Rakin: Chasing that feeling

CHASING THAT FEELING

“When you feel what I did that day, you always try to get that feeling again.”

Four years ago, the Brazilian League of Legends Championship (CBLoL) hosted in its studios the first playoff match of the 1st Split, between CNB and ProGaming. The Bo5 series was on fire all the way to the last game – and we know that a very tight match often comes down to the details. When ProGaming had it all in their hands, the game changer was Rafael “Rakin” Knittel: The then-mid-laner pulled off a pentakill with his Champion Azir and gave CNB the comeback win. The crowd went crazy.

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[Pentakill do Rakin! – YouTube]

It’s difficult for him to put into words the feeling he had during this moment, which is still considered historic in CBLoL. Understandable – in a competitive scenario, sports or esports, emotions are high, the pressure is big, the adrenaline comes into play. As fans, we get the thrill. But it’s not the same.

“It was the only time in my life that I looked at something and I could only see what was in front of me. I couldn’t think of anything else. [I was] looking at that monitor while I was playing, and when it was over, the rest of the day felt like I was dreaming.”

Nowadays, Rakin is no longer a pro; he has fully dedicated himself to his career as a streamer and content creator (don’t call him an influencer – he doesn’t like the word). He still plays during his live streams, but with different responsibilities. And, somehow, he keeps searching for that feeling.

FROM THE BEGINNING

Born in the northeast of Brazil, in Salvador, Bahia (the same city as VALORANT’s agent Raze), from an early age Rakin had very different experiences from those an “average” Brazilian usually has. He studied, for example, in a school where almost all subjects were taught in English. “I learned to speak English before Portuguese,” he says. He had the opportunity to do two years of high school in Switzerland, and then moved to the United States to attend college.

So, where do games come into his upbringing?

“In Brazil I didn’t study. I would come home and not study at all. I spent the whole day playing. My parents were very strict, so they said I needed to study, and I would play in secret. […] I played many games at that time, like Ragnarok, Tibia, Counter-Strike 1.5, but before going to Switzerland I was very focused on Heroes of Newerth, a MOBA. I played with a semi-professional team called wGi. We played championships, we streamed, we studied the game.”

“In Switzerland I went to a school that didn’t have peer-to-peer internet access. […] I went there basically to stop playing, since I was getting low grades because I wasn’t concentrating on my studies and was playing all day long.”

The strategy may have worked, helped by the fact that the esports scene was nowhere near the behemoth it is today. However, that competitive seed was already planted. But it was in another country that it grew.

From Switzerland, Rakin went to the United States with much better grades than he had in Brazil and focused on going to college. This time, he wasn’t so directionless in his studies. He had a clear goal – and a tough one at that: medicine.

“I wanted to work in preventive medicine, because my family had health problems. My grandmother had recently died of pancreatic cancer, and that was what triggered this idea. With preventive medicine you do a genetic analysis of the person, find out the predisposition to diseases and do all the pre-disease treatment.”

He doesn’t quite state it explicitly, but when talking to Rakin, you can see that much of what he has done and still does is tied to a wish to give back to his family and the opportunities they have provided him. His gratefulness shows. It’s an ongoing goal, although it wasn’t achieved through medicine.

“I started playing LoL just before I went to California. I took the IB (International Baccalaureate) course, which consisted of studying three standard-level subjects and three higher-level ones. I ended up taking four high-level subjects and two standard-level ones, which doesn’t help at all with admission to college and is just more work.

“In IB, you have a period of a month and a half between the end of school and the beginning of the tests. Since I had already studied for the tests, I thought, ‘I’ll play LoL.’ I found a way to download a VPN at school to unblock games and I played it on my notebook, using the trackpad, no mouse. My hand was all twisted and it hurt too much to play, but it was really cool.”

In the United States, Rakin did two years of pre-med at UCLA, the University of California. There, he juggled his studies with League of Legends, competing in the collegiate scene and making his first professional connections by playing for teams like CLG Black and Cerberus.

He ended up not finishing college. It would be pretty obvious to assume that Rakin simply chose to pursue his hobby exclusively and leave a more traditional professional career behind. That may be so, but that’s not all.

“My family started to get into a tough financial situation, so we decided that I would stay away for a year, work with my family, wait for the dollar to drop, and then see what would happen. Instead of working with the family, I said, ‘Can I try to play [LoL] professionally?'”

Dad? “‘No way.'”

Mom? “‘Let him, let’s give him a sabbatical year to see what he can do.'”

EXPANDING HIS HORIZONS

A professional career in any competitive environment is filled with expectations. You have to deliver results, perform well in games, and above all – win. High-performance athletes always give something up. Even today, in a time when we have a global scene more structured than ever, esports is an uncertain path. After five years dedicated to competitive League of Legends, with experiences in American and Brazilian teams, such as Brave, CNB and paiN, Rakin decided to put his focus solely on streaming. He doesn’t plan to return to play professionally – although he briefly thought about it in the early stages of VALORANT.

“It’s a very big risk and I don’t want to take it at almost 28 years old. When you put pressure on a mineral, sometimes it turns to diamond. Sometimes the mineral breaks. 90% of the time, it breaks.

