Introduction

Behind the warm smile and humble personality lies a hardworking, competitive person, with a penchant for sports and who is a social butterfly.

That’s right, it’s Opinicus’ Captain this year, Ivan Tan!

Although he is in his final year and majors in International Business Management, he puts his faith in Opinicus and hopes his house will emerge as the champion for this year’s Monash Cup, just like his house motto goes, ‘Always Above’. 

But since COVID-19 essentially pushed this highly anticipated event online, how did Ivan take on the captain’s mantle and navigate Opinicus on their mission to conquer the House Cup?

Find out as we sit down for a chat with him on a late Tuesday afternoon.

Q: How has the experience been with managing your team virtually, especially training your members?

For each of the gaming categories, the captains will have their preferred training time where they will set [it] to train weekly, depending on when they’re free.

I’ve attended most of the training to see how they’re doing. I’m very satisfied with all my captains and they did a great job in properly training their team and making sure that everyone’s doing their best.

Sometimes training does get pushed back because people are really busy. We’re in Monash and of course, our priority is our studies. It’s not that they can’t train, there’s just too much workload to handle. But I think everyone somehow managed to get it together.

Honestly, it’s been really fun overall. I met new friends and everyone’s been amazing. I have an amazing team, some of them are my friends. The captains for each category were amazing too and they are very dedicated to their role. I’m really glad that everyone’s putting in the effort. There weren’t many issues and everything was solvable. Everyone’s really friendly and did their job properly.

Also, I’m glad that most of my captains are competitive and luckily because I’m very competitive too. 

Q: How has the transition been from offline to online hosting of Monash Cup?

The streams are not handled by me. C&S handled it and they had a streaming partner this year, which is good.

Although last year was pretty last minute, the organizer still did a great job. But this year is better because they planned out everything with a proper streaming company.

I expect the result to be pretty organized and I think everything will be professionally done. 

Even though it’s just the Monash Cup, players and non-players will get to experience the competitive scene in a professional setting. Audience-wise, I think it is not that big. I feel like the highest view will be during finals. But it’s Monash, everyone’s dead and busy so I’m not sure how it will go. As for the players, I think it’s going to be a good experience.

Q: Were there any conflicts that happened between your house members?

Honestly, I would say it was a pretty smooth ride.

Everyone’s really straightforward and pretty disciplined, so there are no conflicts. That’s the thing I like about all my team players. At most, maybe we have some issues with egoistic players but we managed to resolve it. It wasn’t like a very big issue. 

There might be drama during the Monash Cup, who knows? Hahaha. But not within my house, Opinicus, no-no.

Q:In the future, do you think Monash Cup should continue implementing ESports when we transition back to campus?

I think they should. For me, I’m a very versatile person and I can do both physical and e-sports too. So, I feel like it’s actually a good addition to add ESports into the Monash Cup. Some people don’t do sports and they prefer to play games, so this will create an opportunity for people who play games to excel in this category. 

I honestly think it will be a good university experience, especially for people who join the Monash Cup.

From my experience, I can see a lot of [players] started off as strangers, but now they’re all very close friends because they played games together.

But I guess it’s up to the C&S, whether they have the resources to handle it. I remembered the C&S people told me if there was no COVID-19, they would bring everyone to a cybercafe, set it up like a proper tournament, and have a proper final where everyone would gather to watch them play, which sounds really cool!

I was really excited about that but I understand we can’t really do much because of COVID-19. 

Q: If there’s no COVID-19, what games would you play?

Well, I’ll play a lot like volleyball, frisbee, dodgeball, badminton, and captain ball. I think I would play 5 games, yeah. 

I’m a physically active person so most of the sports are fun and I love to play. I will definitely try to compete and play as much as possible for me last year and meet more new friends if there was no COVID-19. 

Honestly, I missed the physical [tournament] and I could have competed with my friends, which would be so fun. But it’s okay, I’ve experienced the physical Monash Cup two years back. I guess the grass is always greener on the other side. 

For E-Sports this year, the friends that I made and the team that I have been with are very memorable to me. My committees, my team captains, and my players.

Q: What is your favorite online game and how did you get into it?

I play all types of games but the one I played the most is definitely Dota. 

I remember I was watching people play and then I decided to try it myself and then just slowly learned it throughout the past few years. I think I got in like 2016 when I was in high school, then I stopped a bit and played again. 

I like the game because it’s very complex. But many thought that playing games are not useful, whereas, for me, I find it useful because you can meet new people, it taught me how to lead or communicate with strangers, [make] very important decision making and [train] your thought process. It does help me in real life. 

There will definitely be a very toxic community that you can’t avoid and I feel like you have to get used to it. It can carry into your life too in the future where you are going to meet this kind of person in real life, which is worse. So you can actually use this platform to learn how to handle [difficult situations].

Q: When will we catch you in action?

I only participate in one game which is Dota and I’m also the captain. The tournament for Dota has started and the finals are next Sunday, two weeks from now. I’m confident that my team can make it to the final. 

But I feel like each game will be fun to watch. We have different games like CS League, Valor, Dota, Mobile Legends, and PUBG Mobile. So if anyone is interested and free to watch the stream, go ahead. I believe the finals will be really exciting. 

Q: Last but not least, what would you describe your house in four words?

First place, friendly, fun, and family.

Thank you for coming here, Ivan. All the best with the game!

Stay tuned and mark your calendar peeps, it’s going to be on 19th September! May the best house wins the Monash Cup 2021. 

 

Article by Elly Zulaikha
Header by Angeline Ho