THE country’s biggest e-sports festival with cash prize of Rs 20 million for the winners was held at Pakistan-China Friendship centre with a lot of zeal and enthusiasm shown by lovers of this format.
The conduct of this tournament itself is a clear manifestation of interest and talent of our youth in e-sports.
We appreciate the patron of Galaxy Racer Sheikh Ahmed Al Makhtoum and his entire team for organising this mega event in the country which indeed will go a long way in boosting country’s gaming ecosystem and nurture gaming talent, giving them a platform for competitive e-sports.
There are indeed great opportunities for the youth in gaming industry and one has seen in recent years, young gamers earning millions of dollars from it.
For instance, the top earning Pakistani gamer, Sumail Hassan, has earned around $3.8m by playing Dota 2.According to one estimate, up to $25m is earned locally across the industry each year.
Gaming industry in fact is not confined alone to playing games but also envisages several other categories including e-casting and game designing and development and so on.
Given the size of our population and lack of job opportunities, our youth may explore this area as well in order to become breadwinners for their families.
However it is also important for the youth to strike a right kind of balance in their studies and online games.
These games are highly addictive in nature and there are instances where this addiction has affected studies and normal life and many parents have become miserable.
There are also studies that indicate that spending long hours on these games badly impact physical and mental health of children.
When gaming addiction takes over, children and young people do not care about their sleep, diet and hygiene.
In Pakistan also, incidents of suicide have surfaced after players failed to complete a particular mission in a game.
According to some estimates, China makes up around 25% of the global video game industry.
The sector grew stronger during the pandemic.Sales revenue of cloud gaming and e-sports grew by 79.35% and 53.69% respectively, during the first half of 2020.
Regardless of this, China has been trying to limit the negative influence of gaming on its young population for the past few years.
After experiencing that their children log inordinately long hours playing online games, the Chinese government in recent months issued sweeping regulations giving children under the age of eighteen a three-hour window to play video games per week.
We also need to do something to save our children below eighteen from this dark aspect of game addiction and in this regard educational institutions can play an important role to lead the children.
There should be proper counselling which takes the children towards healthy lifestyle and helps them distinguish between positive and negative effects of technology.
