Happy Friday, Guardians! Welcome back to one of our favorite segments on Bungie.net, this week’s Community Focus! This week we are chatting with a content creator who has a pretty rad day job, Kujay!
Hi Kujay! Thank you for taking the time to chat with us! So, let’s get started with a little background. Who are you, what are your pronouns, and where are you from?
Hello, my name is Kujay (he/him). I’m an aircraft designer by day and a Destiny content creator by nightfall! I grew up in a small town in eastern Kansas before eventually moving out to Southern California after college.
Wait, aircraft designer? Yeah, we are going to have to touch on that in a moment. But first, what got you into gaming and content creation?
I got into gaming at a very young age, when I was just four years old. I had just started going to daycare, and there was a Super Nintendo that all the kids could play with. The first game I ever played was Yoshi’s Island (still an amazing game to this day!), and good lord, I was hooked immediately! Fast forward about 20 years, and after moving to SoCal, I found myself with a LOT more free time than I was accustomed to during school (aerospace engineering coursework is no joke!). Then, shortly after the launch of Rise of Iron, a friend of mine that was streaming started poking me about trying out streaming for myself. After pushing him off for a few months, I eventually gave in and bought a PS4 webcam. I found out that streaming is a ton of fun (and something I’m really good at), so much so that I’ve been doing it for nearly six years now!
That sounds like my kind of daycare. 😊 Alright, big question here — how in the world do you balance both a full-time job and content creation?
Over the years it has been difficult to balance my professional career with the content creation side of my life. In the early years, I used to stream a LOT more, getting in streams every Friday through Monday (usually involving lots of Trials of Osiris assistance!). However, as the years went by and the responsibilities for my day job started mounting, I began to scale back the amount of content I was pushing out. I’ve started focusing more on YouTube in the past two years, as it’s something that I can do “piecemeal,” as opposed to having the camera rolling for a live stream. And on the Twitch side of the house, I’m mostly a “weekend warrior” now, with streams only on Saturdays and Sundays. It’s been tough to juggle the two sides of my life, but also IMMENSELY rewarding. How many people get to design airplanes during the week, and then come home to a successful stream and YouTube channel on the weekend? It’s something that I don’t take for granted!
Gosh, that just sounds like such a wild ride, and you seem to have done such a great job at maintaining it. So, you mentioned Yoshi’s Island, but how did you find Destiny?
So, interestingly enough, I had actually taken quite a long break from gaming when Destiny came calling. After binging the hell out of Skyrim my senior year of high school, I didn’t game much at all during my freshman or sophomore years of college. However, I got pulled back in by the PS4 remaster of The Last of Us (AMAZING game btw!), which I never got the chance to play when it originally launched. And then, as if by “destiny” (wink wink), a few days after finishing up The Last of UsI got an email from Sony inviting me to play the upcoming Destiny alpha. I was always more of a Call of Duty kid growing up, but many of my childhood friends were MASSIVE halo fans. When I asked them about Bungie’s next project with Destinyall of them encouraged me to try it, describing the game as a mashup of Call of Duty, haloand “Space Skyrim” I decided to try out the alpha shortly thereafter, and I was instantly hooked. The gunplay was far and away the best I had ever experienced. And now, over eight years later, I’m still as helplessly addicted to Destiny as I was the first time I ever landed in the Cosmodrome.
A day one player, love to see it! What type of content do you like to focus on when you’re streaming or making videos?
I like to focus on endgame content within Destiny, with a focus more so on the PvP side, be it Trials of Osiris or Iron Banner. I also love GM Nightfalls and raids, and I especially savor day one raid experiences with my group!
That is super awesome! Endgame content can be so challenging, so having content creators like yourself to help teach and shepherd others is really cool to see. For those newer players, what is something you wish you knew before starting, or at least in the beginning of, your Destiny travel?
Honestly, I wish that someone had told me just how thoroughly I was going to be absorbed into the Destiny universe and the wider Bungie community. How am I still playing the same game after eight years?! Hahaha, just kidding =). But in all seriousness, I wish I knew how important it was to find a solid group of people to play Destiny with. I played solo for a decent chunk of time during vanilla D1 before finding my way to LFG (Looking for Group) websites. If I hadn’t been captured by the magic of OG Vault of Glass, there’s a good chance I may have stopped playing Destiny during those early days. The game is immensely more fun to play when you have friends to jump into harder content with and bounce builds and ideas off of. Because of this, I am incredibly excited for Guardian Ranks and in-game Fireteam Finder coming to Destiny 2 next years. I think those will serve as catalysts for thousands of players to start forming friend groups of their own and unlocking the true “endgame” of Destiny.
Heck yeah! With endgame content being your focus, do you have any advice for players looking to improve their skills as a player?
If you’re someone who wants to dive deeper into the endgame experiences in Destiny and improve your skills, the absolute best thing you can do is reach out to other players and start building a friend group that you can play Destiny with. While Destiny can be played solo, the game’s full potential is realized when you have an established group of people that you can lean on, both in casual PvE environments and deep in the trenches of Trials. Teamwork really makes the dream work, and you’ll become a better player when collaborating with other like-minded players over time.
Alright, it’s time to ask, what is your main character and favorite subclass?
I’ll probably draw a lot of ire here, but Hunter is my main character, and I have been hopelessly addicted to Stompees for the better part of five years now. Going all the way back to Modern Warfare 2, my favorite way to play FPS games has always been about speed, speed, and more speed! To that end, I am absolutely IN LOVE with Arc 3.0 Hunter. The Speed Booster is just *chef’s kiss* and Gathering Storm might just be the coolest Super in the game now. I used to main Arcstrider from Seasons 2 through 8, so coming home to my old baby with Arc 3.0 has been amazing!
Oh yes, going fast in video games is always fun! 😊 What kind of vibe does your channel maintain?
My channel tends to walk the line between both entertaining AND educational. In one moment, we’ll dive deep into the lore of Destiny’s universe and start speculating about future stories to come. Then in the next, something completely ridiculous will happen within a Crucible match (at the expense of my opponent OR myself, both happen often!). We’ll often talk about builds or the state of the game as a whole, all while keeping things pretty light-hearted with lots of laughs along the way. Just like the balance between my work life and content creation, my channel thrives in its duality between education and entertainment.
Entertaining and educational while keeping it light-hearted? Sounds like my kind of place!
Alright, it’s about time to wrap up our interview, but I did want to ask because you have been really inspirational so far in our conversation. What is something you want to make sure every New Light knows as they join the Guardian ranks?
With the current New Light experience, it can feel overwhelming once you wrap up your introduction in the Cosmodrome. You’re summoned to the Towe, and you’re presented with quest after quest after quest. My advice would be to choose just ONE of those quests and commit to it alone. By the time you finish up that first quest, there’s a great chance you’ll have gotten to try some new weapons, increased your Power a bit, and in general, have gotten a feel for the gameplay loop of Destiny. And once most people get that far, the gameplay alone is usually enough to get them hooked!
For more specific tips, 1000% start using Destiny Item Manager for a massively improved inventory experience. That, and make sure to check in with Ada-1 every day for those sweet, sweet combat mods!
And finally, where can people find you?
I stream over on Twitch every Saturday and Sunday morning, with the occasional video upload over on YouTube. I am also very active over in the land of twitterwith plenty of hot takes and shenanigans to keep just about anyone entertained!
Stay crafty, Guardians!
Sam
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