Turkmenistan levels up in global gaming revolution

ASHGABAT, Turkmenistan - Turkmenistan is dipping its toe into the world of e-sports having got a taste for gaming at a showcase sporting event it held last year.

The traditionally reclusive Central Asian country is in the process of forming a national e-sports team that will represent it in events devoted to Counter-Strike, Dota 2, Hearthstone and other popular titles.

Denis Oglodin, who plays under the moniker Den4EZ, has already earned the right to wear the republic's colors after his five-man team triumphed in a national contest for Dota 2 - a multiplayer 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, said.

"My parents understand me and aren't bothered by it. My goal (in gaming) is money and glory," he said.

Boom time

That e-sports has arrived in 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.

For Emil Gasanov, who at 38 is the oldest member of the team 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 video-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 e-sports tournament held in Ashgabat in 2017.

Hello, internet

Turkmenistan's e-sports 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 e-sports enthusiasts in the country, 70 percent of whom are students at schools and universities.

"Our task is to popularize this sport in Turkmenistan," Eyeberdiev said, adding that he expected "conservative views" of gaming as a hobby rather than a sport to fade over time.

Obstacles to the growth of a national gaming culture include internet speeds and costs in an economically depressed country.

Now authorities claim there are over two million internet users, but a standard fixed-line connection of 256 kilobytes per second costs around 190 manats ($54) per month for Ashgabat residents, which is prohibitive for many Turkmen.

Overall, however, Turkmenistan could be climbing aboard the e-sports train at just the right time.

Vitalii Volochai, a Ukrainian sportscaster with 10 years of experience commentating on Dota 2 tournaments, says the World Electronic Sports Games held for the first time in January last year are offering gamers from smaller countries a chance to shine that they did not have before.

The event, backed by Chinese tech giant Alibaba, is the closest thing e-sports has to a soccer World Cup, with players competing in national teams and battling for a prize pot of up to $1.5 million per competition.

Dota 2's equivalent of the Champions League, The International, offers even greater winnings than that.

Given the tight censorship in Turkmenistan, it is perhaps surprising that the state is throwing its weight behind e-sports, some of which features graphic violence.

That is something that bothers the IOC, whose president Thomas Bach has spoken of a "red line" for games involving killing while remaining generally upbeat on the possibility of e-sports' Olympic inclusion.

Volochai says the debate over Olympic recognition is not something most gamers are losing sleep over, however.

"We don't really need the IOC or Olympics - they need us," he said.

Agence France - presse