TheJakartaPost
Please Update your browser
Your browser is out of date, and may not be compatible with our website. A list of the most popular web browsers can be found below.
Just click on the icons to get to the download page.
No underdog: Time to acknowledge great force of Indonesian e-sports
Change text size
Gift Premium Articles
to Anyone
Share the best of The Jakarta Post with friends, family, or colleagues. As a subscriber, you can gift 3 to 5 articles each month that anyone can read—no subscription needed!
T
he world has seen Indonesian e-sports players win championships. The only thing left is for other Indonesians to see its greatness as they do other sports.
In recent months, e-sports has taken Indonesians on social media by storm. Just earlier this month, an Indonesian e-sports team surprised many by winning an international competition against the holding champions. Twitter trending topics bearing the team’s name then started popping out left and right.
That team was BOOM (Beast on Our Mind) Esports, a multinational e-sports organization from Indonesia established in 2016. They just won the Gamers Galaxy series in Dubai, the United Arab Emirates on March 7, effectively becoming Southeast Asia’s current biggest team, even ranking second worldwide just below the Chinese giant PSG.LGD.
Speaking to The Jakarta Post on Mar. 11, the team’s CEO and founder Gary Ongko Putera was beaming with joy.
“Very happy, of course,” Gary said about BOOM’s success. “To be honest, I was a bit moved.”
That feeling was shared by those who follow Dota 2, the biggest e-sports game in the world with a prize of more than US$40 million.
“I do feel proud, but I feel happier because at least Indonesians can finally show off [their talents] in big international tournaments,” 22-year-old e-sports enthusiast Fernanda Dimas said.
Dimas, a casual player since 2015, heaped praises on BOOM’s win and Indonesian e-sports representation in recent years; an excitement similar to someone seeing their national soccer team get into the World Cup. But unlike traditional sports, e-sports’ credibility and audience took a long time to grow in Indonesia.
Late bloomer
Before BOOM, Gary Ongko was already a tournament player in high school before he continued his study in the United States, pursuing degrees in economics. Throughout that time, he was still keeping up with the e-sports scene and watched the games.
“After I finished my master’s degree in 2016, suddenly e-sports was really growing in Western countries — the US, Europe. To get just Rp 10,000 (70 US cents) when I competed in tournaments in high school was already thrilling, but suddenly the prizes in this business turned into millions of dollars. So I was like, ‘Wow, what’s going on?’” Gary said.
At the time, he noticed that some Americans had started wearing jerseys of e-sports teams around town, showing its mainstream popularity. A major competition was even broadcast on the US prime-time TV channel TNT at 7 p.m., right before NBA basketball matches.
“So when I went back to Indonesia in late 2016, [...] I made BOOM Esports as a side hobby and side job,” he said.
But BOOM was only the third ever e-sports organization in Indonesia back then, and Gary knew the hard path ahead of him.
“Ever since the start, I always felt like Indonesia was always a step behind in sports,” he said, especially in the digital realm, where a lot of people still look down on professional e-sports players and label them as mere “gamers”.
The country’s slow trajectory in e-sports baffled Gary because he knew that millions of Indonesian students excelled at computer sciences and mathematics and had won many tournaments.
“We might have it tough in traditional sports, but why on Earth couldn’t we beat the world in e-sports? We have over 240 million people, we have very smart youths, why can’t I find five Indonesian players to go against the world?” he wondered.
Pay off and global renown
“Initially, my parents were quite against me [being a professional player],” BOOM’s only Indonesian player in Dota 2, Saieful “Fbz” Ilham told the Post on Mar. 12.
Now one of the highest-ranking players in the scene, Fbz started out rough—balancing e-sports and school life at SMAN 16 state senior high school in Makassar, South Sulawesi.
“I would go directly to a warnet (internet café) after school ended at 1 p.m. and stay there until midnight to train myself,” he recalled. He often got into arguments with his parents since he would wake up late for school.
“But I always believed I could make it in e-sports, so I kept pursuing it,” he said.
As luck would have it, things started looking up for e-sports in Indonesia from 2018 onward. More domestic tournaments were endorsed by celebrities and sponsored by various brands, like the one from online shopping platform Tokopedia IESPL (Indonesia E-Sports Premier League). Not to mention the explosion of mobile gaming trends in Indonesia.
“Since then, more youngsters said they wanted to be a professional e-sports player when asked [about their dream job],” Gary said.
The nation’s biggest breakthrough and fame possibly came from Kenny “Xepher” Deo and Matthew “Whitemon” Filemon, who became the first two Indonesian players to play in the prestigious, World-Cup-equivalent The International in 2021, the competition’s 10th year. Xepher’s viral interview captured how big of a deal it was, in which he said “Mama, aku di TI!” (Mom, I’m in TI!), and which became a trending topic and raked in thousands of views from international viewers.
Xepher and Whitemon, recruited by the South Korean team T1 in late 2020 and early 2021 respectively, are some of the few household names from Indonesia in the Dota 2 international scene.
“When Dota 2 came out and The International tournament existed, I was just determined to reach for success internationally,” Xepher told the Post on Mar. 15. Unlike the relatively new Whitemon who started out in 2018, he has been in the industry since 2014.
But for Whitemon, the road was nothing short of easy.
“I also had to make a lot of sacrifices when I was still in school, like spending so much time training instead of hanging out with my friends,” Whitemon shared. And since he often lost many games back then, his pocket money spending saw no return.
Grateful to be able to play in The International, their next objective now is to win it, a dream both Indonesian players and viewers are dying to see happen.
More to come
With the recent success stories, Indonesian e-sports teams and players are now seen as big figures among other Southeast Asian countries, despite initially trailing behind.
“There is an improvement, for sure. A drastic one,” Dimas said. “When I saw Xepher and Whitemon being interviewed on TV, I was like, ‘God, how amazing is this?’ There used to be only European or Chinese players there,” he gushed.
Gary hopes Indonesia can be the e-sports hub of Southeast Asia in the following years, while Dimas expects more Indonesian players to play on the international level. This is also the wish of other players outside the Dota 2 game.
“My goal is [to] hopefully represent Indonesia and Southeast Asia and keep winning the tournaments around the region every year,” said 22-year-old BOOM player Saibani “Bani” Rahmad to the Post on Mar. 11.
Bani is a player of the similarly popular game VALORANT whose team just won first place in a recent tournament. And now they will compete in the game’s famed Champions Tour, where other teams across the world will meet.
With all his players currently thriving in many competitions, Gary is sure that this is only the start, both for his team and Indonesia.
“The future is bright,” Gary said.
