BREAKING

THE STREAMER

STIGMA!

Can you tell us the story of how you started in the world of streaming?

Oh man, okay, I’ve told the story many times before and each time I always add something to it because there are always lots of layers to the reasons why I started streaming.
As most people know, I live in Italy.
I moved here when I was 15 years old, my family split up, no big deal,
things happen to everybody, and Italy was where I went with my mother
and brother. Before that, I grew up in Canada. I was always gaming with my friends, I must say I had a wonderful childhood, I miss Canada every day and when I moved here, it was rough, it was like a completely new world with new people, I didn’t speak Italian as well as I do now, and I had to go to school to get better with the language. It was hard being homesick and all the cultural differences were insane. To this day, it is taboo to be
a streamer in Italy. People talk bad about streamers, YouTubers,
and gamers. The only gaming you are “allowed” to do in Italy is FIFA
or soccer games. If you were into games like World of Warcraft there was always this stigma or prejudice
that you are some weird socially awkward nerd.

What genre games

do you focus on?

Because I started so long ago, I did a variety of games. Growing on twitch is very difficult if you are a variety streamer because you are not creating a foundation, you don’t have stable viewers that come for you,
and the majority of people will come for the game you stream. I did several years as a variety streamer and that didn’t work out so well. I tried going into League of Legends and I did it for a long time as well, but when this game Lost Ark came out, I went back to being this MMORPG variety guy, because before League I was sort of the “MMO guy."I have played many MMORPG’s and I am an encyclopedia when it comes to most of them, if you have heard of an MMO I probably played it. The majority of gaming
I stream now will probably be Lost ark but I don’t want to be limited to that, I want to go back to doing more variety. I'll definitely try World of Warcraft when the new expansion comes out since I have played every single one. I also played Elden Ring which is an amazing game; but yeah for the unforeseeable future, I will be streaming mostly Lost Ark, because that is the content that is reliable for me right now.

"Wouldn't it be fun if people could listen to our conversations"

Do you stream full time

or do other things too?

I started streaming 9 years ago, actively streaming for 7 years.
Back then I was streaming 8 hours a day and before that, I was a full-time English teacher at the university of theology in my town which is kind of weird because I’m not a religious person. I always felt out of place because of this. But I would always spend time with my Canadian friends. We had great conversations and such good banter. I would play WoW with them on the American servers,
and they would be higher levels because they started playing before and since I was 6 hours ahead of them, I’d go to bed when they woke up and so I would often have to play by myself. While playing we came up with the thought “Wouldn’t it be fun if people could listen to our conversations, wouldn’t it be funny
if we could just share these jokes with others?” and when my friends weren’t playing with me because they were in school or sleeping, I would listen to comedians and stand-up comedy while gaming. I was really into comedians like Jorge Carlin, Dane Cook and Jo Koy, and I always loved the idea of making people laugh while streaming. Also because of the taboo of gaming itself in Italy,
I could only be myself when I was playing games with my friends.
I wouldn’t be the person I am today
if I hadn’t spoken to them every day.
It molded me into the person I am today and to this day I’m still close to my best friend Adrian who I've known since I was 5. I love my friends
and I miss them dearly. Gaming
and streaming were a way for me to be myself and to speak English with people because I couldn’t speak Italian that well. It became my dream to entertain while gaming.
We decided to open up this school together and we provide certificates to prove your level of English.
After having a bad experience in that place, I ended up fully streaming for 3 years. After not having the success that I would have wanted monetarily,
I had to get more of a part-time thing and fast forward to right now, I own a language school where I teach English with my partners who are my mother and my secretary from the other job
I had. During the pandemic, not a lot of people wanted to learn English, and if they did it was obviously online, but when I had lessons, I had to put streaming on the side. I don’t know
if to say fortunately or unfortunately but I didn’t and don’t have many lessons today, knowing that the majority of students can be handled by the other teachers that are there,
I can give more focus to streaming.

What is next for Bundif,

what are your goals?

This is pretty easy. Ever since I started streaming, the dream has been to get big enough to be recognized
and become either a voice actor
or someone who can get involved in the production of a videogame.
For example, a cameo in Cyberpunk 2077. There is a bunch of YouTubers out there that are established voice actors and I’m in love with that idea.
I always wanted to do voice acting and I have no idea where to even begin, but that is the goal for me.
I don’t care about becoming the biggest on twitch, but I do want to be known enough where my voice is recognized in a game, or to be involved in the production of a game.

"The teacher no one hates"

What can people expect

from joining your stream?

I don’t consider myself the most skilled player, so people shouldn’t come into my stream expecting to see the best plays like the 360 no-scope head shots and stuff. If they ever want to know something about a specific game, then I can provide that information, after all, I am a teacher and I think I’m good at explaining things. All this is combined with
comedy. Even when I teach, I have a very good relationship with my students. I always try to make them laugh and not be the teacher that everybody hates. Growing up in Italy,
I can say that English teachers can be very bad, they don’t care about their job, they might be bitter or angry,
and part of that could be because this is an underpaid, unthankful job.
I always try to put a smile on people’s faces when I’m teaching them something. The thing that bothers me the most is when people give up,
I’d always do my best to help people understand something as much as they can before they decide to give up. For example, with Lost Ark if you are worried about it and you say
“Oh, the game sucks.” Then I’ll be like “Did you try this or that?” and explain it to you, and if it still sucks for you then that’s fine, not everyone likes the same things. That is my goal when streaming, to offer a welcoming environment, explanations of games, and all this with a good laugh. That is what people can expect when coming to my stream.

Where does the name

Bundif come from?

I’m pretty sure that everybody when they start with video games online, they have their first kind of screen name and all of mine were always cringe. For example, I played Maple Story, Fiesta Online, Flyff and in all these games I was always the same character. I would always call them like Shadow_Strive or Shadow_Bringer and all these other edgy names that nowadays seem so cringy. One day
I was playing Final Fantasy XI with my brother and his 2 friends, and they are older than me by 7 years, so I thought “Now is time for me to have a new name that is not childish, I want to have an actual cool name." That day we were playing and I decided to create my character, we ordered some food and we had to choose,
my mother wouldn’t speak English well enough to order and my brother was too lazy to do it, so it was always my job to order and I had to choose between Chinese or Pizza.
So, my name is Bundif because
I ended up choosing pizza and then like “what if” I had gotten the buns, the dumplings, so bun ... if … Bundif. That is why my logo is this little bun icon, and that’s the story behind the name Bundif.