– Swedish politician Rickard Nordin, speaking to Glixel about his interest in streaming video games.
If you’re making games in 2017, you probably know that video game livestreaming platform Twitch is a good place to go if you want to talk directly to folks with a passion for games.
That’s part of the reason Gamasutra started its own regular Twitch streams last year, and it’s the whole reason that Swedish politician Rickard Nordin has started to stream Hearthstone on a weekly basis: he wants to have conversations with both viewers and his fellow politicians. More specifically, he wants to talk about eSports.
“I just want to level the playing field so that eSports is treated the same way as other sport,” Nordin, a member of Sweden’s House of Parliament, told Glixel in a recently-published interview. “I also want to promote all the good things about eSports. Team spirit, learning the English language, quick decision making, thinking strategically and logically and so on.”
“There are so many prejudices,” he continued.”About people sitting at their computers instead of playing outside and meeting their friends – to fight that I guess I will have plenty of work to do before it’s fully accepted in society.”
His full chat with Glixel is brief and well worth reading, as Nordin sheds some light on the state of Sweden’s eSports scene and how it is (or isn’t) being valued by members of the Swedish government.
Incidentally, Nordin says he intends to stream every Tuesday at 19:00 CET “at least until the summer”, so if you’re curious about his perspective on eSports and Swedish politics you might consider tuning into his channel; Nordin told Glixel that “even if I will mostly stream in Swedish I’ve promised to try and answer some English questions as well.”