\n
\n
\n
![\"\"](\"/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Mineski_fg-01.png\")
\n", "content_text": " ", "date_published": "2019-11-18T11:42:46+08:00", "date_modified": "2019-11-18T11:42:46+08:00", "authors": [ { "name": "大象传媒", "url": "/author/rgentribirthfurd/", "avatar": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/9965230d2fd009579b4e8df9a934f6d1021b1ee67e60bcb4cad3b7249a2900ce?s=512&d=mm&r=g" } ], "author": { "name": "大象传媒", "url": "/author/rgentribirthfurd/", "avatar": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/9965230d2fd009579b4e8df9a934f6d1021b1ee67e60bcb4cad3b7249a2900ce?s=512&d=mm&r=g" }, "tags": [ "Page One", "sufeatured", "Longform", "Video" ] }, { "id": "/?p=227107", "url": "/video/2019/04/30/227107/how-mineskis-growth-mirrors-the-growth-of-the-local-esports-industry/", "title": "How Mineski\u2019s growth mirrors the growth of the local esports industry", "content_html": "
Reporting
\nMark Louis F. Ferrolino
Video
\nPaolo L. Lopez
Illustration
\nFortunato V. Da\u00f1as
Editor
\nSam L. Marcelo
Ronald Robins, founder and chief executive officer of the largest electronic sports (esports) organization in Southeast Asia, dreamed about a plane crash and an attendant who, in the middle of that horrifying scenario, kept calling him \u201cMineski.\u201d
\nThe day after the nightmare, Mr. Robins, a professional Dota player then, changed his in-game name to \u201crhomineski.\u201d In the 15 years since he was baptized \u201cMineski\u201d in a dream, Mr. Robins managed to turn the portentous term into a mainstream brand: one cannot talk about the thriving esports scene in the country without mentioning Mineski.
\nMineski, in the world of esports, refers to several things under the umbrella of Mineski Corporation. It can be a professional gaming team under the Mineski Pro Team; a cybercaf\u00e9 franchise by Mineski Franchise Corp.; or the Mineski Events Team (MET), which organizes big esports events in Southeast Asia.
\nIn an interview with 大象传媒, Mr. Robins said that Mineski began as a gaming team he founded with like-minded friends. That was 2004, when it was nearly impossible to make a full-time career out of video gaming.
\nEsports back then was a relatively new concept and tournaments were limited to weekend LAN (local area network) parties. There were no regional and global championships, no support from organizations. \u201cEsports before was basically a leap of faith,\u201d Mr. Robins said. \u201cThere was that big uncertainty.\u201d
\nDespite these risks, Mr. Robins\u2019 team persevered. They reaped the rewards when larger tournaments started coming in and their team rose in popularity after bagging numerous championships. Mineski was considered one of the strongest Dota squads in the Philippines and represented the country in several regional competitions.
\nJust like other teams, Mineski faced the struggle of looking for computer shops with high-end gaming facilities. That is why, in 2008, Mr. Robins and his partners decided to open the first branch of Mineski Infinity in Taft, Manila.
\nUnlike other cybercaf\u00e9s with bulky cathode-ray tube monitors and slow-running computers, Mineski Infinity was the first to house computers with flat-panel LED monitors and quad-core processors. As the first-of-its-kind cybercaf\u00e9, Mr. Robins\u2019 team immediately received requests to open other branches in other locations.
\nTeam Mineski, meanwhile, continued to dominate Dota competitions in the country, up to the point where none of the local teams could break Mineski\u2019s stranglehold on the game. This, on the other hand, resulted in a way of thinking called \u201cnew blood mentality\u201d in gaming circles. The term refers to the mentality of new teams who don\u2019t want to compete with strong teams, lobbying instead for the banning of highly experienced teams in tournaments under the guise of a level playing field.
\n\u201cAt that point in time, I saw this as a big problem,\u201d Mr. Robins said, adding that new teams can\u2019t improve their gameplay if they don\u2019t compete with the best.
\nThis issue paved the way for Mineski\u2019s third arm, MET, and its aim of creating a series of tournaments that would act as a gateway into the competitive sphere of gaming.
\nIn 2009, despite a successful career in the pro gaming scene, Mr. Robins decided to step down from the limelight and focus on the business instead. It was a ballsy move for someone who was considered one of the country\u2019s most influential players of his time.
\n\u201cIt was really a big decision for me. I realized that there was a bigger purpose for me rather than just play,\u201d he said, adding that quitting as a player would allow him to concentrate on doing his part in making the gaming industry sustainable for future generations of gamers.
\nSHAPING THE ESPORTS ECOSYSTEM
\nThrough the years, Mineski\u2019s three main business units have evolved on their own paths, shaping the country\u2019s esports ecosystem along the way.
\nAt present, Mineski Pro Team not only refers to an iconic Dota team; it now features teams across multiple competitive titles, including League of Legends (LoL), Overwatch, and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO). The organization has a good history of managing its players, who now have the legal protections and benefits due an esports athlete.
\nMeanwhile, from a single branch of Mineski Infinity in Manila, the company now boasts a network of 150 cybercaf\u00e9 branches across the Philippines, Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia. Plans to expand to other countries in the next three years are already in the pipeline, Mr. Robins said.
\nWhile Mineski\u2019s professional teams continue to make waves abroad and Mineski\u2019s cybercaf\u00e9 business keeps on expanding its network, MET has remained committed to its mission of popularizing esports in the country and across the region.
