Interview with a Pioneer of Gaming: FaZe Rain

FaZe Rain. If you watch Call of Duty ever on youtube when it comes to sniping, you know the name. From the flashy play style to the crazy clips, FaZe Rain is one of the most polarizing figures in FaZe Clan’s history. He is a pillar of the Call of Duty scene. In that, the Game Haus actually got a chance to talk to that pillar in an interview with a pioneer of gaming: FaZe Rain. 

Why the name “Rain”?

“My name before Rain was React. I met a dude by the name of KSI, which was actually a team. He ended up stealing the name for himself as he outgrew the team. I met a guy on the team named Rainbows and I got over my name in React. He just told me to make it Rain, which is short for Rainbows and I said ‘bet’.”

What made you so invested in wanting to join FaZe?

“My reasons are different compared to a lot of other people’s reasons. I came up where I was already recording. I discovered FaZe which was doing what I was already doing. Which was making clips and making montages at the time. I felt a sense of relativity between myself and FaZe. There was nothing like FaZe at the time. I just felt this gravitational pull towards the team. I actually knew a guy on the team that said he was making $40 a video. So, you know what I mean, I had to make some money so I could prove to my mom I could do this.”

Why did you want to join FaZe and nobody else?

FaZe was the only team I really cared about. There were a bunch of other teams I was a part of. I was just hopping around. I didn’t really care for those teams. At the time, it was just natural, it was organic to me what FaZe was doing. It was the only team that I felt I could build a brand for myself and make this a job and not just a hobby. It was one of the biggest reasons why I wanted FaZe to be a reality for me. 

What made you want to play Call of Duty? 

It’s crazy. I am actually a Halo fanboy and was so much about Halo 3. As a kid, I used to talk s**t to everyone who would play Call of Duty and that it takes no skill to do that. I was super into Halo. I do not know how I started playing Call of Duty. It must have been my friends that made me play. When Modern Warfare 2 came out, they were all playing it. That’s when I fell in love with that and never really went back to Halo. 

What made you want to trickshot?

“I was already doing it. Even in Halo, I was always trying to no-scope people. I was always trying to get clips. It was something I was already, naturally doing. It started to be a big thing. People started doing it, which made me want to start doing it. I was one of those people that made gameplays with regular guns, but I was always just a sniper. I really only cared about the sniper. It was something that I thought was cool in the game. It was fun for me, it was something I naturally gravitated to.”

How important is growing an audience on all platforms? Why do you think people struggle to do that?

“I think people struggle with it because the kind of content that they make might be one-sided to a certain platform. It is extremely important to be well spread across social media. It’s extremely important because you are pushing yourself on every single social media. You are moving traffic which will create a sort of ecosystem.”

It was recently announced that Musician/Gamer Kaysan be brought on as the first-ever Hybrid FaZe member as he is both a part of the music and gaming industries respectively, I also came to the understanding that you yourself played a huge part in bringing him into being a member. What did you see in Kaysan? Why is it so important to have a person like Kaysan in FaZe?

“What I think is the coolest thing about Kaysan is that he always wanted to move into music. The advantage of going for someone like Kaysan is that we have no imitation of who we can work with now. We can work with all the artists we want to work with, without having them sign with FaZe and do cool projects with artists and producers and do something cool with them through Kaysan.”

Snoop Dogg just joined FaZe, so as a brand, how important do you believe it is to grow and expand your reach by going into music and other things rather than gaming?

“I mostly care about it because it’s super organic. We always had music as a huge part of our brand. So I find it more organic as it is important for availability purposes. I don’t like doing things for FaZe that are just for scale-ability purposes. It is always about the fact that everyone cares about it, which is when the FaZe magic happens. It’s when we all care about something.”

What separates you from other figures in esports?

“I have always kept it real with people, always been super authentic with my fanbase, and never did any shady things. Kept it real with everybody and tried to be myself. People have some sort of relatability to that and they can also trust me to a certain extent.”

Why do you think people are so invested in becoming a FaZe member?

“It is for people to feel like they belong, to be a part of some community. I feel like there are a lot of people out there that are gamers or content creators that don’t feel that relatability to the world. It is something that I always found. I just felt like I wanted to join a group of like-minded people. I feel like that would be a reason why there is a huge interest as to why people want to be in FaZe.”

How do you incorporate the FaZe lifestyle into your life?

“To me, I just want to be true to myself no matter what it is that I do.” 

How do you think the FaZe lifestyle has affected your present and future? 

“It has taught me everything. It has taught me that there’s nothing that you can’t achieve in this world. With gaming in general, it wasn’t even a thought that this could be a thing. I never have an idea of something that cannot be attained. Just because it hasn’t been attained already, doesn’t mean it can’t be. This has given me a lifetime of confidence for whatever I want to do.”

After the interview, one thing was for certain. You could tell how much hard work Rain put into his career. After all the hardships, you could see why he is an inspiration to so many. That being said, you can definitely see why he is still is one of the most important pioneers in gaming and in FaZe clan’s history. 

Featured Image Courtesy of FaZe Rain

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