[2022] Community Focus: Pijinnn

Happy Friday, Guardians! Welcome back to one of our favorite segments on Bungie.net, this week’s Community Focus!  
Community Focus posts have been one of my personal favorite things to read over the years. Just looking at what we have posted recently, we have interviewed content creators, cosplayers, artists, and people who are helping lead the change to make the gaming space safer and more accessible to more humans. And that is just in the past few weeks. It still is so wild to me that we have gamers from all walks of life, all over the world, who play this game we all love and adore. Please, don’t forget to keep tagging us in your suggestions!  
Alright, it’s time, here we go! Once upon a time, in a Community Focus happening now, we got to interview another streamer from the far away (to us in Seattle) land of Scotland!  
Welcome Guardian! We are so excited to have you chatting with us today! First off, tell us a little bit about yourself and your journey with video games.    

Hullo! My name is Pijinnn (pronounced like the bird: pigeon!), I use he/him pronouns, and I’m from the city of Glasgow, in Scotland.  

I got into gaming from a very early age thanks to my dad, who at the time let me play on his Sega Mega Drive console. Golden Axe and Sonic the Hedgehog were my favourites! Growing up, I was always engrossed in RPGs, platformers, and any kind of first-person shooter that was out.   

As for content creation, I started out streaming casually on Twitch in late 2019. I was already hooked on Destiny at this point, and as cheesy as it sounds, I wanted to show to my friends why I loved the game so much. I think I managed to convince a few friends to at least try it, haha! I started out with a PlayStation 4 set up with the official webcam, and had this little wheel-around desk, on which I used my college laptop to run the stream and read chat.  

In autumn 2020, I had barely gained any traction and took a forced break because I had to move to a location with subpar internet (I downloaded Shadowkeep at launch, using my mobile hotspot anchored in my room). With streaming out of the picture, I did the next best thing I could think of, I took to Twitter. Within a few months, I had begun meeting and interacting with a lot of Destiny community members, and so the wider picture of what had been missing those previous months finally took shape. I was hanging around Twitch chats while frequently discussing topics in my tweets, making new friends, and often getting play sessions together.  

In February 2021, I found a backup solution to my internet woes, so I relaunched my Twitch channel. I did a short test stream, and I was almost instantly blown away by the many people who came to watch, most of whom I’d only met in the previous months. In late March, I made the move to PC to stream and play Destiny 2. It was a game-changer, and I’ve been building my platform continuously since, be it within my Discord community (called the Coop), outrageous clips shared on YouTube, TikTok and Twitter, or pouring out my thoughts and feedback on forum pages and subreddits such as r/ DestinyTheGame. 

That sounds like quite the journey you had to go on to be able to curate your space on the internet. So, how did you find Destiny and when did you start playing?    

I picked up Destiny 1 completely by chance from my local game store one day. I bought it and another game from the preowned PS4 games section to try out. I got home, only to be hit with The Taken King and Year-2 update, which didn’t finish installing until the next day. I loaded up the Intro mission, and the moment I pulled the trigger button on the Khovostov, felt the controller vibrate, and those RPG/MMO-style damage numbers lit up on my screen, I knew that I’d found something special that ticked every box on my favourite gaming genres.  

As mainly a PlayStation gamer, who had experienced the joys of the Halo franchise prior, I was always looking for a platform equivalent. I got a message from an old friend, asking if I’d just picked the game up and they hopped in to help me complete the vanilla Destiny 1 Black Garden mission. When they landed in my team, my jaw hit the floor at how cool and powerful their character looked, and it pushed my power fantasy into overdrive. I almost immediately picked up The Taken King expansion and, as my game knowledge grew, I was able to take on some of my first raids which by that time fully sealed the deal with me playing Destiny.  

One of my favorite things in the world to hear is how other people find this game, and it always makes me smile when someone else hops in to help Kinderguardians on their way.  
You mentioned that you started this journey wanting to show people what you love about the game, is that still a similar focus?  

My focus really hasn’t deviated too much since I started out. I want to share my enjoyment of the game with others in the hopes they’ll find the same enjoyment I do, whilst being welcomed into an open-minded and safe community space.  

I’m very meticulous when it comes to chasing the perfect “5/5 god-roll” loot, and often spend big grinding sessions locking them down. I love the buildcrafting in Destiny 2 right now, so I’ll also be experimenting with builds or busting out my favourite combos. I’m also an avid raider and nothing comes close to the excitement of a new raid and day-one experience. You can find me tackling these as well, and I hope to one day place well on the big race! 

That’s super wholesome Pij, and it’s really neat to see that you work on all sorts of content, with a focus on the endgame.  
Alright, last week I got luck with this question, this week I already know but have to ask anyway, what is your main character and favorite weapon right now?  

I’m through and through a Hunter main, and right now, thanks to the Heartshadow Exotic Sword from the new Duality dungeon, I’m living my best stealth-ninja life (I think I counted five different ways to go invisible now!)  

Honestly, playing a stealth-ninja does seem like a really fun time!  
So, if someone was coming to your channel for the first time, what should they expect? 

Chaos. Utter. Chaos. However, when chat isn’t spamming sound effect redemptions (such as the Omnigul scream sound), we love getting together to game, have ongoing discussions about Destiny and beyond, all punctuated with some wholesome moments. My favourite way to put it is, “There’s never a dull moment.”  

Destiny 2 shines brightest when you play it alongside others. Take that chance and reach out to game with new people.  

And finally, where can people find you?  

I stream on Twitch Tuesday through Saturday and I share all my shenanigans on Twitter and TikTok.  

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Ta-da! That was so much fun! Please be sure to go follow Pijinnn on his socials and check out one of his streams if you get a chance, it really is a silly fun time in there.  

If you didn’t see last week, Liana and Ahnubyss had a super fun conversation you can enjoy here!  
Have a super awesome weekend Guardians, be kind out there.  
*high fives*  
Sam