\nThe events team has established itself as the premier organizer of large-scale esports events in Southeast Asia. Among these events are the Pinoy Gaming Festival,\u00a0Mineski Pro-Gaming League, CrossFire Stars Invitational, and The Manila Masters.
\nTOO BIG, TOO FAST
\nMineski\u2019s trajectory mirrors the growth of Philippine esports, which Mr. Robins believes to be an emerging industry with enormous potential. Mineski is still on track to legitimize professional video gaming as a \u201creal\u201d sport. The company has been working closely with the Games and Amusements Board (GAB), the government-run regulatory body of professional sports in the country, for this matter. In 2017, GAB allowed professional esports players to secure athletic licenses, making it easier for them to secure visas when competing internationally.
\nThe biggest breakthrough, so far, is the inclusion of six esports titles in the 30th edition of the Southeast Asian Games, to be held in the country at the end of the year. Five of the six games have been named: Dota 2, Starcraft II, Tekken 7, Arena of Valor, and\u00a0Mobile Legends: Bang Bang.
\nMr. Robins hopes that more firms and brands will invest in the industry, whether by partnering with esports event organizers or sponsoring players and teams. Aside from helping the industry grow further, such investments, according to Mr. Robins, bring value to the investing companies, especially to those who want to tap younger demographics.
\nMarket research company GlobalWebIndex said in its 2018 ESports Trends Report that esports fans are more likely to be young, male and affluent \u2013 a demographic which marketers are finding increasingly difficult to reach. The firm noted that majority or 71% of esports audience is male, while around 73% aged from 16 to 34.
\nOver the past years, the eSports industry has grown at a tremendous pace. Market intelligence and analytics firm Newzoo said in its 2019 Global ESports Market Report that the global esports revenues will reach an impressive $1.1 billion this year, the first billion-dollar year for the industry with a revenue increase of 26.7% year-over-year.
\nConsidering viewership, esports have attracted massive followings comparable to traditional sports. The League of Legends World Championship, for instance, attracted 99.6 million unique viewers in 2018 for the final series. This is a lot closer to 103.39 million viewers of the National Football League’s Super Bowl, the most-watched sporting event in America, in the same year.
\nMany of Mineski\u2019s plans involve improving the sustainability of the industry and attracting more investments. \u201cWe know that this industry is too big for us. It\u2019s growing too fast beyond the control of our company. That\u2019s why we always entertain third-party partners,\u201d Mr. Robins said.
\n![\"\"](\"/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Enter-the-dragon_fg-02.png\")
Reporting
\nBjorn Biel Beltran
Video
\nNina M. Diaz
\nPaolo L. Lopez
Illustration
\nFortunato V. Da\u00f1as
Editor
\nSam L. Marcelo
Only one of them plays full-time. In fact, two of their players are still in school. Yet despite the circumstances, the Sterling Global Dragons (SG Dragons) professional esports team for Mobile Legends: Bang Bang made it big in the second season of the game\u2019s official Philippine professional league this January.
\nFrom placing eighth prior to the finals of the second season of the Mobile Legends: Bang Bang Professional League (MPL) Philippines, the team came from behind to secure the first runner-up spot against big-name rivals like Execration, Aether Main, and \u00a0ArkAngel.
\nThey might not have taken home the trophy \u2014 and the $25,000 cash prize \u2014 but it sparked enough to whet their appetites for the next tourney. Particularly, the Mobile Legends segment of The Nationals later in the year, the country\u2019s first franchise-based electronic sports league, in which SG Dragons will be competing as PLDT-Smart Omega.
\nThe win also gave them the hope that, despite their unusual situation, they have yet to unlock the full potential of their players.
\n\u201cOut of the teams that competed at the finals of MPL Season 2, we were the only ones who play part-time,\u201d Jules Carmann Marcelo, who plays as \u201cDragons Lex,\u201d said in the vernacular in an interview. \u201cOf course, that came with advantages and disadvantages.\u201d
\n\u201cThe disadvantage was the other teams can practice all day, when we cannot. The advantage, however, is whenever we practice we have the eagerness to play. When you play full time, you tend to take time for granted. There\u2019s this attitude that comes with playing full-time that might make you mismanage your time.\u201d
\nHe pointed out that full-timers are more likely to be \u201ctilted,\u201d the gaming or gambling term for an unbalanced state of mind usually caused by a big loss. As in games like poker, tilted players play below their usual ability, making riskier and more aggressive decisions in an effort to quickly recover their losses.
\n\u201cFor us, our advantage is whenever we do get to practice, we take that practice seriously because we\u2019re all eager to play,\u201d he said.
\nDiffering backgrounds, same goal
\nQuality matters over quantity, especially if the team only really gets to practice for two to three hours a day, when its members have come home from school, or have otherwise finished with their daily responsibilities. Mr. Marcelo, for one, is a director at the U.S.-based multi-level marketing company USANA Health Sciences, which has allowed him to be financially secure while giving him the time and freedom he needs to practice.
\nAt 33, he is the eldest professional esports player in the Philippines, if not the world. Mr. Marcelo proves to be an exception in an industry where discrimination based on age is a major issue.
\nRather than proving a hindrance to him, however, his age provides him with the maturity and stability that put him above many of his peers. He even admits that, if he were a few years younger, he probably would not have decided to go pro.
