China has pushed the development of electronic sports, or e-sports up a notch as it begins offering a degree program for the emerging field.
The Ministry of Education is set to launch the "Electronic competitive sports and management" program to be offered by vocational schools in 2017, along with 13 other new courses for vocational schools, GB Times reported. The new course will be categorized under sports and education, the Ministry said.
A school in Xilingol, Inner Mongolia has already begun offering a similar course in August in cooperation with several local e-sports companies.
The Chinese General Sports Administration first recognized electronic sports as a legitimate sporting event in 2003 and further redefined in 2009.
Creating the new program is said to be part of China's effort to cater to the growing e-sports industry in the country. In 2015, the market has reportedly generated revenues of more than 26.9 billion yuan ($4 billion) and is expected to grow even larger in the4 coming years.
China is also fast rising in prominence in the international e-sports competition scene, with several Chinese players bringing home fame and fortune. In August, Chinese team Wings bagged the biggest prize to date offered in a gaming tournament, taking home the 60 million yuan ($9 billion) top prize at the TI6 DOTA 2 World Championships in Seattle.
However, while members of the Chinese e-sports community welcomed the development, they also admitted that there is still a long way to go before the field can be fully established professionally.
According to Li Ailong, president of the Inner Mongolia e-sports association and the one who spearheaded the current program, manpower is still a big matter of concern.
Li noted that many of the practitioners in the field do not have professional training and said that it often takes two to three months to train new talents, China Daily reported.
Meanwhile, Yang Shaohua, marketing head for the online streaming platform Panda TV, said that the4re are still not that many widely influential games around, thus schools offering the new program should first do trial runs to see how the public respond.
Yang also suggested that the program should focus more on training program directors and other industry practitioners instead of directly handling professional gamers.