JAKARTA, March 26 (Xinhua) -- The Indonesian government will build communities of e-sports in a bid to foster its development in the country, the youth and sport minister Imam Nahrawi said here on Tuesday.
"The most important thing in developing e-sports is how to set up sporting communities, from the upstream sector to the downstream side," he said.
Nahrawi noted that the ministry has an important role in promoting the sport across the country.
"The focus is how to make e-sports acceptable in communities and become a favorite pastime among them," he said.
In addition to being categorized as a sport, e-sports is also classified as an industry which has potential to be tapped into, according to Triawan Munaf, head of Indonesia's creative economy council.
"Here, we compete to create attractive games so that they can be sold and even staged at international competitions," he said.
Indonesia is to host an e-sports international championship from March 29 to 31 in the capital Jakarta, with participants from Thailand, Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia and Singapore.
The Indonesian e-sports team has set a target of winning two gold medals at the Southeast Asian Games in the Philippines this year, according to the country's e-sports association.