\n\u201cI\u2019m very lucky that although I\u2019m 33 years old, the timing was just right for me to be here. If it wasn\u2019t, if for example competitive Mobile Legends took off before I was stable, most likely I\u2019d choose my responsibilities over the game,\u201d he said in Filipino.
\n\u201cIt just so happens that the timing worked out, and I have my responsibilities settled. I can pursue my dreams now.\u201d
\nIn contrast, Karl Gabriel Nepomuceno, who plays for the team as \u201cDragons Karl,\u201d and who at 14 years old is the youngest pro player in the country, is still figuring things out. Still finishing up middle school, he is juggling the day-to-day pressures of schoolwork as an honor student with the rigors of competitive gaming. Of the skills in his disposal, time management, he said, is the most essential.
\n\u201cWhen I get home from school, I make sure to do my schoolwork first because I\u2019m an honor student. I do that first and afterward I can play any time,\u201d he said in Filipino.
\nMr. Nepomuceno is hoping his time management skills can get him through college, because despite all the successes they have achieved, and the ways they have yet to go, he still dreams of finishing his education.
\n\u201cIf they want me to go full-time, homeschooling is an option. But if it were up to me, I don\u2019t want to stop school. I want to do both,\u201d he said.
\nGiven his young age, his parents disapproved of his gaming at first, going as far as to turn off their internet to make sure he got enough sleep. Only when he started competing– and winning– at tournaments did he convince them to his side.
\nLikewise, for Steven Dale P. Vitug, 22, playing as \u201cDragons Dale,\u201d it was a challenge to get support from his loved ones when he was starting out.
\nAs a relatively new industry, professional gaming has yet to overcome conventional barriers regarding public acceptance. Many still view video games as a childish hobby, a far cry from the esteem generally given to professional athletes.
\nGrowing up, Mr. Vitug had to contend with the criticisms of his parents and relatives about his gaming habits, telling him to give it up, that he won\u2019t get anywhere just playing games. When he eventually had his own family, he realized he had to take their advice.
\n\u201cI had no choice then. I needed to abandon my love of games,\u201d he said in Filipino.
\n\u201cWhen you have a family, you can\u2019t do what you did as a teenager, going to computer shops all the time. What if you need to wash bottles, feed the baby? You can\u2019t do that anymore. You\u2019re not a teenager anymore. You have responsibilities.\u201d
\nMr. Vitug was working as a clerk at a convenience store when he got introduced to Mobile Legends, which then served as a fun pastime during work breaks and before bed. He got good at it, and when the opportunity came for him to play competitively, he found that he was at a crossroads.
\n\u201cBecause of my responsibilities to my family, I couldn\u2019t just leave them to play full-time. It got to a point when I was questioning whether I can feed my family from esports.\u201d
\n\u201cI asked my partner to be patient, to give me one last chance. If it didn\u2019t click, then I would quit trying to become a pro player. I\u2019ll stop,\u201d he said.
\nInasmuch as Mobile Legends caused friction between their relationship, the game also sparked life into another.
\nEarvin John Esperanza, 23, who plays as \u201cDragons Boo,\u201d never planned to enter the competitive gaming scene as a career. Like his teammate, Mr. Esperanza only found out about the game through a colleague, and it started out as a pleasant enough hobby that reminded him of his teenage years playing Defense of the Ancients, or Dota.
\nBut becoming skilled enough at Mobile Legends allowed Mr. Esperanza to rub shoulders with some of the country\u2019s best players, and the small connections he made playing the game changed his life far more than he expected.
\n\u201cAt first, I really didn\u2019t take it seriously. It was just a game,\u201d he said in Filipino.
\n\u201cBut it was through the game that I met the love of my life.\u201d
\nAlthough Mr. Esperanza could not pursue professional gaming full-time due to health issues, finding a kindred soul lit a fire in him that served as his inspiration to take the career more seriously.
\n\u201cI told myself I wanted to make her proud of me because we\u2019re both gamers. It\u2019s a joy to have someone who supports me,\u201d he said. He added that once he gets well enough, it\u2019s full throttle from there. \u201cIt\u2019ll be hard, but I can manage.\u201d
\nFor the love of the game
\nAs the team captain, 18-year-old Rico Jatico Esto, who plays as \u201cDragons Levi,\u201d is the one who bears the responsibility of making this team of part-time professional gamers work. But there is, perhaps, no one better qualified. Though still a senior high-school student himself, Mr. Esto has been following competitive video games for years, since esports celebrities like Lee \u201cFaker\u201d Sang-hyeok began making their names in games like League of Legends.
\nAs League of Legendsnwas one of \u2014 if not the most \u2014 popular game at the time, with around 67 million active monthly players at its peak, Mr. Esto found it difficult to compete at a high level on his own.
\n\u201cI thought at the time that maybe the game just wasn\u2019t for me, because it really was hard to find good teammates. I was always on solo queue,\u201d he said in Filipino.
\nWhen he saw his sister\u2019s boyfriend, who was also an esports player, playing Mobile Legends, he found that the it ticked all the boxes that he was looking for in a game to replace his obsession with League. With it being a mobile game, it was also much easier to find like-minded people to team up with.
\nSG Dragons as a team started out this way, with small, local tournaments being their first foray into the competitive scene. Though their journey has not gone without its trials, the fact that the team has managed to come so far in only a matter of months speaks to the passion and dedication the players have for gaming.
