The Expert
Paul “Hayzer” Hay on His Path to Making SPL Content, Reactions to Phase 3 Playoffs, and Predictions for the SMITE World Championship
Paul “Hayzer” Hay via Twitter
Paul “Hayzer” Hay is something of a paradox. If you only watched his stream in bits and pieces, you might come away thinking he’s an unserious streamer who puts a pool in his apartment and sings SMITE-themed Carly Rae Jepsen parodies. At other times, however, you might instead see a serious, intelligent SMITE Pro League Pundit who offers detailed analyses of not only the SPL teams and its players, but also individual games, rosters and roster news, interviews, and the occasional off-the-cuff reaction (a series he calls ‘Hayvering’--a play on his last name and a Scottish term for babbling). If you’ve been fortunate enough to be a regular part of Hay’s stream community for the past two years, you will have seen the whole picture: a unique blend of veteran knowledge and a keen analytical edge with a lightness and absurdist humor that few have the character—or the composure—to pull off.
The player-turned-coach-turned-analyst never drew it up this way. After leaving his playing and coaching careers behind to focus more on his career in software, streaming SMITE Pro League games was something Hay only did to stay a part of the community. However, it did not take long for Hay’s lovable and entertaining personality to start to build gravity for his stream. What started out as a way to hang out with friends and enjoy SMITE matches quickly grew beyond Hay’s expectations, and last year he was invited to Alpharetta Georgia to participate as a guest analyst at the SMITE World Championships. Today, he maintains his status as one of if not the central third-party analyst of the SPL.
With season 9 quickly barreling towards its dramatic conclusion in Arlington, Texas next month, I sat down with Hay to discuss the results of phase 3 playoffs, his predictions for Worlds, and his path to becoming an SPL content creator.
[The following interview has been edited for clarity.]
The Long Lane: We saw the phase 3 playoffs recently. What were your takeaways from that tournament? Any surprises?
Hayzer: I wasn’t that surprised that the Kings did as well as they did. I think a lot of people have been. They looked really strong toward the end of the phase with Jarcorrr, and I think it’s a testament to how much they wanted to win. I think it means more to them than anyone else that they won, because they needed to prove to themselves that they could win something. My other takeaway is that the Warriors still can’t play tournament events. They still don’t show up. It doesn’t look as if they have quite yet. They still don't show up. I thought maybe they turned a corner. It doesn't look as if they have quite yet. And I feel like they and their fans have to be a little bit worried going into Worlds. Will they even qualify? We'll see.
TLL: It's interesting you ask if they will qualify. We don't know all of the SCC teams that will be in that group, but we do know that it's going to be NA 2 and EU 1, with the Scarabs in their group as well. Do you think that they're actually in danger of maybe losing out to the Scarabs and perhaps this EU 1 team or even the NA 2 team?
H: If they play the way they did against the Titans in their first set, they could definitely be in danger of losing to anybody. It really depends on what teams show up and how they show up playing one event like this. Anybody can lose in these events, but it's about minimizing that risk and making sure that you play well for a majority of weeks. And I just don't think the Warriors proved that at all. I think they play well, like one in two weeks. A lot to improve on between now and January.
TLL: We had a pretty mild rosterpocalypse coming into the season. Very few changes, most of the course, staying together. The Warriors, of course, being one of those teams that didn't make any changes. What do you think they need to do in order to justify staying together another year?
H: They probably need a Worlds run where they at least look like they could win it. They need to qualify for Worlds, probably comfortably, and at least make semis to keep this team together. I think the problem which plagues them is the inconsistency. I think they have two consistent players and that's Vote and Nika. I think those two on the side lanes are very good almost all the time. Dardez depends on whether the gods that he likes to and is capable of playing are good. QvoFred is somewhat similar. Sometimes he just looks amazing on certain characters, and if you take him off them, he really struggles. And Neil just hasn't quite hit that many heights this season, I don't think. Neil can be a great player but tends to be a facilitator, and he will perform based on how well his team is performing. He'll do very badly when his team's doing very badly, and he'll do pretty well when his team's doing pretty well.
