Player Spotlight – ShinKaigan

At Vainshame.com, one of the most exciting aspects of Vainglory is the growing community of players that are streaming the game and sharing their knowledge with other players. At all hours of the day, across many timezones, players are taking to Twitch.tv to share their experiences and strategies in Vainglory. Of all these current streamers, ShinKaigan has emerged as one of the most prolific. With daily streams and over 3000+ followers, you can tune in and watch Shin play with some of the top players, developers, and fans.

Being such, we thought it would be great to learn a little bit more about who ShinKaigan is, what he loves about VainGlory, and where he hopes for the future of the game.

Good afternoon Shin! Thank you for taking the time to answer some questions.

Of course.

To start, can you tell me a little about yourself, and how long you have been gaming?

Well I go by the name ShinKaigan, which is actually a really old name I made back in middle school and have since used in pretty much every game I have ever played since. I have been gaming since I was pretty much two years old when I was playing on the original Nintendo, which might give you some kind of indication about how old I am haha. I have always loved gaming and I played far too many to list them all but a few notable ones would be: Starcraft, World of Warcraft, DotA, League of Legends, and dabbled in pretty much every MMO under the sun. Mostly I just love gaming as a way to connect with my friends. Some of my fondest memories would be the times my friends and I would gather around the couch and duke it out in a video game.

What first drew you to MOBA’s in general?

It was originally because my friend introduced me to Defense of the Ancients or more commonly known as DotA, the custom map for Warcraft III. At first I didn’t understand the mechanics of the game and I was getting slaughtered left and right. It was pretty daunting, so many heroes to choose and all these items to remember. However after playing the game after a few rounds, there was this magical moment where the knowledge you learned so far all clicked and I was able to “carry” my first game. That’s probably when I was first really hooked to MOBAs. After that I started to spend weekends at the PC club with my friends playing DotA, it was so much fun. After that I moved onto League of Legends and then from there Vainglory.

From League of Legends to Vainglory, what motivated you (and when) to make the move?

It started when League of Legends was down for a day for some kind of maintenance. I needed another game to stream and a friend of mine told me that Vainglory had just came out and that it seemed pretty cool. So I decided to give it a shot even though I was pretty skeptical about MOBAs on an iPad. However from the moment I entered training mode, I was so impressed. The game seemed so well polished, the graphics were fantastic and the controls felt responsive. The heroes seemed really over the top too, which was a plus in my book. After all what other game has a blind, rocket chain axe carrying, snow leopard monk? After I started playing Vainglory more, my interest in League of Legends dwindled. Since then I think I have only played about two LoL games over the past three months so that goes to show how much I am loving VG right now.
It’s funny that the LoL downtime was right when Vainglory was first released in the NA region. The devs assure me that it was sheer coincidence but I don’t know, it was an awfully convenient time for that to happen haha.

From my perspective, SEMC has been handling community relations exceptionally well. What excites you the most about Vainglory, and the future of this game?

I’m very excited that this game could help usher a new era of gaming on mobile devices. Generally speaking gamers think of mobile gaming as something that is strictly for “casuals” and honestly before I started playing Vainglory I was in the same boat. However I think SEMC challenges that notion. EdtheShred mentioned in his D.I.C.E. speech that the average amount of time people spend playing Vainglory is about 75 minutes a day, which I think stands as a testament that mobile gaming doesn’t necessarily equal casual. This is an amazing prospect for me because I want to take the gaming experiences I had when I was growing up and have them on a device that is always ready in my pocket.

An example of this would be when I was at the airport waiting for a layover with my girlfriend. To help pass the time we just took out our phones and immediately went into shattering Vain crystals within a couple of minutes. If I wanted to do that with say, League of Legends, then I would have to take my laptop out of my backpack, find a table to put it on, look for an empty outlet, plug in my mouse, etc. That’s giving me a headache just thinking about it.

What is your favorite Vainglory meta at the moment?

My favorite meta would have to be the triple invade team comp. I know that this particular meta has caused a lot of grief for some players but for me I find it a lot of fun. I don’t have to wait until we farm up, I can have my first team fight within two minutes of starting the game.

If there was one thing you could change about Vainglory today, what would it be?

There isn’t anything that I would want to change that Super Evil Mega Corp hasn’t already addressed. For instance the two features I’d like are spectator mode and more things to spend my ICE on (like skins) but SEMC has already said that they have those on the horizon.

Congratulations on recently becoming a Twitch partner! That must be exciting for you? Was this always a goal for you?

Thank you! Honestly I didn’t think that my channel would get noticed, much less get partnered. So imagine my surprise when I received the news. I was with my friends when it happened and I literally couldn’t stop saying “Oh my god” for like a solid 10 minutes straight. I am very lucky and thankful to my viewers for making that a possibility.

With your stream running Monday through Friday, with varied times over the weekend – what motivates you to sit down and turn on the webcam every day?

I look forward to streaming so much that it really isn’t a problem finding the motivation to sit down and get behind the webcam. I actually have the opposite problem, I have difficulty putting streaming to the side. I had to implement “time off” sort of speak to rest and recover from streaming but even then I’m thinking about what else I can do to improve my channel or other fun VG projects I can work on. Like recently I have done a six person stream because I wanted to capture the fun of playing with friends and share it with my audience.

I know I have heard you say on your stream that being a part of the Vainglory team over at SEMC would be a dream. While from my knowledge they have not extended any sort of official offer to you, it is obvious that they value your involvement within the community.

How do you feel about your emerging role within the Vainglory community and the impact you have on both the new and veteran players?

I’m happy that I could be a big part in helping develop the community. In particular I was eager to help out new players because I know from personal experience that MOBAs could be pretty daunting. I want to ease them through the learning process so that new players can start having fun as soon as possible. That’s why I made a few youtube guides along with several posts on the Vainglory subreddit.

I also hope that I can make a difference in player toxicity. A fairly big problem in the League of Legends community is how they treat other players and I was hoping that by setting an example that I could stop that from happening in Vainglory.

What is the weirdest thing that has happened during one of your streams?

Weird? Hmm… that’s a tough one. I don’t know about weird but the craziest thing to happen to me (at least at the time) was on the first day that I started streaming Vainglory, the first viewer I had was actually EdtheShred. I was pretty blown away that a dev had taken the time to check out my channel and that happened within a few minutes of starting my stream. He took the time to answer all of my questions about the game and tweeted my stream out and it was a pretty crazy experience. Looking back on it, seeing the devs take the time to talk to me about the game was probably one of the things that got me hooked on the game.

Has anyone ever stopped you in person and asked, “Hey, aren’t you that guy?”

No not as of yet. If that ever does happen though, I honestly think it will be more exciting for me than it would be for that person. I would be the one going “OMG You know who I am?” and then proceed to take a picture of that person haha.

What is the best part about being ShinKaigan?

Honestly the best part is just being able to play with my viewers every day. It’s hard to stress how much I enjoy it because I’m normally a very shy person. So having so many loyal viewers come back to hang out with me has truly been a blessing.

Thanks again Shin for taking the time for this interview. Is there anything else you’d like to add, or shout-out you would like to make?

I want to take the time to thank my close personal friends.They have been very supportive along the way and helped me with the channel so much. Honestly I don’t think I would have been able to make it without them. So thank you YumaRanken, Lunistia, DartxIcexDragon, LaserCrabs, Nivmett, Dragonserp and IceBreakerz. You guys are honestly the best friends a person could ever ask for.

That concludes our first Player Spotlight. Follow Shin for all kinds of great Vainglory related videos, guides and streams. Links up top in the side bar.