\n\n\u201cSometimes I wondered if what this was the right thing to do. But I realized that this really was my passion. Ever since I was a kid, I dreamed of making it as a pro player. So even if it\u2019s hard, even if I don\u2019t get to have the time to do other things like going out with friends, I\u2019ll keep doing it,\u201d Mr. Esto said.
\n\u201cMy idols from League of Legends, this is what they had felt when they were on the stage. I\u2019m feeling what they were feeling when they compete with other teams with people watching. I know now how amazing it is to feel the support of so many people.\u201d
\nAfter he graduates, he plans on focusing his attention on esports full-time. His team will be right there with him. Bonded through a shared love of gaming, the players of SG Dragons are looking ahead, aiming to go higher than any Filipino sports team has gone before. Their first goal: to become back to back to back national champions, and work upwards from there.
\n\u201cAs long as we\u2019re enjoying what we play, we\u2019ll continue playing,\u201d Mr. Esto said.
\n\n![\"\"](\"/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/SAM2_fg-02.png\")
Reporting
\nMark Louis F. Ferrolino
\nVideo
\nPaolo L. Lopez
\nIllustration
\nFortunato V. Da\u00f1as
\nEditor
\nSam L. Marcelo
Kyung-in \u201cTr1cks\u201d Lee was sitting in front of a screen, playing an online game when the voice of some guy came through her headphones and, in much ruder language, asked her who she had to sleep with to get to her rank. Ms. Lee, captain of an all-female professional electronic sports (esports) team, fields these vulgar comments all the time. The disparagement is annoying, she said, since she climbed the ranks through solo queue\u2014that is, on her own merit.
\nMs. Lee and the rest of the members of the ArkAngel CSGO Female Pro Team recently sat down with 大象传媒 to talk about what it\u2019s like to be women in the flourishing world of esports. \u00a0
\nThe team is about to compete in the grand finals of the Word Electronic Sports Games (WESG) 2018-2019 season to be held in China from March 7 to 17, after bringing home the gold medal in the women\u2019s division of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO) at WESG Southeast Asia last December.
\u201cIf you play casually, people are like savages,\u201d Joy Maria\u00a0\u201cJoy\u201d delos Reyes said. Her teammate, Shara\u00a0Mari \u201cKuchiii\u201d\u00a0Koshikawa, added:\u00a0\u201cWhen they know you\u2019re a girl, sometimes they kick you.\u201d (\u201cKick\u201d here means to boot a player out of a game.)
\n\n
\n
\n
\n
The members agreed that it was sometimes better to turn off their microphones in a match against random players\u2014even if that would mean putting themselves at a disadvantage\u2014than to deal with the misogyny that pervades esports.
\nCommunication is essential in CS:GO, a multiplayer first-person shooter video game developed by Hidden Path Entertainment and Valve Corporation. Winning a match rests heavily on a team\u2019s ability to relay in-game information such as how many opponents might be lurking in a specific location. If shutting off their mics isn\u2019t a viable option, then the members of ArkAngel shift to another strategy: pretending that they\u2019re prepubescent 12-year-old boys whose voices haven\u2019t dropped.
\nGender discrimination against female gamers can take several forms, including inappropriate comments (Jiles Korine \u201cLaire\u201d Buenviaje was told to \u201cgo back to the kitchen\u201d) and unconscious bias in favor of male gamers. To illustrate the latter, Ms. Lee said that it is a common scenario for a less-competent male gamer to be chosen by a team over his female counterpart.
The leader of the ArkAngel team speaks from experience. While playing at a tournament in America, people repeatedly questioned her spot on a mostly male team. \u201cThey asked my captain at that time, \u2018Why do you have a girl in your team? Like, of all the players you could have picked in America, why did you choose this girl?,\u2019\u201d she said.
\nThankfully, two of her teammates came to her defense, saying that Ms. Lee deserved to be there\u2014there was nothing \u201ctoken\u201d about her spot on the team. \u201cIt was the first time I ever heard a male player stand up for me based on my skills,\u201d she said.
\nWAITING FOR THE CULTURE TO CATCH UP
\nIn reality, esports is no longer the male-dominated space it used to be. According to a report released in 2018 by the Entertainment Software Association, 45% of gamers in the US are female, and adult women represent a greater portion of the video game-playing population at 33% than males under 18 years of age at 17%.
\nAlthough the demographics have changed, gaming culture has not. Eyeballing the competitive scene shows only a few women in the upper echelons. The issue is not one of competence but of confidence. \u201cYou can\u2019t always take everything people say online to heart, and that\u2019s something that a lot of them [female gamers] do,\u201d she said, adding that \u201cit gets hard especially in the pro scene.\u201d
\nTo equal the playing field, esports organizers have either mounted female-only tournaments or added female divisions to general tournaments. For instance, the WESG, an international esports championship tournament based in Shanghai organized by AliSports, started in 2016 with only four games then expanded to include female divisions in 2017.
\nAlso worth noting is the Female ESports League (FSL), an annual league for female gamers that aims to grow the number of competitive female gamers and to see them compete in top-tier tournaments.
\nAs early as 2005, an organization called Women in Games International (WIGI) has been promoting the inclusion and advancement of women in the global gaming industry. The organization stands as strong advocates for issues crucial to the success of women and men in the gaming industry, including a better work-life balance, healthy working conditions, increased opportunities for success, and resources for career support.
\n\u201cFemales really have a place in eSports scene. If they choose to have it, they can choose to enter that scene. And whether or not they excel in it is really their own choice,\u201d Ms. Lee said.