TLL: Thinking about Dardez and Nika as well. I don't want to say they're ill-suited for each other, but it feels like Dardez really excels with these physical hunters, and sometimes in order to facilitate those double-hunter compositions, you really want a mage or guardian in solo lane. It feels like Nika is one of those that really excels with pressure warriors and assassins. I've wondered, at least from what I've seen, about these issues with their draft in terms of reconciling those two styles. Is that something you've seen as well with the warriors?
H: Yeah, a little bit. I wouldn't put Nika on—like if I was drafting for Nika and he had to play to save my life or some other weird scenario like that—I wouldn't put him on anything magical apart from Artio. I think he has a great Artio. Other than that, it does feel as if he can be forced into magical picks. One way that the warriors have gone around that, and I think they're probably the best team for that, is they've gone for characters with shred, especially the AMC, and then they just run a four-physical comp with a single magical as their support. And they get away with it because I think they play that style pretty well, and they build well around it. But I do feel like it's true that Nika could be maybe pushed towards some characters that wouldn't be his first choice for the matchup and wouldn't be the best for his style because of Dardez needing to play a Hunter.
TLL: I wrote after this tournament that I think that the Dragons basically have to win worlds, and nothing else will satisfy. I know there's potential with PandaCat for this to be his last season, but do you think that this core, this Dragons team, in order to stay together, they need to win the World Championship this year?
H: It's really difficult to say because they've been through so much disappointment already. They've made two finals as a core and lost both, and they've had really great phases and really great seasons without performing at the end. I think that a lot of emphasis gets put onto Worlds, maybe more than should for a lot of players. And the Dragons fans being some of the most demanding—I don't think they're some of the most demanding, I think they're the most demanding in the league, and it's not very close—see anything except victory as failure, which I guess makes sense. But there's no other team, I think, whose fans are going in saying if they don't win, it's a disappointment. And I think that goes onto the players as well. And I think the players end up believing that even when a Finals loss, being the second-best in the world at something is pretty incredible. I think a Finals appearance would, for me, be enough to justify keeping that team together. They've brought Pegon in as a rookie. He's had a great season. The meta hasn't suited the way the Dragons have traditionally liked to play for most of the year.
It's been more focused towards objectives and late game, and invading has been totally crippled to sort of stop them from doing what lets them dominate the SPL and they've had to adjust for that. So I don't know. I don't think that failing to win Worlds is something that should cause that team to blow up like that. You can see it being another reason for players to consider it and another reason for that roster not to stick together. I think they probably will stick together if nobody retires, though.
TLL: What about a team like the Bolts? My take on the Bolts is it looked like they finally had a tournament where they overperformed expectations. The flip side of that is that they still feel like they're behind where they were before phase three. Even though they took fourth place at a tournament, which they hadn't done before, they're still not looking quite as competitive as they think they would have wanted to. Time is running out, and if you don't get Baskin back after this year, you would have a situation where it's the same four guys and the new solo laner again, and to me, that feels like one too many times of hitting the reset button. But what's your take on the Bolts? They've been staying together for a while, but haven't really been close yet.
H: I think when coming into a tournament and finishing fourth out of six is overperforming, you're already a little bit worried about your team. They finished above the Warriors who were notoriously very bad at tournaments, and above the Titans, who had their jungler ripped from their team two days before the event started, so they had one scrim session with Cyno, so finishing above that team, I don't think somebody to celebrate. I would be extremely shocked to see this team stay together next year, even if somehow they go and win Worlds. I wouldn't like to see them stick together. I don't feel like we've seen much evidence of this team gelling this year. Apart from the tracksuits, maybe the tracksuits. I thought that was their most synergistic moment. I think it's already probably one year too far. The team nearly broke up at the start of the year. Losing their solo laner kind of led them into a spiral, but I think they were already in that spiral before their solo laner went, and they just went on a period of extremely bad form. They made it into this tournament. They're making it into Worlds, which is great, but I don't think we'll see more than two of the players on this team playing together next year.
