'GrndpaGaming': Meet the 71-year-old Navy vet who streams four hours a day

He’s known to friends and family as Will but to millions on TikTok and hundreds of thousands on YouTube and Instagram, he’s known as "GrndpaGaming." 

"Gramps," as he’s affectionately known, is a 71-year-old Navy veteran who says he’s been gaming since 1976. He's one of more than 52 million gamers over the age of 50, according to an AARP survey released last year. The survey found the number of senior gamers has increased by 30% since 2016.

But Gramps was a gamer when he was a young man and long before it became popular among the 50+ age group. His first computer game was the B-1 Bomber on the Apple 1 computer. 

A fully functioning Apple I computer (C back) is on display with its interfaces at Sotheby's in New York, June 8, 2012. ((Photo by EMMANUEL DUNAND/AFP via Getty Images))

"It was on the three-inch cassette that you put in, and it was just a text-based game. There was no graphics in it. It was just all text. And it was fun for – when it came out, it was fun," he told Fox News Digital.

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Gramps said he retired from the military in 1992 and has worked several jobs since then but experienced a number of health scares in the past few years. 

He had an accident at work and ruptured three vertebrae in his neck. He was diagnosed with prostate cancer, suffered two heart attacks and had a double pulmonary embolism.

Currently, Gramps' favorite games are "Battlefield 2042," "Fortnite Zero Build" and "theHunter: Call of the Wild." ((GrndpaGaming))

"The doctor said, from that, I should have never woke up. So someone upstairs said I have something else planned for you. And I think this is it," Gramps said of his streaming success. 

Gramps began streaming in 2015 and recalled getting "conned into it." 

"I was playing a game called ArcheAge and a guy had seen me playing and he said, hey, you look pretty smooth there. What kind of system are you using? I said I built the system myself. It's a custom system. He goes, well, you should start streaming. And I sort of hesitated and I said, what is that? He goes, you know, with Twitch. I go, no, I don't know. What is that? So he explained it to me. And then the next night, we came out, and it took us about an hour and a half and we got it set up and I never looked back," he explained. 

Gramps streams four hours a day and said his longest stream was 38 hours and four minutes exactly. Currently, his favorite games are "Battlefield 2042," "Fortnite Zero Build" and "theHunter: Call of the Wild."

Battlefield 2042 video game boxes are seen at the store in Krakow, Poland on December 30, 2021. ((Photo by Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto via Getty Images))

Gramps' glee is palpable in footage of him besting fellow gamers: "'See ya! Wouldn't want to b-b-b-be ya!"' he laughs. 

The Vietnam vet told Fox News Digital that streaming is a way to keep his mind off the pain. He doesn’t like taking medication for his neck because it makes him feel "foggy." 

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"I also like to stream to get a message out to the older generation. Hey, there's nothing to be afraid of. Get yourself out there. Socialize and keep your mind sharp. Keep your motor functions sharp," he said. "And that's what gaming and that's what I'm all about. Making new friends."

Dr. Laura Mosqueda, a family and geriatric medicine specialist with Keck Medicine of USC, told Fox News Digital gaming, like any other activity that keeps people engaged, can help keep the mind stimulated and help with reaction time. 

Gaming, like any other activity that keeps people engaged, can help keep the mind stimulated and help with reaction time. 

"The key is, as we grow older, staying mentally, physically, socially, emotionally engaged and connected are very clearly helpful to having a better aging process and a better old age," she explained. 

Dr. Mosqueda added that gaming has some obvious disadvantages as people get older, such as an increase in sedentary behavior. However, ultimately, in moderation, it can help with mental engagement and, to a degree, social connectedness.

"It still is really important for people to connect on an emotional level and have that kind of one really good friend or confidant or family member or whatever, which is different than what you get in a video game," she said. 

Gramps said his favorite memory since he started streaming has been all of his viewers. He held up a plaque he received from YouTube that says, "Presented to GrndpaGaming for passing 100,000 subscribers."

The plaque says, "Presented to GrndpaGaming for passing 100,000 subscribers." ((Fox News Digital/Ashley Carnahan))

"So now my next step is a million. And from there on, it's an open world for me."

Ashley Carnahan is a production assistant at Fox News Digital.