SEPARATE IS NOT EQUAL
\nWhile female-only tournaments do provide a platform for women in the industry, some women view them as a means for segregation instead of integration and acceptance.
\n\u201cWhen you enter the female scene, you can\u2019t leave it. There is this sudden wall that people say, \u2018You\u2019re part of the female tournaments.\u2019 It\u2019s like you\u2019re not part of the general tournaments anymore,\u201d said Ms. Lee.
\n\u201cSo advantages, disadvantages: You have a spot, but it’s almost like you can\u2019t break free from it,\u201d Ms. Lee said.
\nEsports is on a promising track and the inclusion of women in the industry\u2014both on stage and behind the scenes\u2014is critical for its overall success. \u201cEsports wasn’t made just for guys. It was made for gamers, and gamers don’t mean guys only. It means whoever loves games,\u201d Ms. Lee said.
![\"\"](\"/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Esports_logomain-1250px3.png\")
Reporting
\nBjorn Biel Beltran
\nVideo
\nNina M. Diaz
\nPaolo L. Lopez
\nTitle art
\nFortunato V. Da\u00f1as
\nWebmaster
\nCriselda R. Valentin
\nEditor
\nSam L. Marcelo
The games are short, just about 10 to 20 frenetic minutes of action each. The mechanics of play are similar to basketball in that there are five people per team and winning requires cooperation and strategy. In a sense, they\u2019re also like boxing, in that each side considers the opponents\u2019 strengths and weaknesses when fine-tuning their formula for success.
\nFurthering the analogy: like basketball games and boxing matches, the tournaments for Mobile Legends: Bang Bang draw hundreds of enthusiastic spectators, fans wearing the shirts of their favorite teams, chanting the names of their favorite players. Such was the case at the grand finals of the recently concluded second season of the Mobile Legends Professional League (MPL), held at Ayala Malls Circuit in Makati City on January 12 and 13.
\nAnd like basketball games and boxing matches, these contests involve real cash with real trophies. The winners of the MPL took home over $25,000\u2014over a million pesos\u2014in prizes. But unlike basketball and boxing, the sport of Mobile Legends is entirely virtual.
As the name suggests, the game is played on mobile phones: it is a free-to-play app available on the Apple Store and Google Play. Developed by Chinese developer Shanghai Moonton Technology, Mobile Legends: Bang Bang is a multiplayer online battle arena, where the objective is to destroy lest ye be destroyed. It has become one of the world\u2019s most popular games, with tens of millions of players across countries like China, Malaysia, and Indonesia \u201claning, jungling, and tower rushing\u201d to victory since it was released in 2016.
\nHere in the Philippines, Mobile Legends is one of the first mobile games to have garnered a competitive esports following. In organizing the MPL Grand Finals, Marlon Marcelo, country manager of MET Events, the event-organizing arm of Mineski Corporation, the largest esports organization in Southeast Asia, told 大象传媒 that they had to book a separate viewing area outside the main arena to accommodate the massive number of people who showed up to watch.
\n\n\u201cFive or six years ago, you wouldn\u2019t imagine a mobile game drawing this kind of crowd,\u201d he said, almost shouting over the passionate cheers of the crowd after the event.
\n
Indeed, around a decade ago, esports, or organized competitive gaming, barely existed in the Philippines. Despite the mounting presence of esports associations like Major League Gaming in the US, or the Electronic Sports World Convention, many video game tournaments in the country had been largely amateur, held within the confines of the local computer shops and internet cafes that dot Metro Manila.
\n\u201cAt the time, it was very hard to see esports as what it is now. Before, eight or ten years ago, there were no big events in the Philippines,\u201d Mr. Marcelo said, noting that the general attitude toward video games at the time was outright dismissal.
People were not sold, he said, on the idea that video games could become anything other than a pastime that was either an enjoyable\u2014if unproductive\u2014hobby between friends at best or an addictive blight on the youth at worst. Despite predictions that the industry will become a billion-dollar business by 2020, with an estimated audience of over 380 million viewers all over the globe, the stigma of video games remains a rather prickly concern.
\nThat so many students were spending so much time in computer shops to play video games lends a semblance of credibility to such negative views on gaming. According to an exploratory study published in the International Journal of Cyber Society and Education in 2012, 73% of internet cafe customers in Manila were found to be students.
\nThe study, titled \u201cPattern of Internet Usage in Cyber Cafes in Manila,\u201d found that 72% of those surveyed had attained or were pursuing a college degree, and 20% had finished or were still in high school. Presumably, a number of such students were playing video games at the expense of their studies.
\n\u201cFor now, the main challenge is educating everyone that esports is becoming an actual sport,\u201d Mr. Marcelo said, adding that Mineski has been an avid proponent of responsible gaming since its inception.
\n\u201cYou can be successful and be a gamer at the same time. It doesn\u2019t mean that if you\u2019re a gamer, you\u2019re a loser or an addict, or you\u2019re not successful in life. That is a very big misconception. Gaming is not equivalent to addiction, and gaming can be done right,\u201d he added.
\nIt was because of this stigma that Katrina Flores-Doctolero, head of project management at gaming-and-esports-event-organizing firm Gariath Concepts, expressed her excitement at how far the esports industry has grown in just a few years.
\n\u201cIt feels like we are now a legitimate kind of sport as opposed to before,\u201d she told 大象传媒 following the conclusion of a separate NBA2K esports event that her company organized. \u201cEsports is not just about gaming\u2014it\u2019s about the passion of the individual gamers who team up and make it something bigger. I think it will take time, but we\u2019re getting there.