TLL: Who do you think is going to win Worlds this year based on what you've seen so far?
H: If I had to pick a team to win Worlds right now, today, I think there's three teams in the running for it. I think most people would say you're looking at Leviathans, you're looking at Kings, and you're looking at Dragons. The same three teams that I had in the running for this playoff tournament, and I think the teams that looked like they were competing to win it. At the moment, I would probably give it to Leviathans, even though the Kings just beat them in a great best-of-five. I think that the Leviathans have more players that are going to perform better at Worlds, more players with experience in high-pressure games. Although I'm not sure about playing in front of a crowd. That's an interesting one. You think about the players who have actually played in front of a crowd on these teams. Some of the Sanguine boys play in front of a crowd at SWC before they made SPL. I don't think they've played in front of a crowd since they made SPL.
TLL: They did. They played at the season six SWC with Haddix. Haddix is actually subbing for Jarcorrr. So it was this roster minus Zapman.
H: A little bit of SWC experience. At least they've got something. But it's a whole different ballgame. And then you look at the Kings. Bigman has played in front of a crowd. Twig has played in front of a crowd. Jarcorrr has not, although I can't imagine anything flapping him. Variety has played in front of a crowd many times, but Genetics is the one with the least crowd experience out of everybody, which is crazy. I feel like he's been around for a long time now. There are jokes about him being Rookie of the Year, but I feel like he's the one who's got something to prove in that situation and he wants it a lot, so it'd be very interesting to see how he copes in that situation. I've totally derailed this question from where we were going, but right now I would pick Leviathans to win. Even though the Kings just beat them. I think that Leviathans have really ramped up towards the end of the season. They've got Zapman with that unbelievable land presence. He just shows up at Worlds. Throughout the regular season, he's the worst player on that team and it's not really close. And then when you get to Worlds, I think he'll be the best player on that team and his veteran leadership is going to be really helpful for them. You look at the other players who have that veteran status—Twig, Variety—they've not had as much success. The two of them had a decent amount of success together in season three and Twig has made another SWC final. Did he make two with Rival?
TLL: He was jungle when they lost to SK, and mid when they lost to PK.
H: So Twig has three SWC finals losses. Can he get a fourth? We'll see. In my book, probably. I could see a King's Levi's final and at the moment I would have Levi's taking it home. Dragons, I'm not sure. It totally depends on what they can cook up between now and January because I think they need to cook something up. I don't think they can show up and play the same smite as the Leviathans and Kings and win. If they show up and play the same game as those teams, they will lose. They need to have their own early-game dominant meta where they control the game and take it down because I don't think their late game play calling and play around objectives is strong enough.
TLL: Something that maybe hasn't been noted about the Dragons is that, yes, there is a discipline issue when it comes to objectives, but they're specifically losing a lot of coin flip objectives. And I could certainly see a situation where they're pulling a coin flip objective and they actually secure it and take a lead in a set. I could see something like that falling the Dragon's way, whereas in the regular season perhaps they have been unlucky and we've seen it a lot of times go the other way. So there is a possibility that their lack of discipline won't cost them a set.
H: Yeah, it does feel like they're due a lucky break, a little bit. Big game, they dice roll at FG at 20 minutes when they really shouldn't. Say they're ahead 23K gold. They dice roll at FG and this time they get it and they don't throw the game. It would be a nice change of pace for them.
TLL: I think the question is, will Pegon play Poseidon with Worlds Finals on the line? That's what everyone wants to know. Will we see a game five Poseidon lose yet again for that team?
H: [Laughs]. Surely not.
