by Burak Akinci
ANKARA, Dec. 8 (Xinhua) -- Just like football players play football together, eSports players play computer games against each other. Turkey is building a name in the game industry.
ESports doesn't just take place inside living rooms between friends and family. Huge eSports tournaments on such games as League of Legends now take place with significant prize all over the world in big arenas with large crowds, including Istanbul, Turkey's biggest city and economic hub.
League of Legends summer league finals at Ulker Arena in Istanbul, which has a 12,000 capacity, is always sold out, constituting a major eSports event in Turkey.
People have been playing computer games for over 30 years. But since the dawn of the new millennia, personal computers and the internet have become cheaper and thus popular.
Turkish people may have encountered computer games later than many westerners, but they wasted no time in catching up and the modern Turkish game industry is reputed to be one of the most rapidly growing markets of the world.
"I've been playing computer games since I was 5 years old, my mother also played video games," Beril Ozge Damaci, a gamer from Ankara told Xinhua.
This young women aged 23 is on her senior year of history studies in Yildirim Beyazit University in the Turkish capital, and is also one of the leading students of her eSports club and the editor-in-chief of a local computer games website.
Now that she is finishing her degree and need to focus on her studies, Beril said she plays less than an hour in week days but around 5 on weekends.
She prefers single user games and not violent ones, which "are giving a bad rap for eSport in general," as parents fear the games would increase aggression in children.
"During the last ten years, we saw the computer game industry in Turkey moving up from the subculture to a recognized, legal ground," she added.
A very recent study conducted at the University of York and published in the journal Entertainment Computer suggested that there's no evidence to support any theory that video games make players more violent.
There is a huge potential in Turkey with a young population. The country is home to 81 million people with an average age under 30. More than 60 percent of the population is online and 30 million Turks regularly play video games.
According to the eSports report by Turkey's Youth and Sports Ministry, there are 15,000 amateur eSport teams across the country amid a growing popularity for eSports globally and domestically.
With nearly 880 millions U.S. dollars generated this year from digital games and 4 million fans and followers in Turkey, an official eSports federation was established in April, 2018.
Now, almost all big sports team in Turkey like Fenerbahce, Galatasaray and Besiktas have their own eSport teams and are present in this booming sector where players and fans are mostly students creating correlation with education.
"We want to become one of the leading countries in the world in eSports. Our aim is to represent Turkey the best we can in international competitions," Esat Kahyaoglu, the vice chairman of the eSports federation told Xinhua.
This 33 year-old businessman from Istanbul is also a gamer, who is confident that his country will become soon the 51th member of the International Esport Federation (IESF).
"Turkey ranks actually 18th behind giants from the United States, China and South Korea in the gaming industry, and we would like to see our country higher up in this list," said Kahyaoglu.
He gave the example of Zula, a first Massive Multiplayer Online First Shooting Game (MMOFPS). Turkish game are played in 100 different countries in 11 different languages.
Kahyaoglu also emphasized that in many countries, games are used in education intensively. They are working on projects to create events and curriculum material so that new generations can learn eSport better.
"We want to change the unfounded concept that 'games are bad for you.' We want to explain to everyone that games are good as long as you live your life fully," he insisted.
