Galasrinie – Australian Speedrunner of Action, Hack'n'Slash, & Adventure Games

Tell us your history with video games

This is something hard in particular to remember, but my first memories that I can recall are of watching my uncle and sister play Oddworld: Abe’s Oddysee & Tomb Raider on the Playstation 1. Even though I was little and only watched them play, it was a way that we bonded together. Watching them play games made me happy. I don’t play with them now, as I’m the only one in my household who plays games years later.

In my early youth, I had a precious childhood friend as well who would play games with me and share with me the games she loved. Games such as Animal Crossing, Mario Kart, RPGs. Thinking back on her, I treasure those memories a lot as it shaped me with feelings of acceptance with my love for video games. Having close friends of similar interests makes me feel a part of a ‘tribe’ so to say. A sense of belonging.

Video games and streaming them makes me happy, and sharing that passion with others like me is very important to me when it’s the only way for me to connect with players as I am the only gamer in my house. It makes me maintain that feeling of having a tribe of people alike, and it holds a big place in my heart.

My username ‘Galasrinie’ is from the Elvish Name ‘Galasriniel’ but I shortened the L. I like fantasy a lot, so I wanted a username of some sort of fantasy language or meaning. The name ‘Galasriniel’ when translated means ‘Lauren’ which is my name IRL.

What’s your backstory and how did you get into streaming?

I started streaming over 32 months ago. It was something I just wanted to try out for fun, and my motivation was to attempt to get through the games in my forever growing backlog. I thought streaming them would help motivate me to get through them, so I remember the first game I streamed was VA-11 Hall-A: Cyberpunk Bartender and Bayonetta 1.

I started streaming in 480p with a 1000bitrate, because I live in Australia and I had horrible internet back then. However, even with this low quality I was able to get up to an average of 50 viewers with streaming like that. (Don’t let bad internet hold you back!!) I streamed with that internet for two years.

When I started, I believed streaming could help me with my confidence and my speaking skills. I was a very internal person, and had troubles expressing myself especially with emotions of sadness or anger. I really wanted to become better at expressing myself, though. I can say now since then that I am a lot more confident with myself and I can express myself a lot better, though there have been ups and down dealing with my ongoing battles with anxiety.

My social skills have improved a lot, from how social and accessible streaming is to be apart of. I have made many nice friends, had negative experiences as well, and just learnt so much from the interactions I’ve had with others through streaming. I don’t feel like I need to hide myself and the things that I love. I can be passionate, goofy, laugh, cry, and express myself without fear. It’s not that scary as it used to be!

My stream has changed a lot over the course of time, as now for the two years or so rather than first playthroughs I mainly focus on speedrunning content.

Tell us about your channel and community

I can say that my community has tastes similar to mine. We are very welcoming, and we like to have a good laugh and goof around. We like to talk about all sorts of different games and have discussions on what is happening around the world, gaming news, as well as mental health topics. The people at my stream are very comforting and encouraging. I’m not sure if I would classify my stream as ‘wholesome’ as I do love a good lewd joke or two, but I can indeed say that it is comfy and down to earth. I can say that my stream makes me feel human when there is chaos going on in my life or in my head. I don’t have to be someone else or put on a performance. That’s not what my stream personally means to me. It’s me.

My stream revolves heavily around speedrunning now and a love for action, hack’n’slash and adventure games. I am big on personal improvement and fulfillment, so I often stream my practice and learning of the games that I speedrun. I like to play cozy music while I stream, such as soft video game soundtracks with rain effects or comforting sounds. I’ve been told a few times because of this along with the tone of my voice, that I am good to have in the background or while sleeping.

I also played the Dark Souls series for a while in the past, so there are friends in my community from the Dark Souls Speedrunning part of twitch. Some of my favorite games right now are Bayonetta, Ninja Gaiden Black, Nioh, God Hand and Devil May Cry 3. I am heavily in love with fast paced action titles and play them offline as well.

Tell us about your brand and how you’ve been able to obtain success

My stream persona is myself, represented by an elf with brown hair. I have her as my emotes, my profile picture and I have her as a vtuber model as a point redemption at my stream. I really loved elves, so I wanted something like that to represent my stream. Originally in the beginning she had blonde hair, but I changed her to have brown hair just from change of taste.

Growing my channel has had its ups and down. It has not been linear at all. I remember at times focusing on it so hard my blood vessels would be bursting and other times not really caring at all about growth. There have been a lot of times like that. In the end, I just came to a conclusion that I don’t need to really change who I am to fit in with something else, or do what someone else did, because being like that doesn’t make me happy and it often doesn’t make you grow either. It was more about giving myself to show what I am, and developing as a person and my tastes. The things that I love and the things I want to create as content that make me happy. I just need to find the people who are similar to me, who love the similar things I do or who have similar emotions to mine.