TLL: Something about the Kings that interested me—they just picked up Jarcorrr. This term gets thrown around a lot, but maybe they are in a little bit of a honeymoon phase. We saw when the Dragons got Screammmmm. They looked dominant pretty much immediately, then again when the Leviathans got Haddix and they looked dominant. Now the Kings make a change and win the playoffs. Now you're talking about five weeks until Worlds. Is there a worry there that the magic could be a little dried out by the time they make it to the World stage?
H: It's probably a bad time for a break for them, but maybe they would have lost the momentum over five weeks anyway even if they were still playing. So maybe it's okay. But yeah, I don't know how you could ball that magic and keep it going. And when are the Scarabs getting their honeymoon phase? They should have had at least one this season, right? With all the roster changes.
TLL: [Laughs]. It was both of the Valkyrie sets. These short honeymoon phases where they got Hurriwind, beat the Valkyries, got Snoopy and beat the Valkyries again.
H: Maybe the honeymoon phase scales with how long your roster has been together. So the longer your roster has been together, when you kick a player and replace them, you get a longer honeymoon phase. So that's why the Scarabs have just been getting skimped on their good weeks of play.
TLL: It's interesting you bring up the Scarabs. Do you think that Hi-Rez needs to do something—not necessarily hard roster lock rules—but something to keep a team from getting constantly cannibalized over the course of the season?
H: Yeah, it's difficult. It's a really difficult situation because you want players to be able to grow and evolve. If a player outgrows their team, I think they should be able to move and if they're outperforming their team, that should be recognized and they should be rewarded for it rather than being stuck on a team that's not doing well when you're capable of flourishing. I think people should have the ability to move. People bring up professional sports and how lower-ranked teams will trade players to higher-ranked teams all the time, but I think the difference there is that the lower-end teams get something for the player they're losing, so they get a transfer fee or in North American sports it might be a draft pick sorry. And that gives those teams some way of growing off of this player that they've nurtured and they've built up. The difficulty with what's happened with the Scarabs is that with every transfer and every time they lose a player they get worse and other teams around them get better. And I think that's something that could maybe be addressed but I'm not sure how to do it. The difficulty with a franchise league is that there's nothing gained. Say for example the Scarabs bringing Stuart through and growing him as a player and he really evolves and they've put all this time and effort into him. They've put all this effort into growing these other players, into making them better and then they just leave it and you're left to try and start again and do it again. I think that's where this sort of system we have at the moment with no roster locks falls down a little bit. But I don't have an answer as to how to fix it either. Can you make teams within the league pay other teams to take their players? I think it's really tough with the system we have in place to resolve the situation because players should be free to move. Maybe there should be slightly less free movement throughout the whole season.
TLL: I think Hi-Rez should consider making the phases completely stable where you can't make changes during regular season phases and then designate time between phases and that would obviously incentivize teams to make moves before phases start which could inject some intrigue. I know in Major League Baseball everybody watches every season at the trade deadline for all the moves that are going to be made because you can't make any more trades after that for the rest of the season. So I know once you put structure there, teams will respond in kind. So it may be something to consider going forward. It is a players’ league. There are no general managers, there are no franchise owners or anything like that. And you don't want to tell your players like, ‘hey, you can't play for this team you'd rather play for.’ We had talked a little bit for an article I did earlier in the year about potential changes they need to make to the SCC to make it more of a place where talent can really flourish. What do you think they need to do to SCC, especially in Europe, to make that talent more enticing for SPL teams?
