Rio Tirado
Co-founder, VERSE
Phone:
Alias: HeyDasNotGood
Pronouns: They/Them
Location: Bay Area, CA
Email:
A Bit About Me
Hello! My name is Rio, but folks online also know me as HeyDasNotGood! I was born and raised in the Bay Area, but my family roots are in Michoacán and Guanajuato.
I began gaming and streaming casually at the start of the pandemic, playing games like Apex, Overwatch, Fortnite, Stumble guys & Minecraft. While I still enjoy streaming casually, my true passion lies in education. Outside of VERSE, I work for local community organizations empowering youth and families while supporting them throughout their educational journeys.
Through VERSE, I hope to continue empowering and amplifying the voices of marginalized people in my community and providing a safe and fun environment for folks to learn, grow and connect with each other!
You asked. We answered.
What was your favorite childhood game?
What are your hobbies away from gaming?
What was your inspiration for cofounding VERSE?
There were three games that I was absolutely obsessed with and played all the time on my mom’s dinosaur computer:
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The 625 Sandwich Stacker game from Lilo and Stitch.
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Club Penguin. I swear every gay kid had a mansion for their Puffle and before you ask, yes I was one of those kids that would sit for hours trying to convenience everyone else that we should tip the iceberg.
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Mr. Meaty’s Treasures of the Deep. This game and show still feel like a fever dream.
Cooking! Growing up my dad was a cook so I grew up really appreciative of all of the labor and love that goes into making food. Although sometimes it can be very time-consuming I still find cooking to be very therapeutic and love finding new recipes on tik tok!
When I began gaming at the start of the pandemic, I quickly realized how toxic, discouraging, and alienating it can be to game and stream as a Queer person of color. I specifically recall early in my journey having friends convince me to play Rust only to have a group of random guys follow me around yelling racist, sexist, homophobic, and ableist slurs. The worst part of this all was talking about my negative experiences in gaming with other marginalized context creators and hearing similar stories surrounding harassment while gaming or targeted hate on platforms like Twitch.
Last year, I remember having a venting session with Zí and Sam surrounding gaming culture and we talked about all of the different ways we would love to see the current gaming culture shift and how amazing it felt three years ago when Zí and I hosted a charity event for Transanta, a community organization that safely sends gifts to trans youth in need. I remember how excited we were to throw this event, not only because we were able to raise money for an amazing cause, but also because we were also able to connect with a ton of like-minded streamers who also wanted to create positive changes in the community. From this conversation, Sam and Zí brought up the idea of creating a gaming organization focused on uplifting and celebrating marginalized content creators, and I was excited to jump on board and help us all make our vision and reality.