I streamed Bayonetta Speedrunning for about a year with about an average of 20-40 viewers after changing from my old speed game which was Dark Souls 2. I participated in GDQ Frame Fatales near the end of that year, presenting the Bayonetta Speedrun. After that event, a lot of people who loved bayonetta came to my stream and I had a booming 120 viewers for a while. I wasn’t focusing too much on numbers as that wasn’t my main motivation for participating, but I was overjoyed by people loving the same things that I do! I had more people to talk about the games I loved and speedrunning to now. So I think putting yourself out there in places where you can get to show yourself, your talents, who you are and what you love is important. You cannot please everyone, but there will be people who will see you and vibe with you. Streaming is a lot about community and reaching out for opportunities and talking with other people.

Find communities or places where you can share and express your passions, because then you will find there are people who are just like you too! For speedrunning, participating in speedrun marathons big or small is amazing for that. Interacting with other runners and visiting their streams is awesome, as well as doing races together with fellow runners. You get to meet so many talented and lovely people who will express their love for their games to you as well. People often gravitate to someone who is genuine and hard working with what they do.

How do you balance streaming and life?

Right now with Covid-19 and being unemployed, my day of streaming is waking up at around 11am, having breakfast, picking out a nice top to wear, doing my lipstick, picking out a necklace to wear, and going live around 2-3pm in the afternoon and then streaming for about 5-6 hours or longer depending on how I am. I take a break every 3 hours or so to stretch my legs and viewers appreciate breaks too so they can stretch as well and get water. After stream, I have something to eat, check out social media a bit and then lay down and get ready for sleep.  If my anxiety is kicking my ass I might stream again late into the night since some days I just want some extra company. Something I remember someone once telling me, is that there are a lot of lonely people on Twitch who just want someone to spend time with, and I do agree with that. Viewers and Streamers alike.

My days off often involve a good walk to the park, cleaning my set up, grocery shopping, maybe a bit of cooking, listening to music. I often check social media a lot more on my days off just to see what’s happening with other streamers. I post in my Discord as well to chit chat with some of my viewers, might do a Voice Call as well. I do highlights of my speedruns on Twitch and upload them to my YouTube, as well as other highlights such as first playthroughs that I want to keep. The export feature on Twitch is really good for taking it straight from twitch to YouTube! So I like to use that a lot, even for clips of boss fights that I was proud of. I also make little simple thumbnails for the videos.

I’m not sure how long I will stream for, but it is something that brings me a lot of enjoyment. If I have to work full-time in the future streaming will probably get a lot less attention but it still would remain something I love, even if it wasn’t me who was streaming consistently.

Tell us what tools you use for your stream

For my Stream, I use OBS Studio with StreamElements. I originally used StreamLabs OBS but it ended up not being to my preference. I didn’t like having everything in one app. I liked it split up in two, so on the website I can edit more and then bring it into OBS as captures. I like using the StreamElements website for all my alerts and overlays. I like to keep my stream overlay very simple and clean now. I just have my chat in the upper corner of my stream, my webcam, my speedrun timer and then a box for alerts whenever they come. I don’t like too much clutter on my overlay or borders and I think having it as simple and neat as possible is the best.

I have StreamElements set up also for donations, but I also set up a Ko-Fi for donations that are more private if people don’t want a big alert on my stream. I have StreamElements in my chat as a bot with a few helpful commands viewers can use for information such as about a stream or what marathons I am going to be in. I also use BTTV and FrankerfaceZ extensions for my browser and stream.

My emotes are commissioned artworks. When picking out how to have my emotes, I wanted them to be as usable for viewers as possible when picking out a design. I used to have very intricate and varied emotes with all different characters, but now they are a lot simpler with simple expressions (love, sad, laugh) and have a singular themed character. Since then I noticed people have been using my emotes a lot more.

What are your top 3 streaming tools? 

Hmm. I guess my top one would be having a decent microphone. Doesn’t need to be expensive. I use a cheap headset mic. It is a Sades 902 7.1.  I don’t think a webcam is as important as audio, since I didn’t use webcam for a very long time. Having a good quality microphone audio when using mic really helps. I’ve had a lot of compliments on my microphone audio being good and it brings people back to see me.

My second one would probably be a double monitor. Having 1 monitor for the game and the other for OBS and the chat pop out is a life changer. For a long while I had an 18 inch second monitor but it helped so much with streaming set up even if it was a bit tiny. I have streamed with just 1 monitor before, having the game in 720p and then the chat on the side, but having double monitors is very comfy and helps a lot.

My third tool would be water, or snacks to nibble on while streaming. You can get burnt out so easily when you are low on fuel. Might think that sitting down doesn’t cost much energy but your brain is working hard while streaming! And it’s easy to forget to hydrate so a nice big water bottle is great to have as a tool available.

What advice would you give to small channels trying to reach Partner?

Don’t be too hard on yourself, learn as you go, learn about yourself as you go, make friends as you keep going. Don’t forget to pat yourself on the back for the things you accomplish, take breaks if you need them and listen to what makes you happy and unhappy. Find people who are like you, and that you like also.

If you could change one thing about Twitch, what would it be?

This is an interesting question. There are a few things I would have changed, but if I could pick only one it would be more transparency and consistency for twitch bans and punishments. Having the guidelines more precise.

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