H: Yeah, I've talked about it a little bit before, but there were some real issues this year in the SCC with the way the players were treated and how professional the league looked, that I think if I were a young player coming through would mean that I was not interested in taking it further. I think that's the biggest issue. There were a lot of payment issues specifically where players had no idea when they were going to get paid their money they were due from playing in the SCC and their rewards for placings at tournaments and the communication on it was really bad. I think that the real difficulty for Europe is I think we could have seen European players picked up, but it's just the issues with visas, it's too difficult. I don't know if there's anything that Hi-Rez could do around making sure that they have these visa processes really ironed out. And they can say with confidence to SPL teams, if you pick up this player, we'll have a Visa within two weeks, a month, whatever. Because I think if, for example, the Scarabs are losing Boronic, they could have looked at a player like Angry, maybe adapting could have had a chance of coming back into the pro league, he's been playing in the SCC. Maybe Dzoni. There's a lot of talent there that is just completely off the table for SPL teams to pick up because of a lack of confidence in visas. And you don't want to end up with another Valkyries situation. Obviously, we had COVID exacerbating things previously, but I think that's a thing which really holds back the EU SCC people from pushing and wanting to commit to competing in the SPL.
TLL: It's hard to think of a fix, something that I have been considering as a possibility. And I have no expertise here, so I'm just thinking for fun. But maybe longer breaks between phases with tournaments. I think it's probably easier to get European players over here for tournaments. So if you have a team that needs to make a roster change, they could pick up a European player, they could come up for a tournament potentially, and maybe have enough time to get here before the start of the next phase. We have three tournaments, including Worlds. I think it could be interesting if they changed that to four and maybe had one in Europe as well. I don't know how feasible that is, but it might help encourage some EU players and maybe help solve some of those logistics issues.
H: I would love an EU tournament so much. I think it would be amazing. But I think at this point we're probably unlikely to get another one. We'll see. Maybe season ten is the season. Some of the pro players have talked about it, but I think that people have a total misunderstanding of how much that stuff costs. It is incredibly expensive. You're flying all the players, all the equipment, all production, all the staff, the people who manage the staff have to go. And that's without getting a venue and things like that. It's an incredible amount of money and there's a lot of money spent on Smite Esports, but I think sometimes we can be a little unrealistic with our expectations. Pushing for an SWC in person, that was a good one, but I don't know. I think I'm a bit more pragmatic than I was when I was younger on these things. I just don't think we're going to get an EU LAN. I think it would cost too much for them.
TLL: You used to play competitively. Most of your experience in the SPL was coaching. You coached for Cyclone, you coached Obey, you coached the Renegades. What was that experience like as a coach and why aren't you still coaching?
H: It was a really cool thing that I got to do in my life. I was playing, and I decided to step down from playing because I got my first full-time, real adult job when I turned 22, and a team asked me to sub for them. And then I ended up coaching, and then we made SPL, and I ended up spending far more time on SMITE than I ever had in the past, which was wild, and it was a great time. I made some lifelong friends through that. If I ever get married, I will invite SMITE people to my wedding, which I think is just amazing and really cool, but it's a lot of hours coaching. I was on Obey at the same time as having a full-time job and at one point I actually left my job midway through season five. I would get back from work at 6pm, hop on for scrims, like six to 6-9:30, and then I'd have like an hour and a half left of my day, then go to sleep and go to work again. And I enjoyed it, and I think it's super cool to have a side hustle and things like that, but I don't know, I'm not in that twelve-hour workday grindset really. [Laughs]. I just, I don't think it's healthy. Which is why I stepped down from coaching in the end. I stepped back into the Renegades at one point, but only for six months or less than that even, just because I really wanted to try to win Worlds and I failed again. At that point I was like, that's probably enough. I always have thoughts of ‘could I step back in and do it again? Would I like to step back and have another run at it?’ Because I think it's a really rare thing to get the chance to—never mind just playing video games or watching video games or doing that for money, I think that's amazing—but also the chance to really compete in something, really try your best against other people who are really trying their best and try to be the best in the world or something. I think that's like a totally awesome goal and a really cool experience, but I doubt I'll step back into it now. I don't know if I have it in me anymore.
TLL: Well, there you have it, add Hayzer to the list of people whose dreams were ruined by Zapman in the fall of 2019. He just got in the way of everyone, didn't he?
