From accidentally destroying a $550-graphics card to only losing 300 ranks instead of 3,000, Risai seems to remain cheerful regardless of circumstance. He’s known for his playful teasing, lax attitude and blunt authenticity both on and off stream.
HypeHorizen needed to know Risai’s secrets to tranquility, so we decided to go through his Twitter Feed and Twitch Clips. Here’s what we found:
Only Losing 300 Ranks
“I was having fun with Pure Paladin that day because I was almost winning. That’s why I’m like ‘oh wow, I only dropped 300 ranks.’ On any other day, I would’ve dropped 3,000.”
Risai said he has at least one deck for every class and when he gets bored of playing meta decks, he likes to take something off meta for a spin. However, if he played that Paladin deck a bit longer, he may have had a different outlook.
“Given time, if I would’ve played more and would’ve lost more, I would say ‘all right, this deck sucks; I’m out. Let’s go back to Aggro Warrior.'”
He said sometimes he goes back to playing meta decks and rediscovers “winning is fun” as evidenced by this Tweet.
A Taunt Minion is in the Way
One of the possible reasons Risai has stayed sane through all his time streaming might be his girlfriend. She’s been with him since he started streaming Hearthstone. But occasionally, she’ll ask some interesting questions like why he can’t attack when there’s a taunt minion in the way.
“I was streaming and my girlfriend was there trying to hang out with me and be supportive. At the time, she was at school, so she was away. She was kinda learning at the time and was like ‘why didn’t you attack?’ Well, the taunt minion is why. I was playfully being a jerk to her, mostly.”
Risai wasn’t even an affiliate at the time. He said it was sometimes difficult to stream to few or even no viewers. However, Risai’s girlfriend gently pushed him forward by hanging out in Twitch chat while being away attending college.
Illidan Stormrage Cup
“This is a special promotion with Carl’s Jr. I still have this exact cup.”
Risai has been hooked on Hearthstone since trying it while doing a project for his senior game design class. He’s collected several pieces of merchandise like this cup, a puzzle, which he has framed, and a Murky Hazy IPA. The day he heard about the cup, he got in his car and drove to the nearest restaurant.
“On the first day of the promotion, I saw someone Retweet out a promotional thing with Carl’s Jr. that they’re having Hearthstone cups, and immediately I’m like ‘I want that cup.'”
Unfortunately, he got “gypped” as it wasn’t available the day he went. However, about a month later after he forgot about it, Risai’s girlfriend asked if he wanted to go out for lunch and finally get his Illidan cup.
“This time, as we pulled in, they had the signs stuck in saying ‘play Hearthstone now. They just came out with the new expansion.’ And I was like ‘ah yes; my Illidan cup.’ Little did I know that this person was going to be bashing my face in for the next like three months.”
Risai’s First Clip
“This is the last thing that exists to remind me of how terrible [my stream] looked.”
Another passion that’s hooked Risai is constantly improving his stream. This clip was taken during his second-ever stream as Risai’s first stream was lost to time, specifically to not knowing about archiving Twitch VODs.
All the hardware in that clip is the same, yet Risai’s production value has increased dramatically with things like floodlights, a green screen and changing his camera angle.
“I like having good quality stuff. It pisses me off to no end when I see streamers that have a shitty mic and I can’t enjoy it because I hear static every other second. And it’s not just smaller streamers. Some bigger streamers I can tell and I’m like ‘their mic quality is garbage… how?'”
Risai’s passionate about improving his stream quality, and despite his setup looking “jank,” he’s happy as always. And just like his original stream quality, viewers will probably never see two shots like that again.
“My teammate had died and I made two shots that I don’t think I’d ever be able to make again.”
