This man among men has a strict bedtime, has to drink milk every night, doesn’t know where he’ll be in 5 years, or any real plan for the future, but if there’s anything he’s truly passionate about, it’s video games. 

The foundation for Arvin Doan’s gaming tendencies started young. Like many other kids, he played Pokémon on the Nintendo DS. As he got older, Arvin branched out to PC gaming when he finally built a new computer. 

“Mostly first-person shooters. I’ve tried others before but I could never really get into them as competitively as I could with FPS games, or I straight up found the game boring,” he said. 

He also often plays the rhythm game “osu!”, originally released for Microsoft Windows on September 16, 2007. A game built by its community, and still standing strong today. 

Arvin’s first break-through in shooters was when Overwatch, an FPS game developed by Blizzard, came out in 2016. Overwatch would be the game Arvin would dedicate most of his time and effort towards, eventually becoming one of the best players in our region.

“In the peak of my Overwatch career, I was about ranked 400-ish in all of North America. I was being put into games as actual pros which were honestly some of the best games I’ve ever played.”

“I always played to become better—not for fun. There was always a drive in me to become better, to not settle for second place but to take first. Nowadays though I have my studies to focus on and can’t really play where I was eight months ago which sucks, but I have bigger things in life to worry about right now,” he said

Being a senior sure is tough. First and foremost, college is right around the corner for him. But as a wise man like Shia LaBeouf said, “Don’t let your dreams be dreams.” If you have the hopes of developing your skills and becoming a king of kings like Arvin Doan himself, then constantly put motivation towards it, and fortunately enough, Arvin has given us advice on how to improve yourself in competitive gaming. 

“Other than the classic ‘play more’ approach, having someone better than you look at your gameplay and point out your mistakes will make you better as long as you correct them. If you can look over your gameplay and see where you went wrong and correct them on your own not only will you become a better player on the spot, but you’re developing a skill in which you’ll learn to spot your own mistakes and correct them on the spot. Remember that improvement doesn’t happen overnight, practice is a long process that’ll reward you down the road,” he said.