H: [Laughs]. He took us all down. His dream was to be the three-time and he did it.
TLL: It's ridiculous. And he's about to do it again. I don't even want to watch, to be honest.
H: [Laughs]
TLL: So you mentioned university. What did you study at university?
H: Computer science. I have a Bachelor's. With honors.
TLL: You have a day job still, right?
H: Yeah, I'm a software engineer.
TLL: You don't have to share too much, but what kind of software do you make?
H: Let's say I work in an analytics type platform, so I work on some analytics-y stuff.
TLL: So once you stop coaching, you started building your stream a little bit more. You're sort of the premier SPL analyst out there. You're really the only one doing that, at least regularly. So how did that start?
H: I’m not really sure. It's one of these things I kind of stumbled into. I just wanted to watch the games with and why not watch the games and stream over the top of it? And then for some reason, people liked to watch and it just kind of went from there. I don't know, I never had any intention to become an SPL content creator after coaching. It was just something I stumbled into. I would just stream and I would hang out with friends and with people who I'd met through Smite. And they'd come along and watch and speak in the chat. I don't think there was any conscious decision or any moment where I was like, I'm going to do this every weekend. I'm going to be there for every set. This is like a semi-job now. I never really consciously thought that at any point. It just kind of happened over time, it just became a habit and it became a thing that people expected me to be there, so I was there.
TLL: Is it ever hard to reconcile that with your job? Because I know that that was a big concern with coaching. And now do you feel like this is demanding a lot of your time as well?
H: Yes, it's difficult. Sometimes it is difficult to manage. I think it's more my social life that suffers more than my job. I think if I didn't have the job, I would maybe still have the same difficulties because most people, at least in Scotland, Friday, Saturday, Sunday evenings, that's when you'll hang out with your friends here. There's a lot of drinking involved, which I managed to get on my stream anyway. But it's the socializing that I miss a little bit. I think that's more the thing that suffers with the SPL stuff. My job, there's a little bit of burn out there I would say is the difficult bit because sometimes it's difficult to get proper rest and come back into work the next morning feeling relaxed and ready to go. Say if it's a Thursday and there happens to be games on, finish work, jump on and stream the games, go to sleep, get up, work the next morning, it can be difficult to really reset. And sometimes, yeah, I think it can be a bit much. I get a lot of leave and things like that from my job, which I'm lucky to have. We're a little bit spoiled as software engineers, so that's good. But still, it's another thing that I lose out on. This year I moved, and because of that, I basically had no vacation time because I took some vacation time for SMITE things. Again, at the start of the year, I'll be taking six of my 30 floating days of leave for SWC. So that's another thing which it does put a little bit of pressure on.
TLL: I've definitely experienced some of that myself. I'm a Ph.D. student, and I started this, and it has been really fun. And then I realized I have to put out Power Rankings every week, but I have 500 pages of reading and a 3000-word essay also due. But it's totally worth it just to be a part of this community doing something I really enjoy. You mentioned how you get leave. What's it like living in a country where workers are taken care of? What is that experience?
H: [Laughs]. It's very nice. It's good. I like a lot of the things about where I live. Scotland is great. We get free medical care, free prescriptions, things like that. It's all very nice. And also, you know what else happens? The tax comes off your pay before you get it, so you never have that pain of having to go and declare all your tax and give it to the government, which is great. I like that, too. We do pay more, but at least it's gone before I see it. I don't have to go and spend it on my insurance and things like that. I would recommend 30 days of leave, big time.
TLL: I want to talk about the SCC a little bit. Obviously, the hounds have been the team to watch in North America. How do you think they stack up against SPL talent?