Ultimately, it was through companies like Gariath Concepts and Mineski that esports gained its foothold in the country. In the early 2010s, when small internet cafes started holding their own tournaments for games like Dota 2 and Counter-Strike, Ms. Doctolero said they saw an opportunity for esports to become something bigger.
\n\u201cOf course, at first we didn\u2019t see it as becoming something nationwide,\u201d she added, admitting that it took time for them to realize the untapped potential of esports. \u201cWe only made events for very specific games in very specific locations, mostly in Metro Manila.\u201d
\nToday, Gariath Concepts organizes the Esports and Gaming Summit (ESGS), one of the largest combined gaming and esports activities in the country, held at the SMX Convention Center in SM Mall Of Asia. This year, the company is also organizing the inaugural season of The Nationals, the first franchise-based electronic sports league in the Philippines, sponsored by the MVP Group of Companies.
Since opening in 2004, Mineski, for its part, organized grassroots tourneys that grew along with its empire of Mineski Infinity cybercafes. Moreover, the company had been one of the first to sponsor a professional esports team in the country.
\n\u201cFrom small cybercafe events from Mineski Infinity, we slowly garnered the industry\u2019s trust and earned the community\u2019s belief that Mineski Events Team is an event organizer that actually cares for the players, the sponsors, and everyone we deal with,\u201d Mr. Marcelo said. \u201cSlowly, it grew and grew. One of the crowning glories of our organization was within the last two years we were able to host an event in SM Mall of Asia Arena called The Manila Masters.\u201d
\nThe Manila Masters was one of the biggest Dota 2 competitions in the world that Mineski hosted with the Electronic Sports League, with participants from the United States, Europe, and China, and a prize pool of $250,000, or over P13 million. In 2018, Mineski also partnered with Globe Telecom to launch the Philippine Pro Gaming League, a nationwide esports tournament featuring three major esports titles.
The growth in business was accompanied, or perhaps driven, by the success of Filipino gamers in esports tournaments all over the world. TNC Predator, the professional gaming team of Philippine net cafe chain TheNet.Com, placed first in the Southeast Asia Qualifiers at the 2016 season of the Dota 2 tournament, The International, the first Philippine team to do so since Mineski in 2011.
\nRecently, they took home top prize at the 2018 World Electronic Sports Games Southeast Asian Dota 2 Finals after defeating a Malaysian team. At the same event the year before, Euniel \u201cStaz\u201d Javi\u00f1as emerged as the champion for the digital competitive card game Hearthstone.
In the fighting game scene, a Filipino player named Andreij \u201cDoujin\u201d Albar stunned the world by defeating the long-time Tekken 7 champion Jin-woo \u201cSaint\u201d Choi from South Korea at the locally held Rage Art tournament in 2017. Meanwhile, Filipino teams Bren Esports and Digital Devils Professional Gaming were making their names in international tournaments of Mobile Legends.
\nThe Philippine Games and Amusement Board (GAB), under the Office of the President, allowed professional esports players to secure athletic licenses in 2017, giving it the same legitimacy as conventional sports. The move aims to give esports players more freedom to participate in international tournaments to represent the country. In the past, Philippine teams have been forced to drop out of international tournaments because players were unable to secure travel visas and were subsequently barred from leaving the country.
\nSenator Paolo Benigno \u201cBam\u201d Aguirre Aquino IV, an ardent supporter of Philippine esports, welcomed GAB\u2019s decision.
\n\u201cWe\u2019re very happy that these athletes are now legitimized and recognized by the Games and Amusement Board,\u201d Mr. Aquino said in a statement. \u201cWe hope to continue developing the esports industry in the Philippines and supporting our professional gamers as they represent the Philippines.\u201d
The government\u2019s move to legitimize the industry is nothing if not timely. At the 30th SEA Games this year, which the Philippines will host this November, six esports titles will be included as medal events. Following that, there are talks of esports becoming official medal sport for the 2022 Asian Games.
\nThe development of esports has been organic, as far as Ms. Doctolero is concerned. \u201cOne factor [of esports\u2019 growth in the Philippines] is the community itself. The Filipino gaming community is very supportive with these kinds of events,\u201d she said.
\nMoreover, she said the developers of esports titles have been more than keen to nurture local competitive scenes. Ms. Doctolero said that American developers like Valve Corporation for Dota 2 and Riot Games for League of Legends have in the past expressed their commitment to helping the homegrown communities that have risen around their games.
\n\u201cThe community is very passionate about gaming and we want it not only to be competitive but also something that is celebrated by all gamers,\u201d she said.
Added Mr. Marcelo: \u201cSurely, we\u2019re very optimistic of what\u2019s going to happen in esports especially here in our country\u2026 More and more people are getting involved. More and more people are seeing that this is not a bad career, and government recognition is coming into light. Schools and universities are recognizing what esports is, and I feel that the future is very bright for this industry.\u201d
\nGranted, the Philippines may lag behind countries like South Korea or the US in terms of the support it gives to its esports community. But all things considered, things are just beginning.
\n\u201cIt\u2019s a good start,\u201d Ms. Doctolero said.
words by
\nSANTIAGO J. ARNAIZ
\nvideos by
\nGRETCHEN MALALAD
\nillustrations by
\nJIEGO GAVIN TOMAGAN
\nLate last year, Apple took down a number of Filipino-developed mobile games after over a hundred organizations called for their removal, claiming they \u201cnormalized mass murders and impunity through virtual games.\u201d These games, the groups said, actively promoted murder, extrajudicial killings, violence, and the Philippine war on drugs .
