The country is in absolute shambles, but Sri Lankans, ever the avid cricket fans, have been afforded a brief moment of reprieve thanks to the ongoing Australia tour of Sri Lanka. The Lankan cricket team has been squaring off with the Aussie team in a series of T20 matches, winning the ODIs, and now we await the test matches starting July. The passion shown for cricket in these most trying times has been a true testament to the power of organised sports.
While cricket has always been a Lankan staple, organised sports and sporting events have always played a significant role in the cultural zeitgeist for most communities in every part of the world. They represent a beautiful moment where people come together to showcase skill and talent (as athletes), where people become a part of something bigger than themselves (as spectators), and also present great opportunities for advertisers and corporates to rake in the bucks.
While the arena of sports has historically focused on activities like cricket and other traditional sports, as of recent times competitive sporting events have expanded to include sports in the electronic medium as well with esports – the competitive play of video games.
Teenagers everywhere aggressively immersed in their gameplay while their moms loom over them desperately yelling that they can’t actually play video games for a living finally have the perfect comeback – it turns out that if you really want to, you can actually play video games for a living. While this has certainly been the case in many parts of the world for some time now, thanks to companies like Gamer.LK, Sri Lankans too can have a chance at becoming professional esport athletes.
Gamer.LK
Esports in our country is a flourishing industry and it would appear that rising numbers of youth are getting involved, with the medium providing some great opportunities for young Sri Lankans. While the infrastructure to facilitate professional esports is still a work in progress, companies like Gamer.LK have got the ball rolling with numerous initiatives already underway.
Given that esports is a fairly new concept to us islanders, Brunch had a chat with Sri Lanka Esports Association Founder and President and Gamer.LK CEO Raveen Wijayatilake to discuss Gamer.LK and what Sri Lanka’s future looks like in this new realm of electronic sports.
Wijayatilake shared that Gamer.LK first started as a gaming community around 2007 in the pre-Facebook era, back when online communities convened via online forums. The website providing the platform was Gamer.LK, which provided a space where gaming enthusiasts would gather to talk about games. This then turned into a conversation on “why stop at talking about games, why not play with each other?” – which in turn led to organising online tournaments.
Wijayatilake noted that their first Sri Lanka Cyber Games event was held at the BMICH in 2008, which went on for a decade until 2018, and since then it had grown into a “massive youth cultural movement”.
According to Wijayatilake, the more recent editions of Sri Lanka Cyber Games took place across three days with approximately 3,000 people taking part in esports and about 10,000 people walking in. The event came complete with a festival atmosphere, featuring not only gamers but also cosplayers, exhibition booths showcasing the latest technology in Sri Lanka and related merchandise, and a main stage with the final event being Rs. 1 million in prize money.
The company has continued to grow, with Wijayatilake noting that Gamer.LK was now a local brand that had since pivoted into a global esports service company providing digital marketing specifically focused on esports for brands, with clients like Dell, Samsung, and Tencent Games seeking out its marketing services.
“We specialise in esports, so this experience we had from Sri Lanka – building up the whole esports ecosystem in the country – led to us expanding to the rest of the world,” he said. “Brands come to us saying that they want to connect with gamers, asking how we can help them do that in countries they are active in, and we then provide those services.”
Esports in Sri Lanka
Wijayatilake shared that when it came to those who play video games in Sri Lanka, there was a spectrum that ranged from hyper-casual to esport athletes. He noted that this spectrum included about four to five million people who were interested in video games, including casual mobile games like Candy Crush. He added that as a company, Gamer.LK organised three events, which they referred to internally as ‘the majors’ – an inter-school Esports Championship, a championship at university and mercantile level, and beyond that the Sri Lanka Cyber Games at national level.
The 2019 Esports Championship had about 150 schools taking part – an unprecedented level of participation considering that there aren’t any other sporting events with that many schools taking part from across the island. Wijayatilake stated that when they first started holding the inter-school events back in 2016, everyone, including parents and teachers, were very uncertain about it. However, because they held physical events throughout, they had the opportunity to interact with the parents and schools, which enabled conversations that helped them understand the potential of the sport.
“The perception of video games is somewhat negative amongst older generations. We were able to explain that this was a path one could take, just like any other sport. That it takes the same discipline and strategy as any other sport, which changed many of the perceptions they had,” he noted.
Can anyone play?
When it comes to esports there are many different types of games and Wijayatilake noted that the industry had been included in global events like the Asian Games, recognised by the Olympic Committee of Asia, and included seven different titles with some games played on a PC, others on a console, and the rest on a mobile phone.
He shared that there was an economic aspect to esports as well depending on what games you wished to excel in, considering that certain games were suited for certain mediums and what one played depended on what one could afford. “Especially with the dollar rate going up, a gaming PC can easily go up to Rs. 500,000-600,000,” he noted.
He said that in South Asia, mobile phone games were the most popular as Asia had a huge mobile penetration.
In Sri Lanka, for mobile games, he noted that games like PUBG and Garena Free Fire were extremely popular and when it came to PC games there was a game called Valorant, which was built for lower-end computers and therefore was very popular. “What’s important is the publisher. The developer for the game organises their own events and if they concentrate on your region, that means the players in your country have the opportunity to take part in these leagues. They usually have large prize pools, and if you win these official tournaments you’re going to get yourself a good amount of exposure,” Wijayatilake explained.
Representing Sri Lanka in esports
In Sri Lanka esports was recognised as an official sport in September 2019, gazetted as the 70th sport in the country, with the governing body named being the Sri Lanka Esports Association.
Wijayatilake shared that through the Association, Sri Lanka sends national esports athletes to events held internationally. The Asian Games that were supposed to be held in 2022 was to include esports as a medal event where esports athletes could bring home a medal just like traditional athletes. The first step to include esports at the Commonwealth Games was taken this year as well, with a demonstration sport being organised. The Commonwealth Esports Championship Qualifiers are currently taking place, where Sri Lanka is taking part and the country has also been invited to the e-racing world cup.
Before a player is able to represent the country though, Wijayatilake noted that there was a selection process, where a selection committee would be appointed to select the representatives much like any other sport, as required by the Sports Ministry.
He noted however that if you were an esports athlete looking at participating in numerous private events with huge prize pools, much like the PUBG Mobile Pro League, there were events that athletes could train for and participate in, in a private capacity.
How has Sri Lanka’s current situation affected Gamer.LK?
Wijayatilake noted that when they started, their revenue was largely based on sponsorships, which would come in through large-scale events they would host. However, as soon as the pandemic hit, he said that a large chunk of their revenue was simply wiped out. This then led to them pivoting from an esports events company to an esports services company, which gave them the opportunity to provide services for anyone outside of the island as well.
“Therefore, despite the economic situation in Sri Lanka and our revenue from local companies shrinking, our revenue from the wider global audience has increased greatly and that is how we have been able to grow. We have given our team a ‘cost of living buff’ and we’ve been able to do things like that because there is a certain amount of dollars flowing into the country and into our bank accounts because of these services.”
Wijayatilake shared that they liked to believe in a silver lining as they had been able to fast-track their growth thanks to being forced to expand rapidly to stay afloat.
On a closing note, Wijayatilake said that their basic goal as an organisation was to develop esports up to a point where professional athletes could actually make a living off it. “This means that it is our responsibility to build an ecosystem that is lucrative and able to sustain everyone involved.”
Esports is currently positioned more as a serious hobby than a profession and Gamer.LK’s goal is to get it to that next level as fast as possible.