H: People gave the Hounds a lot of respect the last time they played up against SPL teams, and people expected a lot from them. That was back in phase two or phase one, but they played against SPL teams to try and qualify into another tournament. Previously, I thought they were a little bit of a let down. They have made a roster change since then, picking up Duck3y. Did they have Crimson at the time as well? I do think they have a shot if they play up to expectations. Duck3y is a super sick player. This is the team in NA that's been grinding and putting the time into the game and trying to make it up there. Every time there's a jungle roster change, Oath's name gets mentioned. I think he had a tryout with the Titans the day before Cyno did. So I definitely think this is a team that has potential, whether they can beat the Valkyries and the Titans. I think honestly, the Titans are maybe the team that are more vulnerable to but I don't see either of those two teams losing. I think there's just too much of a quality gap there. With the Titans, it's an individual quality gap, and with the Valkyries, I think it's a team play quality gap. The Valkyries, with their current roster, dominated the NA SCC towards the end, especially of last year, and looked really, really good. And I think that they just have had more time to gel and more time to get better as a team. And I struggle to see how they lose to the Hounds unless they do something really stupid like pick Terra mid or something like that. But yeah, I think the Hounds will maybe end up in a group where they have less of a shot. I think if you put the Hounds up against maybe the Warriors, they might have a better chance of picking up an upset there. I think just because of how hot and cold the warriors play, the Titans tend to dominate teams who are lower in the standings than them. And I think the Valkyries just have too much experience as a team to sort of fall down to the Hounds. I think it's a difficult draw for them.
TLL: If I may sow some intrigue into this situation, I think everyone expected the Valkyries to take a leap forward in phase 3 after their performance at summer masters, and instead they took a huge step back. Meanwhile, the Hounds have been dominating. Could that gap in confidence maybe tilt things some toward the Hounds?
H: I totally agree with you that they absolutely dropped the ball in phase three, and I feel like everything that they had worked on and improved on sort of fell by the wayside all of a sudden. It was really bizarre to me because they looked so improved before. I'm just going to say BennyQ's name. I think BennyQ continually picks these off-meta picks that he thinks he's going to revolutionize the meta with. And he was doing it again, the end of phase three. He kept picking Ra, he picked Atlas mid in an important set and lost. They just seemed to regress. I don't know exactly what the situation is with Sharks, their coach, but I'm hopeful that they get a bit more time with Sharks towards the end of the season. I don't know when he's coming over for worlds, or if he's coming over for worlds. I thought he said at some point that he was. So maybe with a bit more time with their coach, they can iron out those issues. I can see why people would say that regressing so much would mean that they can definitely fall to an SCC team. But I would hope that this has given them the motivation to refocus on what they need to improve and made them aware of where they're lacking. That's what I would want to see here from the Valks. And I think it will. I think they'll hopefully get back to fundamentals and just do mostly what the other good teams are doing and play the meta. Because I think when they don't play the meta, that's when they really fall down.
TLL: Part of your identity as a streamer has been your complete lack of shame. You write and sing these parodies, you dressed up like Nurse Neith—where did you even get that costume?
H: It was just a sexy nurse costume off Amazon. And I bought a red wig to go with it. I think I had to buy the red stockings separately.
TLL: Is that lack of shame something you pride yourself in?
H: It's interesting. I don't know if I pride myself in it, it's just the way I am. I'm just odd. I'm lucky enough to have a community where I'm allowed to be super comfortable with who I am and act the way I do without anybody spamming ‘cringe’ in the chat or making fun of me for whatever reason. Coming at this streaming thing with the angle of trying to have fun rather than anything else helps me a lot as well. I'm lucky enough where this isn't my job. I'm not worried about whether I can have enough subscribers to pay my mortgage this month. I have that sorted out. So it allows me to be a little more free in what I do and just go out there and have a laugh and try to entertain. I guess I just do this stuff because I think it's funny and I think I'm lucky in that enough people seem to share my sense of humor on these things that they think it's funny too. And I can have people laugh along with me.
TLL: Do your coworkers know about your SMITE streaming?
