Gaming has yet to be a mainstay in the Malaysian society. The stigma of ‘gaming is a waste of time’ is still a thing. Though gaming has its few success stories, like how Fnatic’s Dota 2 team, which at the time had three Malaysian players, finished 4th in The International 2016 bringing home RM5,600,000+. But in general, gamers are of the minority here and still plagued with such stigma.
Yet it has not deterred our gamer of the week’s passion to prove otherwise. Meet H.Haunters. Otherwise known as Nugget_Senpai, Haunters had stumbled on his life due to gaming, but managed to make it not a detriment and a source of his failure, but opportunities for success.
Haunters is a streamer on Twitch where he plays various games including God Eater 2, League Of Legends, Overwatch and even Left 4 Dead 2 level mods. Games with a bit of grinding is what he prefers alongside hack & slash games. “I am really looking forward to play NieR:Automata which is a JRPG and a hack & slash,” said Haunters. He’s also pumped for the Final Fantasy VII remake and Kingdom Hearts 3.
At the age of 16 is when Haunters started gaming, at a time when laptops with 1GB RAM is standard. He played RTS games like Warcraft, Starcraft and Command & Conquer. “What a time to be alive,” Haunters said. And what a time indeed, but as video killed the radio star, MOBA killed the RTS star: RTS is pretty niche nowadays. He was later convinced by friends to try out the MOBA League Of Legends, but that meagre 1GB RAM laptop can’t cope with it. So he bought a dekstop.
“I broke my life record: With a RM200 budget I got a full desktop. Legit i5 3.2GHz with AMD 4500 and 4GB DDR3 RAM. It was broken when it reached my hand but, few tweaks and cleaning process, the baby running well and still kicking now.”
Aside from gaming, he also has talents on illustrating. All the artwork you see here is all his own work. ” I learned them by myself by watching YouTube videos and practiced them,” said Haunters. “At first I was not interested at all, but my classmate was giving me a huge push to start giving me support”.
It was not easy learning by your own, Haunters admitted. “For a year, I learned to make smooth lineart with black ball pen, then later in the year, I tried to learn colouring traditionally but I gave up because it’s way too hard”. He then picked up digital drawing courtesy of a friend lending him a pen tablet, which he loved doing. And even that has its fair of challenges, like getting the hang of Adobe Illustrator. Illustrator was a bit daunting, so he resorted to MS Paint for a while before giving it a shot again as Paint lack a lot of features.
As alluded beforehand, Haunters faced a rough spot in life as his studies were affected from his gaming habits. ” I got addicted to games too much which affected my studies result in Form 4 and SPM.” Uncontrolled gaming habits will tend to do this, and Haunters gets it. His parents were totally against him keep on playing games, but he managed to win back his parent’s trust.
How did he did it? The first thing was the e-sports route. “I got very good at one game (back then was League of Legends) and entered an online tournament and won 3rd place thus receiving the reward money (which was) in dollars,” said Haunters. He also takes commissions for his drawings. ” I sell my drawings by opening up a commission and take tips by teaching people how to draw and colour in the most basic and easiest way.” He also have stints at working part-time jobs during weekends.
All the money he earned himself made his parents realising how financially independent Haunters is compared to his siblings. “As a result, today, my parents won’t question me of what ever I do in front of my PC except they keep saying ‘Please keep the electricity bill at minimal’. To cooperate with this statement, I play games or illustrate not more, not less than 6 hours a day.”
As mentioned by one of our previous gamer of the week, Darren “Zero Originality” Goh, discipline is key! Getting proper time management is the best way to enjoy gaming and avoid succumbing to addiction. (Coincidentally, Zero is currently rocking an illustration made by Haunters for his default pictures)
For the haters saying gaming is a waste of time, Haunters has a strong opinion against this.
“If I were to say gaming is a waste of time, then, same as the studying system here (in Malaysia). ” Haunters mentioned that the only subject that benefited him directly is Maths, with the rest being just general knowledge, at least to him. “So, what I am saying is now, certain people can benefit more in their gaming hour session and overall it depends on us for what are we aiming for.”
Given he bounced back from gaming addiction and earned more success from his gaming and art endeavours, he has a justified point here. Let’s not belittle others’ passion that we may not understand fully, that might be their path to success.
Aside from that, Haunters is very active over at Fundeavour, the website for aspiring streamers, e-sports gamers and content creators. He was recently honoured by receiving the Most Helpful Member award due to his active participation over there, sharing streaming tips and even jumping in to watch various streamers over there.
As a streamer, Haunters cite Internet connectivity as “the only problem for a gamer” (in all caps lock no less). “Some people even paid more than we could expect but they never could get the touch of a smooth internet connections. Solutions are way out of the border unless you have cash to chip in more,” he said.
The package offers for proper and stable Internet in Malaysia still has a long way to go before it will be enough for many gamers out here, unfortunately.
So what’s next for Haunters? Currently he has another three years of study ahead of him. He will still regularly stream sometimes to relax, and will consider streaming and other gaming related activities as a part-time job in the future.
You can find Haunters a.k.a. Nugget_Senpai over on Fundeavour and Twitch here.
Disclosure: H.Haunters (Nugget_Senpai) has recently joined the GamerMalaya crew as English writer.
This feature was written as part of a partnership with Fundeavour, a site that helps aspiring gamers around the world to get a head start on beginning their journey as content creators, streamers and eSports players. Want to be featured and share your stories with over 50,000 readers? Check out more info here or sign up with Fundeavour.com!