Sarawak eyes greater participation in e-Sports

We fully support the call made by our Chief Min­is­ter, YAB Datuk Pat­inggi Abang Jo­hari Tun Openg who said Sarawak should be look­ing to delve into the world of e-sports which has gained pop­u­lar­ity in re­cent years. We agree that elec­tronic sports or e-sports has become a form of com­pe­ti­tion that us­es video games and now it has evolved into a multi­bil­lion dol­lar busi­ness, and is some­thing that the state ought to ven­ture into. He said this during the opening speech of the recent Ministry of Youth and Sports Sarawak (MYSS) Appreciation Night 2020 which was held on February 18.
According to the Chief Minister, e-sports is a test of our brains be­cause it is vir­tual sports and a test of your hand re­flex. He added that today e-sports has be­come a multi-bil­lion dol­lar busi­ness and it is a test of our brain en­durance, es­pe­cially in re­la­tion to dig­i­tal tech­nol­ogy, so that is for us to train in this new sub­ject.
In ad­di­tion to e-sports, the Chief Minister said the Sarawak govern­ment is also look­ing into the pos­si­bil­ity of pre­par­ing youths in the state to par­tic­i­pate in more ex­treme and chal­leng­ing sports that will test their re­silience.
He added that the state also needs to de­velop other sports such as foot­ball, gas­ing, sepak takraw, wushu and oth­ers. We also hoped that the younger gen­er­a­tion will find time to get in­volved in phys­i­cal sports, stress­ing that it would not be good to “sit and just play video games” as it would limit one’s time com­mu­ni­cat­ing with friends. They can continue to play e-sports but please di­ver­sify and par­tic­i­pate in other sports too. We thank our Chief Minister and his wife who consented to grace the function which was attended by Sarawak athletes who excelled in last year's South East Asia (SEA) Games held in Philippines and representatives from various local sports associations.