H: Not at my current job. I moved jobs a year ago and to a new place. So there's only some people that know about what I do there and it never gets mentioned. Pretty much not at all. But there are some people who I used to work with who work at my current company as well. They're all very aware and they're all making fun of me for it in our private slack—not the proper work one, but the other one. There are some weird emotes of me that get used as reactions for things and the funniest clips get posted in there sometimes. I think my current boss was told to check out my stream just before I got hired and it was when I did my hot tub stream. So I just had a paddling pool in my old bedroom and my old flat and I was in a bikini, swimming around in that with a snorkel. And apparently that's the one piece of my content that he's consumed. So that's good. But we've never really talked about it. He's very respectful in that way. He never makes fun in front of me for it, he never brings it up, which I'm very thankful for. I work in a very accepting environment, which is great.
TLL: There is an informal segment in these interviews where we look at the wiki and see if any of the trivia is true. It says you can type 80 words per minute and that the average is between 30 and 40.
H: I don't know if either of those are true. I would imagine a little faster, maybe. I haven't done a type racer in a while, but it could be true. Is the average really between 30 and 40? That's pretty slow.
TLL: It also says you refer to your stream as the Beehive.
H: That definitely used to be the case. I used to play a lot of AMC and at some point it was the beehive or the batcave, one of the two. My sub icons and stuff are still bees and little beehives, so that's at least kind of true. But nowadays we much more lean into the #HayNation thing, which is not serious, in case anyone was wondering. And also the hashtag is used by some elementary school all the time, so I can't use it really, because I don't want my stuff showing up there. I don't need those parents happening to click on that hashtag and seeing me, a 28 year old man, in a nurse outfit. I think there'd be some conservative American parents who would be coming for my stream, which I don't need.
TLL: Is it true that you love Taylor Swift?
H: I do. I used to love her a lot more. I used to listen to quite a lot of Taylor Swift. I don't really listen to her too much anymore. I haven't even listened to the new album. I've only heard one song off of it. But I was a big fan of Red. I think that's a really good album. I like her earlier stuff.
TLL: I’m the exact opposite. I could take or leave her early stuff, but I love her newer work. Do you have a favorite Taylor Swift song?
H: My favorite Taylor Swift song would probably be—let me look at Taylor Swift songs to jog my memory so I can pick one because, I don't know, I've only got “Welcome to New York” stuck in my head right now, which is not my favorite Taylor Swift song. No way… Not trouble.
TLL: [Laughs]. Is it really your favorite if you have to google it?
H: Well, it's because I love them all so much. I'm going to go with “22.” “22” is a banger.
TLL: With speculation about pro-players retiring, a lot of people have said that season ten is make-or-break for the SPL. What is your take on the future of SMITE eSports?
H: This Worlds is a big one as well. Honestly, both season ten and this world. I'm really excited to see how people act and how people receive being in front of a crowd again. It's an amazing thing for both the players and the fans. It humanizes everything so much more. You've got the streaming aspect, which lets you feel close to players, but I think that in-person experience is really great as well. So I'm hoping for more in-person events going forward. I think one thing that would be really great for the health of the amateur scenes would be a little bit more love to the amateur scenes and hopefully we can see those scenes start to feed more into the SPL. I think there is this concept of a Friends league, which, whether it's true or not and whether it's a bad thing or not, I think there's a lot to be discussed there. But I think that having a really vibrant emerging SCC scene and pushing for those scenes to be more competitive and hopefully getting more interest in people stepping up from there to the SPL would be my blue skies vision for the SPL going into next year and maybe the year after.
TLL: Anything you want to shout out here at the end?
H: Shout out to you, Erin, for making these articles. I think they're great. I've really enjoyed reading them so far. Thanks for having me on. And thanks just to everybody who supports me and supports the SPL and lets both me and others sort of goof around and have a good time and make a little bit of money off of it. It's amazing. I love it and I love you all. Thank you.
Hayzer streams SPL matches and related content at Twitch.tv/hayzer. He will be attending the SMITE World Championship in January.
