Turkmenistan enters brave new world of eSports
ASHGABAT, Turkmenistan: Reclusive, gasrich Turkmenistan is dipping its toe into the world of eSports having got a taste for gaming at a showcase sporting event it held last year. The Central Asian country is in the process of forming a national eSports team that will represent it in events devoted to Counter-Strike, Dota 2, Hearthstone and other popular computer game titles. Denis Oglodin, who plays under the gaming name Den4EZ, has already earned the right to wear the republic’s colours after his five-man team triumphed in a national contest for Dota 2 - a multi-player battle game - on Friday.
“I’ve been into computers since I was four. Now I spend 12-15 hours behind a computer,” Oglodin, a 17-year-old student at an IT college in Ashgabat, told AFP. “My parents understand me and aren’t bothered by it. My goal (in gaming) is money and glory,” he said.
Booming industry
That eSports have arrived in authoritarian Turkmenistan, a country of around five million people which was practically offline just over a decade ago, testifies to gaming’s global pull. The multi-billion dollar industry has even attracted interest from the International Olympic Committee (IOC), and the 2022 Asian Games in Hangzhou could see medals doled out for gaming in spite of opposition from proponents of traditional sports.
For Emil Gasanov, who at 38 is currently the oldest member of the eSports delegation that will represent Turkmenistan in a forthcoming Central Asian tournament, gaming’s growing global prestige is exciting to see. “My hobby has turned into a profession,” says Gasanov, who founded one of the capital Ashgabat’s first computer game clubs in 1998 and now coaches younger gamers like Oglodin for a privately-sponsored cyber collective called Galkynysh.
Some of the players from Galkynysh competed in an exhibition eSports tournament held in Ashgabat during the 2017 Asian Indoor and Martial Arts Games, a secondary sporting event backed by the Olympic Council of Asia. Those games also saw Kenneth Fok elected as head of the Asian Electronic Sports Federation, which has emerged as an important advocate for Olympic status thanks to gaming’s strong popularity across the continent.
Hello, Internet
Turkmenistan’s eSports adventure was given a boost by the creation of a new national federation earlier this year that has backing from the culture and sports ministry. Its chief Mekan Eyeberdiev estimates that there are several thousand eSports enthusiasts in the country, 70 percent of whom are students at schools and universities. “Our task is to popularize this sport in Turkmenistan,” Eyeberdiev told AFP, adding that he expected “conservative views” of gaming as a hobby rather than a sport to fade over time. — AFP