\nWhile no longer on Apple\u2019s platform, the games are still available on Android, Google\u2019s mobile operating system and the most widely used platform in the country. Since they were launched 18 months ago, these games have been downloaded millions of times.
\nTsip Bato: Ang Bumangga Giba!, a game endorsed and co-developed by the Philippine National Police (PNP) itself, had more than 500,000 downloads before it was taken down from the Apple marketplace.
\nLaunched on Aug. 8, 2016, just six weeks after President Rodrigo Duterte\u2019s inauguration, Tsip Bato shows a cartoon PNP Chief Ronald Dela Rosa barreling through an endless highway and shooting criminals.
\nThe PNP billed Tsip Bato an \u201centertaining and educational game\u201d meant to teach children the dangers of doing drugs. The game features cartoonish acts of violence against drug suspects, with the avatars of Dela Rosa Duterte shown running over the suspects with a truck, gunning them down with an assault rifle, or blowing them up with a missile launcher.
\nThe game was released when the administration\u2019s drug was was just over a month old, and the police and unidentified gunmen were hunting down and killing scores of suspected drug users and dealers in Metro Manila\u2019s poorest communities.
\nThese games may seem harmless and fun out of context, said the 131 human rights and drug user rights groups that signed a petition against Tsip Bato and similar mobile apps. But set against the backdrop of the ongoing war on drugs \u2013 a war that\u2019s seen, and continues to see, thousands murdered \u2013 the games take on a more sinister tone.
\nTsip Bat\u00ado, in particular, raises concerns for being a government-sponsored project, specifically in its purported goal of educating the youth on how to fight drugs in their communities. By focusing on killing, the game signals that extreme solutions are needed to fight the drug scourge. Wittingly or not, it justifies, and in the view of the games\u2019 critics, also valorizes and normalizes the drug war killings.
\nHoping to capitalize on the meteoric rise of President Duterte\u2019s popularity and his campaign to end the illegal drug trade, developer Ben Joseph Banta got his team working on a game built around the PNP\u2019s new mascot, P01 Bato. Banta had previously found success developing games for the Philippine Basketball Association (PBA) and was on the lookout for his next big project.
\nIn the early days of the Duterte presidency, pictures of the bald, wide-smiling mascot based on PNP chief Dela Rosa went viral on Facebook and Banta saw it as an opportunity to garner some attention for his growing game development company, Ranida Games.
\nThe Ranida Games team spent weeks designing a basic \u201cendless runner\u201d with P01 Bato zooming down a highway collecting tokens. Teaser videos of the prototype began to garner attention on Facebook\u2014so much attention, in fact, that the PNP took notice and reached out.
\n\u201cI received an email from the PNP and, honestly, I was quite scared to open it,\u201d Banta said. \u201cAfter working on that game for weeks, I didn\u2019t want it to be pulled out.\u201d
\nBut instead of the cease-and-desist order he was expecting, Banta got an invitation from Chief Superintendent Gilberto Cruz, then-director of the Police-Community Relations Group, to work with his agency on making their prototype an official game of the Philippine National Police.
\nCruz says he bonds with his children by playing video games with them. Noticing that they were constantly playing games on their mobile phones, he toyed with the idea of creating mobile games as a way to bring the anti-drug campaign to younger audiences. Stumbling upon Ranida\u2019s prototype, he believed he had found just the way to do it.
\n\u201cThe game back then was really raw,\u201d Banta said. \u201cThere were a lot of ideas coming from [the PNP] \u2013 the looks, following [General Dela Rosa\u2019s] clothes, his biceps, the aesthetics and messages they wanted to appear.\u201d Banta said the PNP wanted a strong-looking protagonist to match the high-octane gameplay.
\nTogether the team designed a game that they hoped would promote the government\u2019s deadly crackdown on drug users and peddlers, while still being fun to play. The result was Tsip Bato: Ang Bumangga Giba! \u2013 its name a suggestion from Dela Rosa himself.
\nThe game made headlines when it was released, with footage of Dela Rosa gleefully controlling his gun-toting digital avatar spreading through social media. Thanks to the news coverage, Tsip Bato pulled in 195,000 downloads in its first month, peaking at a rate of four thousand users an hour.
\nCruz attributes its popularity to the fact that the game is just fun to play. \u201cI asked my children when they started playing it: They loved running and avoiding those obstacles, and they loved the shooting. And they were learning,\u201d he said.
\n\u201cThey told me that they saw those ads and they saw those signages inside the game. \u2018Avoid drugs\u2019, \u2018drugs kill\u2019, \u2018say no to drugs\u2019. I was happy when they told me that they saw those,\u201d he said.
\nIn the game, the endless highway that players navigate is lined with billboards plastered with anti-drug-use messages. The main menu has Chief Bato (or President Duterte himself, depending on the player\u2019s chosen character) standing on a podium bearing the words \u201cOplan Tokhang,\u201d tying the game to the PNP\u2019s larger campaign. According to Cruz, the game is a success because it teaches players a lesson about the ills of drugs. This, he says, is the main intention of the game.
\nThe game\u2019s messaging does warn against the dangers of drugs, but it doesn\u2019t spell out what those dangers might be. What it offers instead is the image of a police chief taking down drug suspects with assault rifles and rocket launchers.
