Y'know when your house gets raided from the age of 11 upwards,
10 upwards
and you see police raiding your house.
It's not something that I want, right?
This is Blizzcon.
It is the biggest celebration in the world of games like
Overwatch, World of Warcraft and Hearthstone.
Blizzcon is the best event of the year.
We've got thirty thousand people that have come from all over the world.
But among those thousands is one player with a very unusual story.
What were your earliest memories?
I remember travelling a lot with mum.
We travelled around Australia about 3 or 4 times in a car.
All I remember is being in a Kingswood
and my game as a kid was...
the backseat had a hole in the floor
and I used to watch the road.
In hindsight, not that fun.
No.
But yeah I used to watch the road.
It was definitely not a normal upbringing.
I was always in a new school.
Every week it would be like, new primary school.
I sort of was getting old enough to realise what was going on.
Y'know you have police raiding your house and your getting strip searched at the age of 9 or 10
Did you understand what was going on?
I sort of realised a little bit later on in life
But at the time I was like: 'Why is this police lady taking my clothes off?' You know what I mean?
But, yeah, it was definitely weird.
My step dad was one of the biggest heroine dealers in Australia.
He'd been in and out of prison, at this point for about 20 years of his life.
But he must of been a great guy.
I guess.
Cause you said you felt protected by him
Yeah. He was a heroine dealer, definitely involved in bikie groups and stuff like that
but I never felt unsafe around him you know what I mean?
He may of...
They tried to seperate the whole heroine dealing side of things, heroine abuse
Except for when like my mum and step dad would be passed out
or something like that
then there's 20 thousand dollars just laying on the ground and I'm like 'Oh okay.'
My step-dad got a 10-year sentence for attempted murder or something like that or murder
So we left, on like a boat.
I just remember getting on a boat.
And we went to Western Australia.
So I guess he fled the charges.
You said that, you didn't really know what he did for money at the time
you just knew that he changed his clothes a lot.
Yeah, yeah, no that was, so when we were ...
When we were travelling, him and so we had another guy that travelled with us for a little while.
My step-dad and him would run into service stations
Run back out
really panting
and then they'd burn their clothes, or just get rid of them
and I was really confused, I was like:
'Seems like a weird process.'
To get gas.
Maybe they spilt it on their shirt
And a little bit later on I realised,
they were robbing the service stations
So yeah, I would just sit there with like a packet of beef jerky just
"Oh this is fun."
That's where things sort of got like...
bad, bad zone I guess.
What constitutes bad bad zone?
So, my mum and step-dad had never been to prison at the same time before.
When we got to Western Australia they got caught.
They didn't really have anywhere to put me.
And it was a really hard process because they put me into a kid's home
for kids that are waiting to go to juvenile prison.
It was like, two dudes would beat you up every day.
And they left me there for a year.
And then they found a foster care place for me to go very short.
And foster care was not a good thing either.
Why not?
I'll never forget in my life.
It was mothers day and I made a mothers day card
for this lady who was meant to be my foster mum.
And I'll never forget I walked up and went "here you go happy mothers day."
And she looked at it ripped it in half and said "I'm not your mum."
And I was like "Whoa, okay."
And that's I think where a lot of reality kicked in.
So at a certain point mum and step-dad do get out of prison.
And you end up settling in Sydney.
And you're like great, finally this is gonna work.
Except it doesn't happen like that does it.
No, not at all.
We'd been there for about a week or two.
And I remember I come home, and they weren't home
and I was like, "It'll be fine they'll be home later."
And I went to school the next day same process, make lunch
get ready, go to school.
Came home, no one's home
And I was like, "Hmm, interesting."
So I kept doing it and eventually I came home and the locks were changed.
So I thought, there are two processes I can do here
I can one, go to the government.
Which is a little bit of a scary thing for me because obviously I'm scared that
the same process they'll do
they'll throw me in a home again or make me a ward of the state.
So I thought "I'll go and get a job."
So I just went to restaurants
paid I think about $3.75 an hour.
As a first year chef apprentice back then.
Long story short what I would do is...
wash my school uniform at work
and wash my work uniform at school
And pretty much after I'd finish work I'd go sleep in a park or something near school
effectively homeless, just live in a park near the school
and if kids from school saw me with a backpack and my skateboard and that's pretty all I had they'd be like
"what the hell are you doing here?"
Man I was at the craziest party.
You wouldn't believe it, then I got too drunk didn't want to go home.
So they were like "classic Ryan."
So I tried to ride that train out for as long as I could.
Do you reckon you convinced them?
No.
So we're at the E sports section for World of Warcraft
which is the game that I play.
We've got the E sport gear here, which is electronic sports.
I think.
I've been playing games for year I don't know.
I think it's that.
So when does gaming come into that?
Cause you probably need a home to plug in the console.
Yeah, but it was never console. No consoles.
It was always PCs.
So there used to be a game called Diablo 2.
And Diablo 2 had a trade market.
And eventually I remember being at the internet cafe
and one of our friends Johnny was like, hey
"Does anyone have this item?"
And everyone was like "Nah I don't have it."
And he was like, "Man I'd pay 50 bucks for that item."
And in my mind I thought "Would you really pay 50 bucks for that item?"
And I became very good at buy and selling what people wanted.
So there was a girl, and she was a Canadian girl
she said "move to Canada with me and I'll pay for your flights and everything."
I was working in Canada and I was doing security work, in Canada.
while I was there because I was working as a bouncer for a long time before I left.
I was working in this place called Scotia square.
Which was like the ghetto of Halifax in Canada.
Very very bad area, we had shootings and stabbings every couple of weeks.
I got really hurt
while I was working security.
So there was a guy Sam who owned a little shop
in the area, a old Korean guy.
When I got hurt he said "Do the video game stuff, you're too funny to work."
And then he gave me $5000 when I got hurt
and said "Yo try that and if it doesn't work come back to security."
So that was sort of my starting platform was Sam.
He was definitely like a old Korean angel.
What you see there is what you see on screen.
Daily ritual, wake up, shower, brush my teeth.
Pretty much turn the stream on.
I tend to try and ride my motorbike a little bit as well.
Need sunlight.
Yeah exactly, so they say.
For the record we opened those blinds, they were not open when we got here.
It's just a game that I love playing, I love the community.
I'm Chinglish and you guys are team Pandamonium.
My dream job, way before I started streaming was actually to be a youth worker.
It's something that I always wanted to do.
"Chinglish is awesome, watch his stream"
For me it was definitely about having that sort of thing for other people.
Like I try and stream every Christmas day.
I try to stream on the special days throughout the year
because I've been at a place in my life before where I've had to be...
by myself on Christmas.
And it's not necessarily a fun thing to do.
And so I try and stream on those days just so people
if they don't have anyone to hang out with they can at least turn the stream on and be like
"Hey, Ryan's there." So.
There's a guy that has the logo tattooed on him and he said that both his parents passed away.
And he got the logo tattooed on him because when he was really really depressed
he found the stream and it really helped him with the depression.
So...
stuff like that is the biggest reason why I stream.
As you think back on that time
travelling around the country and the number of times you were sort of, abandoned.
Is the predominant feeling anger?
I don't necessarily have anger
it's more sort of, this made me who I am.
So necessarily wouldn't change
-of course I would've loved to have the...
9 to 5 working family.
Where they come home, and I'm home after school and my lunch is made for the next day
but that's not what happened.
You know what I mean? So me moving forward in life
if I look back at it as anger that doesn't do any good for anyone.
Ryan, you're an absolute pleasure to talk to.
Thank you.