By Khalida Sarwari
Like most teenagers–and even some adults over the past few weeks–Alexander D’Souza has been busy wandering the streets of Monte Sereno and Los Gatos, his eyes fixed on his phone screen, hunting for Pokemon. The game, based on the popular 1990s Japanese TV series, is the latest craze among millennials, and yes, even their parents. But if anyone would get into a game like “Pokemon Go,” it would be a professional gamer like Alexander.
Last month, the 16-year-old Monte Sereno resident’s attention was placed squarely on Smite, a third-person multiplayer online battle arena video game. Alexander’s success in the game qualified him to compete among other professional gamers from around the world in the SMITE Masters at Dreamhack Summer 2016 competition held June 18-20 in Jönköping, Sweden.
Alexander’s team, SOAR G2A, placed second overall after competing against European teams, an achievement that Alexander downplayed. The one he’s looking forward to, he said, is the world championship that takes place next January in Atlanta. Alexander will try to qualify for the tournament this fall.
Though he’s played video games since the age of 6, “Mario Kart: Double Dash” being one of his first favorite games that he can recall, Alexander started playing video games as a fulltime hobby only in the last four years and professionally in the last two years. He plays daily for upwards of five hours on some days, and he considers friends he’s made in the online gaming community–mostly other pro Smite players–his only friends.
Being bullied in middle school has left Alexander wary of making friends in school. A senior now at Saratoga High, he said he has no interest in joining student clubs and prefers spending his lunch period working on homework. His evenings are spent playing games and sometimes streaming his games, which brings him a few extra bucks. Online, he goes by the name “Homiefe.”
When he attended Fisher Middle School, Alexander was a top soccer player, said his mother, Ruth D’Souza. He picked up the game at the age of 5 at Daves Avenue Elementary School and played for a good seven years before he became bored of it. His mother suspects an opponent stepping on his arm intentionally might have also factored into his decision to stop playing.
Bullying incidents made him want to stay home and play more video games, he said. So he traded in his cleats and soccer ball for joysticks and keyboards.
“I’m pretty small, so I’m not like, crushed when I play video games,” he said. “Video games [are] just like a fair playing ground.”
Seeing her son fall victim to bullying in middle school was hard for the whole family, his mother said. At first, she and her husband tried to compensate for the camaraderie their son was missing at school by playing board games with him every night.
“We had to be there for him socially and nurture him and hold him tight to us to make sure he knows we love him and we’re going to get through this,” she said.
Alexander gets along best with his father, Daniel, an engineer, Ruth said, but he’s fairly close to his 25-year-old sister, Alexandria, a bioengineer. Ruth, a fashion designer by trade, is the disciplinarian in the family who promotes exercise and a balanced lifestyle to her kids. That means she is the one who sets the rules, forbidding Alexander from playing games after 11:30 p.m. during the week and 1 a.m. on weekends, but if a big tournament is coming up, she said she lets him be. It also means no gadgets will be allowed on their family vacation next month in Maui.
“We’ll hug and snorkel together and get all the kisses in,” Ruth said, laughing.
After some fun in the sun, Alexander will get back to trying to defeat his opposing team’s giant warrior and roaming the streets searching for Pokemon.
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