As the saying goes – seek and you shall find.

That has always been the mantra of us over here at Kakuchopurei.com. If and when we have queries about some particular topic, we go straight to the source for answers.

So being nosy-slash-curious to as what the recently-elected Minister of Youth and Sports, Yang Berhormat Tuan Syed Saddiq Abdul Rahman, has in store, our very own Kenn posted this tweet about a year ago.

Hey!
Sure. Just need to find the right timing. Please do plan a time/date with @Amshar_Aziz /@hafriziqbal .
Looking forward to it!

— Syed Saddiq (@SyedSaddiq) November 24, 2018

After a series of false starts and rescheduling, we finally locked in the date for the interview and last week, what has been just slightly over a year in the making finally came to fruition.

We found ourselves at the Malaysian Ministry of Youth and Sports office building in the administrative capital of Putrajaya where we spent time with the Minister himself. We talked about Malaysian esports, the recently-revealed national esports blueprint, grassroots development, ESM, Overwatch, and more just to set the record straight.

Full video right below.

Interview timestamps:

00:41 – Why talk a lot about esports in Malaysia?
04:55 – Convincing parents that esports isn’t a waste of time.
06:45 – The state of esports in Malaysia right now.
08:30 – ESM in a nutshell.
11:45 – Esports blueprint post-mortem & analysis.
16:49 – National Esports Arena: yay or nay?
22:10 – On game publishers handling esports games.
24:20 – Overwatch Malaysia withdrawal issue (https://www.kakuchopurei.com/2019/10/16/team-malaysia-withdraws-from-overwatch-world-cup-2019/)
27:04 – Closing statement