The IeSF Ambassador Charity-Screen golf tournament, held on June was an opportunity to let the representatives from 15 European countries knows the potential of e-Sports as future leisure activity.
In particular, Gustavo Schiavo, the Deputy head of mission from Uruguay, showed his interest in e-Sports and IeSF.
International e-Sports Federation (IeSF) had an interview with him and discussed the possibility to promote e-Sports in Uruguay and ways to establish Uruguayan e-Sport association.
Q. Can you tell us who you are and what exactly you do?
My name is Gustavo Schiavo. I am in charge of Uruguay embassy. My job is basically to promote bilateral promotion between Korea and Uruguay.
Q. What do Uruguayan people usually do for their entertainment?
In Uruguay, soccer is the number one sport. Even in computer game, soccer is still preferred. Young people, they are all playing soccer in both real soccer and computer soccer game. Especially they enjoy playing FIFA game.
Q. How is the Uruguayan communication and technology Infrastructure?
Uruguay started a project 4 years ago to become the first country in the world where every child has to have their own laptops. We called it ‘one laptop for one child project’. It has been developed several countries but other countries’ project were just small projects and some went down. After 3 years, nowadays every child in Uruguay has his own laptop already. This year, 2010 we started to give laptops to high school students. In 2 more years, every high school students will have also laptops given by government. Moreover, it is state promoted project, so many local governments put wireless for free in public area. Also it is good for them to study, communicate and it is useful at home to have leisure. So Uruguay is very good position in terms of infrastructure for computer, internet and e-Sports.
Q. How do people think about playing computer game? Is it positive or negative?
In general, when parent see their children playing game too long, parent think playing computer game is bad for their children. Thus finding balance between physical sports and computer games is needful to make positive perspective on computer game. And personally 2 or 3 hours are good for people to develop skills.
Q. Is the Uruguayan government supportive to the Cultural and Leisure activities?
Yes, Uruguay is traditionally democratic country with the very long tradition in human right. Leisure, of course is basic human right. We respect a lot free time out of work. We basically promote leisure, tourism and sports.
Q. Do you think there are possibilities that e-Sport can receive favorable response from Uruguayan people and the government?
In Uruguay, there are many companies developing software and many companies related to e-commerce and e-trade. Computers related activities have been always promoted by our government. So I think e-Sport, of course, has very wide range of possibilities to be developed in Uruguay. Nowadays, we import game from US, Japan and etc and many people play them. However, nothing is very organized at this moment. So I think Uruguay can start and actually participate in e-Sport with the help of IeSF European members.
