Less than four weeks ago the end of 2011 came up and I looked back to reflect about what has been going on in Switzerland regarding electronic sports. This review gave me a lot of promising memories which make me believe that Swiss e-sports is starting to get back on its feet. I didn’t have this feeling for a couple of years, so this was very special for me to see. Not even a month has passed since then and I try to take a look forward. This is not easy, without getting too much influence from the fresh review. In life, and especially in e-sports things can change so much that something which was perfectly true last week, doesn’t have to be valid tomorrow. If I’m allowed to make a wish list for the year 2012 and what it will bring to the e-sport community in Switzerland, it would probably look like this:
1) Community activity
I appreciate many things the community accomplished over the past 12 months. I followed clans like My Insanity, Binary Evasion and Broken Arrow over the past month and have seen that not only Starcraft brought them a boost of motivation to compete within tournaments in Switzerland and other countries. But besides Starcraft, the second difference is “awareness”. Clans became much more aware that they have to take their visions in their own hands to be successful. The mentioned clans and certainly others as well showed creativity to get attention from the community and create a fan-base around them, which I haven’t seen in a while from e-sport teams in Switzerland. Not only the clans did evolve over the past 12 month, but also other community members showed an increasing amount of activity. LAN-Parties which have been the backbone of our e-sport movement over many years went through something like a“renaissance” in 2011. Event Organizers which gained some experience over the past couple of years showed a good deal of continuity and new organizations came up to create events for the community. When I spoke to our LAN-Ambassador Beny Kury, I get the feeling which this new generation of “LAN people” are motivated to bring back the events they loved, when they were attending BYOCs. I hope that this level of motivation and activity will continue to grow and evolve in 2012as it did over the past 12 months. I’m sure that the Swiss E-Sports Federation will be able to contribute its part and provide the community with the support it deserves. The awareness that the community has to work hard to improve e-sports is a great step towards that direction.
2) (Positive) Media attention
Media coverage about Gaming and e-sports did change a lot over the past few years. Journalists who wanted to get attention by writing false prejudices about gaming where faced by harsh criticism from their readers. A new generation of journalists is coming up, which themselves grew up with video games. The perspective of those young authors is a different one, and acknowledges the benefits of games much more than their predecessors. I hope that e-sport will get more regular media attention in 2012. When I consider that the e-sport movement must be in its “teenage-years” by now, I’d like to see more articles about competitive gaming on sports pages and cultural essays more than on the usual “tech-page” or “new stuff from around the world”. In 2012 I had the chance to be a part on some good articles about electronic sports published in papers, news-pages etc. The effort for more (positive) media attention will be pushed much more by the Swiss E-Sports Federation, but needs the support from the whole community which has to create the content and activity needed, that good messages can be broadcasted into the non-e-sports-world.
3) International activity
Thinking about the international e-sports federation (IeSF), I hope that the organization will keep on evolving not only in size but especially in their activities. The IeSF World Championship has been established and is an important part of the international schedule for the Swiss e-sport athletes. The IeSF also has other area of activity, which I’m looking forward to contribute. The establishment of relations towards traditional Sports Organizations like IOC and Sports Accord are steps to make IeSF and e-sports, in general, much more stable and recognized.
4) Positive e-sports awareness in the public
Last but not least I hope that the positive awareness of electronic sports and gaming in general will continue to improve. Not only positive media attention, but also a good attitude from the e-sport community will be important for this improvement. People who have the chance to attend an e-sport event always rest impressed with how well behaved and positive the atmosphere is. Just a couple of days ago, I spoke to two bartenders working in a Pub where a Barcraft-Event took place for the second time in two months. Even though the bar was packed with (mostly male) gamers, they never experienced such an easy and peaceful atmosphere in that place. Every time I take people to such events they are impressed by the fact that so many gamers with different cultural and religious background can spend days and weekends on such small space without having any trouble.
If we can communicate this awareness to the public, a big step towards the acceptance of electronic sports has been done.
I’m very much looking forward to this new year of competitive gaming. The Swiss E-Sports Federation created an internal motto last year, called “reboot”. I’m wondering what will be the motto for 2012.
Sincerely and with best wishes for e-sports around the globe
Dario Salice, President of the “Swiss E-Sports Federation”
