Ronald “Roro” Robins, father of Philippine eSports, Tuesday, April 7, called on eSports enthusiasts to”drop their pride” and “step up” to create an association that would “represent” the gaming community in the country.

“What eSports need now is a pro-active group that would represent the gaming industry, a formal association with its own rules and bylaws to represent the entire eSports and gaming community… I am encouraging those who truly care for eSports to drop your pride and step up in the name of the Philippine gaming community,” Roro wrote on his Facebook account.

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“Whenever an issue is raised, there will always be two sides of the story. Unfortunately in the case of eSports, it has always been one way and it is always against our community,” Roro added in his Facebook post.

Roro told eSports by INQUIRER.net in an email that the association would be a “consolidation” of various organizations in the eSports industry. Having such an “association” would give Philippine eSports a “more credible voice”, Roro said.

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“One thing for sure is that it would be having an official spokesperson for the community and eSports development as a whole (a mixture of perspectives from publishers, personalities, event organizers and teams), [making] it much [broader] compared to the previous commission composed of organizers and managers alone,” Roro said in an email interview.

One is not enough

“In my belief no private entity can represent an entire community.”

Roro said when asked about the existence of two eSports organization in the country: National eSports Commission (NESC) and Philippine eSports Organization (PeSO).

“I consider PESO more of a well connected event organizer who has their own set of goals which are also important for the community but that alone is still not enough. We need a much bigger network of people working together to be able to pull off something like this,” Roro said.

Roro, CEO of Mineski Corporation, founded the NESC in 2013 to address issues in the industry. The commission penalized the involved players and parties in the August 2014 match-fixing scandal. The NESC also helped Korea-based Dota 2 team, Rave-Dota (Rave), in their request for an expedited process of their US visa application.

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Meeanwhile, PeSO Executive Director Irymarc “Tryke” Gutierrez expressed his support for Roro’s call to form an eSports association, saying that it indeed needs a “collective effort” and “compromise” from various organizations “for eSports to get to mainstream.”

“He (Roro) is right in saying that the key is for different organizations to swallow their pride and find a middle ground where everyone can work together. What he wants is not an easy task but definitely [rewarding] if it actually happens,” Tryke said in an exclusive interview. “It will take a lot of hard work and compromise [from] everyone involved; but if all the gaming organizations [are really] true to their words in saying that they want the best for the eSports industry, [then] this can actually happen.”

PeSO is part of the International eSports Federation (IeSF), a global proactive eSports organization that aims to “standardize the rules and regulations of eSports in the world and to push for eSports to become an actual sports.”

“We are among the 60+ member countries of IeSF and I believe that IeSF is similar to what Roro wants to build in the Philippines but with a slightly different goal. [Because] his main goal is to create a neutral entity that will help address the issues and needs of the eSports community,” Tryke said.

Photo banner grabbed from Spin.ph

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