With the IeSF 2012 World Championship successfully closed on last 5th of October, International e-Sports Federation held the 2012 International e-Sports Symposium on 4th of October. At the International e-Sports Symposium, four topics were handled. 1) Global Media Network, presented by Sophie Jeon, Global Team Manager at Kyunghyang Games (Media) 2) International Referee Training Program, presented by Hyung Suk Seo, Manager at Korea e-Sports Association (KeSPA) 3) e-Sports and Sports: Need for Amateurism, presented by Colin Webster, President of Mind Sports South Africa (MSSA) 4) 4th Asian Indoor and Martial Arts Games, presented by Jay Shin, Manager of International e-Sports Federation (IeSF) For the topic of Global Media Network, the reason why global e-sports media network is important was investigated through reflecting the relation between global sports events & sports media and roles and impacts of media within the sports and e-sports market. Based on the importance of the global media network, the presenter, Sophie highlighted purposes of global media network, and summarized them as “to allow global coverage for e-sports in integrated manner and to enhance efficient access to globalized resources of e-sports”. Then, she provided establishing measure for global media group in compliance with the process that IeSF is taking and the media network that IeSF is collecting. Based on this process, she also suggested operation plan of global media group and future vision of it. For the future vision, she suggested international e-sports media organization in compliance with IeSF, and profit share model with IeSF global e-sports magazine. This subject derived the most favorable reaction of audiences. There were a lot of question regarding the condition for becoming IeSF’s official global partner to be involved in global e-sports media group as well as the details of its operation. Due to the time limitation, IeSF held special meeting for global media group with representatives of national associations and media, and derived conclusion to set up rules and regulation for becoming IeSF’s partner media. It seems that IeSF will announce more detailed measure to invite partner media and to actually operate the global media group by the end of the year. For the topic of International Referee Training Program, current status of esports referee operation was reviewed. With needs for international e-sports referee demanded from the lack of professional e-sports referees, IeSF and Korea e-Sports Association (KeSPA) are cooperating to design international referee training program, and the outline of this training program such as curriculum composition and plan of operation were introduced during the symposium. The referee training program being designed by IeSF is designed to cover from the national level to international level of referee training with the differentiated levels. Also, as the case of national level referee training support, the presentation introduced the “e-Sports Referee Training in Vietnam” which was held on August 2012 in Hanoi, Vietnam. With the result of the program 40 national referee were cultivated in Vietnam. It seems that the program focuses on creating new professional occupation within e-sports field for the gamers for their future career. Also, it suggests the new paradigm of cultivating and operating human resources within e-sports market, which will resolve the problem of gamers not having the future vision for professional occupation. The presentation also suggested the measure to expand the realm for the referees to be dispatched. At the 3rd session held after the lunch break, the topic of “e-Sports and Sports” was handled. The presentation investigated the matrix of how general sports are developed, and introduced the factors influencing on development of the sports. With these factors, the presentation emphasized the importance of amateurism. Also, it showed that, through promoting e-sports as an amateur sport, e-sports is able to make use and feed off all the existing tools that are currently at the disposal of sport. Furthermore, since amateur bodies are able to access local, provincial and national government funding as well as the national lottery funding, the accreditation given by the public authorities which concern amateur bases will lead to greater and better opportunities for e-sports. The presentation threw a significant question on current e-sports market which is professionalism oriented that the amateur base may bring the new opportunities to the e-sports market for overcoming the current operational limit and financial crisis. Also, it suggests the national e-sports associations and institutions for the direction to nurture the ability to propagate in the future. At the last session of the symposium, IeSF introduces the 4th Asian Indoor and Martial Arts Games (AIMAG) which is a mega sports event hosted by Olympic Council of Asia. E-sports has been selected as one of the official sports discipline within this event, and IeSF is taking role official counterpart of OCA for e-sports. Within the e-sports discipline of 4th AIMAG, 6 e-sports titles have been selected in 6 genres: Starcraft II (RTS), Special Force (FPS), League of Legend (MOBA), Tekken Tag Tournament 2 (Fighting Action), FIFA (Sports) and Need for Speed Unleashed (Racing). All the technical regulations for each title have already designed by IeSF. IeSF once again informed the roles and responsibilities of each member national associations in Asia region, and requested to cooperate with each National Olympic Committee. With this AIMAG, IeSF upraised its global status as official international sports governing body with the recognition of Continental Olympic Council. It seems that it will make the Sport Accord affiliation project of IeSF and recognition of IOC for e-sports as official sports a lot closer. Moreover, it is expected that this AIMAG will impact positively on e-sports market not only for e-sports governing body, but for publishers to decrease negative perception against games and to expand the realm of its market as making close relationship with sport governing body. Even for sport governing body such as OCA and IOC and governments, it can also benefit from this with acquiring new paradigm of sports title and improving leisure cultures and creating related occupations. To top it off the useful resources and contents disclosed by the symposium, the significance of the symposium is that IeSF, as the governing body for e-sports in non-profit sector, keeps endeavoring to create a stage for all parties in the esports market to share their opinions and resources as well as set up a circumstance for academic contemplation for e-sports. The international coordinator at IeSF, Mr. Alex Lim stated his aspiration that, “We believe that our continuous attempts are certainly bearing the seed for academic movement in e-sports field, and will bear fruit for all parties in e-sports world can share someday. We will keep inviting more parties to the international symposium, and expect there will be more various parties participating in the symposium such as global tournament organizers, publishers, broadcasters, professional teams, press, sponsors, suppliers and etc. We will come back with more various and useful subjects and debates next year which all parties can benefit and share.” The International e-Sports Symposium is 7th one, and has been held since 2006 annually for the purpose of global e-sports opinion share and trend reading.
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