After months and months of being promised a comprehensive national esports blueprint, the Malaysian Ministry of Youth and Sports (KBS) has finally demystified its plans for local esports from 2020 to 2025 via a launch event last night.

As usual, Syed Saddiq begins his speech at an esports-related event by reminding everyone yet again that he used to play DOTA back in the day.

Carried out at Dewan Tunku Chancellor in University Malaya in the cover of night, Youth and Sports Minister Syed Saddiq took the stage to announce and share with us the basics of what’s called the Strategic Plan For Esports Development 2020-2025. The full blueprint itself is 144 pages long cover to cover, so I’ll save the juicy details for later and give you guys a basic rundown of what’s what.

A blueprint is drafted so that goals may be reached and the biggest mission that the KBS seeks to accomplish is to “propel Malaysian esports to greater heights and put Malaysia on the map as Southeast Asia’s most active and attractive centre for esports excellence“. As Saddiq himself repeated many times in his speech last night, “together” is how it will all be done.

There are 5 strategic priorities outlined in the blueprint:

1. Develop Athletes For Esports Excellence

2. Towards Responsible Gaming And Esports Ethics

3. Better Access To Esports Infrastructure

4. Build A Sustainable Esports Ecosystem

5. Institute Good Law And Governance

Saddiq handing the physical copy of the blueprint to Esports Malaysia (ESM) President Dato’ Ananth S. Nathan.

Basically, the bigger picture here is to focus on making esports a sustainable industry that will continue to grow alongside other sports in Malaysia. Saddiq acknowledges that 2018 and 2019 have been years full of firsts for Malaysia (KL Major, Mobile Legends M1, PMCO) and wants to ensure that major esports organisations continue to choose Malaysia as their prime destination.

Also officially revealed at the launch event were the blueprint task force committee members who until last night have been shrouded in mystery. Here’s who they are and some background information on them:

• Frank Ng Shun Ming

  • Executive Chairman of Esports Business Networking (EBN) Sdn
    Bhd.
  • EBN owns TGC Marketing, Prime Live, Orange Internet Cafe and Orange
    Esports.
  • Selected to be part of task force thanks to his “experience as an active esports industry player”.

• Ramona Azween Binti Zaharuddin

  • Professional CS:GO player who is currently captain of China-based Tyloo.fe CS:GO team.
  • Formerly captain of Malaysia’s best female CS:GO team Orange.Sphynx.

• Michelle Low

  • Head of Marketing at Agri Mind Sdn Bhd, a strategic partner of WESG in Southeast Asia.
  • Active member of KL Table Tennis Association.
  • Has worked with KBS and Olympic Council Malaysia since 1998.

Ramona Azween, professional CS:GO player and member of the blueprint task force committee.

One particularly interesting priority of the blueprint that Saddiq highlighted in his speech was women participation in esports. In one of the slides shown at the event, it was stated that Malaysia already has a 50/50 male-female participation whether it’d be casual or professional players. Saddiq didn’t mention where and how his ministry got these numbers, but they really need to be scrutinised.

That’s pretty much all you guys need to know about the KBS esports blueprint. What’s been written in this article only scratches the surface, so I implore you to download and read the full blueprint.

To download the esports blueprint slides shown at the launch event, click here. For the full blueprint book, click here. For more updates and news on Malaysian esports, stay tuned on Kakuchopurei.