International Esports Federation (IESF), the world’s largest national federation member based federation, will be launching the ‘Global Esports R&D Center’ in 2018. The vision of this new, and exciting, initiative is to further strengthen the esports ecosystem and ensure suitable development of the industry. With the support of Busan Metropolitan City and Busan Information Promotion Agency, the R&D center will focus on three pillars for the next 5 years of development.
The three pillars are: ‘Esports Academic Research Center’, ‘International Training Center’, and ‘International Referee Academy’.
The ‘Esports Academic Research Center’ will focus supporting and encouraging esports related research, in order for esports to increase its academic foundation for further growth in the future. In 2018, the ‘Esports Academic Research Center’ will be supporting researchers around the globe to encourage esports research. IESF will also be focusing on developing an archive platform, to gather and share all esports related research for the public to access around the globe.
The ‘International Training Center’ is planned serve the purpose of training camps and boot camps for both esports teams and officials. Athletes and teams will be able to ‘scrim’ against different esports teams and coaches. Managers will also be able to access all esports training related resources conducted from the Esports Academic Research Center. The Training center is to be equipped with a demo esports zone, as well as multimedia technical rooms for strategy meetings. Moreover, it will also function as a location to conduct professional team drafts to serve as a path for athletes to enter into the professional world. During non-activating periods, the training center will be open towards the public to encourage the regional community to practice and enjoy esports.
The ‘International Referee Academy’ will aim to standardize and develop intensive curricula to train and certify international referees. IESF will be developing curricula together with the support of the Referee Commission of IESF and Game publishers to ensure that the curriculum meets the highest standards. The Certification process will start in 2019, and international referees will be dispatched to a-matches between National Federations, qualifiers, and World Championships of IESF and its members.
In accordance with the rapid development of esports, IESF believes that it is crucial to build solid Esports structures through such pillars – referees, athletes, and academically active research field.
IESF will also continue to pursue its initiatives to support the esports industry through increased discussions with relative stakeholders at the Global Esports Executive Summit this year in November.
For more information on the GEES, please refer to the following link, being: http://www.iesf.rsportz.com .
