At this year’s Inter-Varsity Games Festival (IVGF), NUS Esports varsity teams and athletes had one of their best showing yet - taking home first and second place across all four e-sports titles! Organised by NUS Esports in collaboration with Nanyang Technological University, Singapore Institute of Management (SIM), Singapore Institute of Technology, Singapore Management University and Singapore University of Technology and Design, IVGF is the annual inter-varsity e-sports tournament where local universities battle it out for the top spots across different computer, mobile and console games.
Held over two weekends in August, the 20th edition of IVGF featured four popular competitive e-sports titles - Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, Mobile Legends: Bang Bang, League of Legends and VALORANT. Hosted by NUS at The Terrace @ COM3, the event saw a massive turnout of close to 200 participants from the local universities.
The first day of IVGF saw the Super Smash Bros. Ultimate competition undergo a Swiss tournament to determine the top four players to advance to the semi-finals and subsequently, the grand finals. After a gruelling morning of games and a nail-biting semi-final, Alvis ‘PsineWave’ Ng and Julian ‘XRias’ Foo from NUS faced off in the grand finals, with the former coming out top in a 3-0 victory.
With 12 teams and 67 student participants, Mobile Legends: Bang Bang was the most popular game at the festival. While all three NUS varsity teams managed to enter the finals, one of the teams was eliminated by a surprise contender from SIM. Eventually, it was an NUS versus NUS final where “Finally AbleToCan” took down “WeLoveNUS” in a close game of 3-1.
For the League of Legends and VALORANT tournaments, the teams had to face off and winners were determined in a best-of-five sets format. NUS’ “Croc with Crocs” took down NUS’ “Bulbasaur Buds” 3-1 in the League of Legends grand finals.
All eyes were on the VALORANT finals, where NUS’ “HER LOSS” went up against “no.men”, NUS’ best VALORANT team who won first place in Campus Legends 2022, an annual inter-tertiary e-sports tournament, and was one of the top eight in the VALORANT Champions Tour 2022: Malaysia & Singapore Stage 1 Challengers. While the former took the first set, the reigning champion bounced back and took the remaining three games, winning the series by a score of 3-1. Having represented the University at various VALORANT competitions, the five-man “no.men” team was arguably, the best e-sports team in NUS Esports history. This was their last competition as a team and winning the IVGF trophy marked a beautiful end to their journey.
Outgoing NUS Esports President and Esports Director Ong Jing Hao said he was extremely proud of his team for pulling off the feat of organising the largest e-sports event on campus. “IVGF 2023 was our most ambitious attempt at organising a physical e-sports event and I am glad that it turned out to be a huge success. I am also proud of our team’s achievements in the games as it was our strongest showing to date,” commented the Year 4 undergraduate from NUS School of Computing.
Recognising and encouraging more females to join e-sports
While the size of this year’s event reflected the growing popularity of e-sports, female e-sports athletes remain largely under-represented in the competitive gaming scene. As one of the three females in the team, NUS Year 4 Mechanical Engineering undergraduate Angel Clarita Juspi hopes to reverse this trend.
Having gamed since she was young, Juspi is aware of the discrimination and stereotypes faced by some female gamers. Encouraging her juniors to be brave, she said, “Don’t be afraid to give e-sports a chance. Everyone is treated the same here, so it is all based on your performance in the games.”
Apart from being a recreational or competitive gamer, NUS Esports also allows players to train as a coach. Year 4 Political Science undergraduate Victoria Foo is a VALORANT Esports Officer whose role involves coaching a team. To prepare for her coaching work, she watches pro gameplays, curates strategies according to her team’s strengths, conducts post-training reviews, and analyses and brainstorms solutions with her team.
Reflecting on her role, Victoria said, “The initial weeks were challenging because I’m the only girl in the VALORANT varsity team and I’m not as highly ranked as the teammates I coach. It felt like I needed to prove not just to myself, but also to the team I coached, and had to work hard to value-add to the team.”
“Despite my initial inadequacies, the friends I’ve made through the varsity teams never made me feel left out. They continued to trust my strategies and we do game together despite the differences in rank,” she shared.
Congratulations to all the NUS Esports athletes and coaches for doing the University proud!
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This story was first published in NUS News on 15 September 2023.