“I had wanted to try with VALORANT, but […] I was already much more of a homebody than before and wanted to be more settled, work on projects, stream, get in touch with the public, and find something beyond the competition.”

Becoming a VALORANT pro didn’t happen but he found a way to be involved in two ways: streaming the beta version of the game, and with the Rakin Cup (Copa Rakin), a championship which is already in its seventh edition, has a partnership with Riot Games in the off-season, and offers a prize of 20,000 reais. The FPS game was very important to strengthen his content creation in streams, much because the game was new – so Rakin and his community were discovering something new, learning to play together, and strengthening their bonds.

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“When I was dropping VALORANT keys was the time when I had the highest average views of my life. I would be on live stream and get 45, 50,000 views every day. It was the month I got the most subs, I was up to 12,000 on Twitch. It was crazy how much [VALORANT] helped the channel.”

Like many streamers, Rakin looks to broaden the content of his streams. He could very well play only League of Legends, for example – he was already doing this actively when he was hired by paiN in 2017, when he averaged 12,000 to 13,000 views, and even before. He may say he was lucky, but perhaps because of his experience as a pro Rakin was able to identify early on the competitive nature of the scene and realize that staying in his comfort zone wouldn’t be the best strategy to grow. Today he also plays titles like Lost Ark and New World – sometimes he even streams himself cooking.

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“I feel that with time we have solidified the channel as a variety channel. People watch whatever I bring, but it took time. It’s very scary, I’m not gonna lie, because I used to get a lot of views [with League of Legends]. And I thought, ‘This is not going to sustain itself, I’m not going to be able to play LoL for a long time as the main game. This is my main source of income; what if I’m forgotten because I decided to make this change?'”

Average views did indeed drop temporarily – but he wasn’t forgotten. The change paid off and, like his content, the audience soon leveled off and became more diverse.

It’s not always possible to know who is on the other side of the screen following you, but proof that all kinds of people watch Rakin is a case he tells of a time when his puppy was stolen, and a follower who worked as a police investigator helped find her.

“There are people watching anything, the crowd is there to chat, they are there for the content. This is what I always wanted for my channel. We were able to strengthen my Instagram, the other social networks, and turn this work into something much more professional. I am very grateful to my audience for being able to do this.”

Just like becoming a pro, Rakin sees risks in becoming a streamer. “What I hear the most [is]: ‘How do I become a content producer?’ To become a content producer is simply to produce content. […] What people want to say is: ‘How do I make money doing this?’ And, to be honest, whenever people ask me that, I say: ‘If you go into it thinking about making money, you’re already wrong. Because it’s very difficult. If I go on Twitch now, I can count on the palm of my hand how many Brazilian streamers are live and make a living from it.”

He, who started his first streams in 2013 as a way to connect with friends who were no longer physically close, advises those who want to follow this path: start as a hobby, only then evolve into something professional.

Rakin repeats that he has been lucky in his career as a streamer. Some say that luck is only the result of hard work, and his own arrival in the Cavalry proves this.

AIMING HIGH

“Hey Steve! How you doing man? I believe TF Blade talked to you about me, but my name is Rakin and I am an ex-pro player […] and one of the top LoL streamers in Brazil. […] Right now I’m focusing a lot on content production, and since I believe our region has a MASSIVE fanbase that is basically untouched by outside regions, I wanted to discuss with you guys to possibly stream for you guys or something like that!”

Sending a DM on Twitter to one of the CEOs of a global organization and expecting to be heard is bold in itself. But as they say in Brazil, “you already got the no.” Can you imagine getting a response within an hour? That’s what happened.

“He [Steve Arhancet] said, ‘We’re going to give you an Academy [League of Legends team] player contract and we’re going to do it like a trial.'”

At that time, in 2018, not many international organizations were looking at Brazil, let alone investing in a local personality. While living in the United States, he had already had a brief contact with the organization by doing a tryout for the team and knew players who would be in the future signed by Liquid, such as TF Blade, mentioned in the DM.

Besides the Academy, Rakin joined Liquid as an official streamer and reserve for the main LoL team, being the first Brazilian to sign with an organization from the MOBA’s major region. He even made streams in English to connect with Liquid’s international fans and managed to bridge the gap between the organization and the Brazilian community. Beyond that, he has more ideas to globalize his content, taking advantage of his international background and expertise in the competitive scene.

“We don’t see in organizations someone who connects all esports. I want to do that and I believe it’s something I can do very well. When you are a content producer, what do you try to do to improve your performance? Connect all the social networks. So I think that to build more audience loyalty, an organization can do something similar, have an international correspondent for all audiences and all countries.”

It’s an interesting approach and a strategic look from someone who is confident in himself and in his work; after all, to send that kind of message and have it validated, you have to be pretty sure. Maybe, looking at everything that has already happened, this bold move is an attempt to rescue that feeling that emerged with the pentakill, which, although quieter, is still present.

“[…] I always wake up thinking that something is missing. So maybe someday I will find something that will make me feel the same way I felt that day.”