her. She made a Twitch account for him called "MiramasaDad" so he could stop by her streams. Her viewers even greet him when he tunes in. "He's trying, and I appreciate that. I just feel like he needs a little more time to really get it."
The biggest part about her growing career that she wishes she could explain to her family is how happy she is in it compared to when she was working in law. Mira says she's glad she completed her education and was able to overcome the hurdles that were placed in front of her so early in school, but content creation is where she can truly be herself.
"I've never felt this at home anywhere. I didn't have that in a law office. I'm an alternative person. I listen to metal and have weird hair colors. I'm from this tiny village where you're supposed to act 'normal.' Content creation and my community have created this space where we're all outcasts, but it's not weird. Everyone loves each other for who they are. I never felt that anywhere. So, it genuinely makes me super happy. I felt that even when content creation didn't pay that much. I don't think I'll ever give up on content creation now."
Be sure to follow Mira on Twitter, and check out her Twitch channel.