YEP recently opened the inaugural season of the National Interschool Cyber League, a nationwide tournament open to all student teams at the collegiate level with a prize pool of about P150,000.

“For the application of the partnership, a representative from the Youth E-sports Program JP Borja reached out to the organization. Through collective decision, our president decided that we should accept the partnership proposal,” Brethren Ace de la Gente, one of the scouts of Komsai.Org said.

The partnership required the organization to participate in the different e-sports events associated with YEP, including NICL, where players will compete in a first-person shooter game called Valorant for the season’s first leg.

De la Gente also mentioned how the partnership would help boost the university’s profile as a gaming community since it will allow the participants to compete with other schools in the country and forge friendships with students from various backgrounds.

“If the students have the natural talent and work ethic, they can use this partnership as a way to strengthen their portfolio as a professional—given that they want to pursue that route in the future,” he said.

Krizzian Hernando, one of the players who applied to be part of the roster for the esports league, expressed the positive and negative impacts of gaming from his personal experience.

“One of the positive effects of gaming brought me is meeting new people and teaching me new skills. A negative effect I can think of is how much time I spend in a day by just playing,” Hernando said.

Another gamer who applied, Nathalie Young, shared the gender discrimination that she’s faced in the gaming community and what she thinks of it.

“Someone once said, ‘Kapag lalaki bobo, pero kapag babae sorry.’ I also often hear the phrase, ‘Hayaan mo na, babae kasi,’ being said by society to women. This implies that girls get either special treatment or skill discrimination. It is a stereotype that must be changed in the present so that e-sports will be a gender-equal community,” Young expressed.