In Break the Game, a Legend of Zelda speedrunner cracks under online abuse, then rebuilds

polygon.com:

In July 2014, gamer Narcissa Wright completed a livestreamed speedrun of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, beating the gamein just over 18 minutes — at the time, a world record. Wright became famous in the gaming world, tracking audience numbers in the thousands and even making a living from streaming.

Then, in 2015, Wright publicly announced that she’s transgender, and the vitriol from the community that had once revered her became so extensive that her streams morphed from speedruns to mental breakdowns. Before her transition, she had been lavished with positive attention by the community, and lauded for her gaming skill. Suddenly, she began receiving death threats and constant taunts instead, and her streams’ comments were flooded by bigots.

Her struggles didn’t just come from transphobia, though. In the new documentary Break the Game, Wright admits that her obsession with audience numbers, fan adoration, and being the center of attention all contributed to her deteriorating mental health. “I was at the precipice, and now I’m like a fallen star,” she sighs in the film.

Wright’s deteriorating mental health led to her being banned multiple times from both Twitch and Twitter, most notoriously for tweeting that she wanted to “kill [her]self” and “shoot people at the twitch HQ,” something she says was only ever a self-destructive post, not a serious threat. “I don’t own any weapons and the threat was non-credible. I did feel like self-harming though, and the Tweet was my way of self-harming,” she posted in a now-deleted tweet. Her account remains deactivated.

What’s unique in Wright’s case is how much of her struggle was documented online, first in her livestreams, and now as recorded streams in Break the Game. The