\nJoie Sales is the chairperson of the game development program at iAcademy, where she teaches not only the skills needed to create video games, but also the ethics involved. According to Sales, Tsip Bato is a very fun game. And it\u2019s the fact that it\u2019s so fun that makes it so concerning.
\n\u201cThe thin line between studying and learning is fun,\u201d she said. \u201cWhen you cross that line, and they\u2019re having fun while they\u2019re studying, that\u2019s the time that they\u2019d actually accept anything.\u201d
\nShe calls this the \u201cflow state,\u201d a technical term for the point of extreme focus when players become actively engaged with what they\u2019re interacting with. In this state, Sales says players become incredibly susceptible to messaging.
\nThis would be a good thing for a game so saturated with slogans admonishing drug use. But Sales explains that because the player\u2019s focus is on gameplay and the messages sent there, details elsewhere get lost in translation.
\nGaming companies hoping to capitalize on the popularity of the drug war, she said, may not be sensitive to the ethical implications and psychological impact of the games that they are putting on the market.
\n\u201cDevelopers should be very careful as to what they want to give these kids,\u201d said Sales. \u201cKids are like sponges… If you actually use the flow state to your advantage and you are an unethical person, you can manipulate that person. When they\u2019re in that state, you can put any kind of image you want.\u201d
\nIn the case of Tsip Bato, the central message presented is not the anti-drug poster lost in the background as the character speeds by, but the image of the man in the middle of the road, gunned down or blown up by the player themselves.
\nAlfred Cholo Peteros is a 19-year-old studying communication at the University of Caloocan City. Like many of his classmates, Peteros lives in Caloocan, a city known to be one of the hotspots of the war on drugs.
\nPeteros says he\u2019s a fan of mobile games and so was thrilled to see a fun, locally-produced app like Tsip Bato. He, along with a number of his classmates, enjoyed taking on the role of General Dela Rosa in killing criminals. It was only upon further reflection that he grew concerned the game might actually present a skewed version of reality.
\nAccording to him, if children were to play games like this, they might imagine that this is what the drug war is about, that this is what the criminals look like.
\n\u201cIn reality, this game isn\u2019t what we see every day,\u201d Peteros said. \u201cIt isn\u2019t what you hear or see on the news.\u201d
\nIn reality, the drug war is butchered bodies wrapped in packing tape. It\u2018s bloody crime scenes. It\u2019s murdered children, and the grieving families left in their wake.
\nOn the evening of August 16, 2017, 17-year-old Kian delos Santos was shot and killed by plainsclothes officers in Caloocan City. Official reports claimed he was an armed drug runner who shot at the police as they gave chase.
\nBut CCTV footage showed he was dragged to the spot where his corpse would later be found. One eyewitness claimed the boy had begged for his life before he was beaten and murdered. At the end of the investigation, the autopsy showed that Delos Santos was shot thrice: Two shots to the ear, and one to the back of the head \u2013 execution style.
\nKian delos Santos\u2019 murder spurred outrage from the public and other sectors of the government alike. But the killings continue. According to the PNP, nearly 50 people suspected of using and selling drugs were killed by officers in the past two months.
\n\u201cThere\u2019s something missing to make [Tsip Bato] actually educational,\u201d said 18-year-old Valerie Rosaldo, Pateres\u2019 classmate the University of Caloocan City. \u201cI don\u2019t think it\u2019s advisable for kids to play it. It\u2019s still about killing people.\u201d
\nThe PNP isn\u2019t the first government agency to look to mobile games to promote an agenda. Countries all over the world have been developing games as a way to tap into the minds of their citizens for years. The most striking example of this comes out of China.
\nIn 2015, the Chinese government launched Sesame Credit, a joint venture between game development company Tencent and Ant Financial (an affiliate of e-commerce giant Alibaba) that hopes to attach a social score, much like the American credit score system, to Chinese citizens.
\nBut instead of tracking credit history, this system rewards citizens with points for acts deemed patriotic, and demerits for acts that are considered unpatriotic. All of this is based, in part, on data gleaned from citizens\u2019 social media activity. In effect, the users\u2019 entire life becomes the game. The app is simply the reward system.
\nFor current users of Sesame Credit, a higher score garners real world incentives, like discounts on online shopping. But in a move straight out of techno-dystopian TV series \u201cBlack Mirror,\u201d that score will also dictate the what services users can get from government offices, their likelihood of getting a loan approved, and even the range of job offers they can access.
\nSesame Credit accounts will be mandatory for Chinese citizens come 2020.
\nWhile mobile games like Tsip Bato are far less sophisticated and overtly controlling than Sesame Credit aims to be, any game mechanics that reward pro-government actions and enforce government agendas can only point to one thing: Propaganda.
\nAccording to Chief Superintendent Cruz, it was difficult grappling with the possible outcomes of this game. \u201cIs it worth it to create a game like this?,\u201d he said. \u201cCan we achieve what we really want to achieve? Maybe, instead of them learning, we promote a culture of violence.\u201d
\nBanta , the developer, said that glorifying violence was never the goal of the development team. \u201cWe created the game, made it fun for the kids to be interested in it, so they could receive the message,\u201d he said. \u201cSo we added features in the game that would make it fun. Shooting criminals was to make the game fun, so we can solidify the gameplay.\u201d
\nApple CEO Tim Cook never formally responded to the organizations, led by the Asian Network of People Who Use Drugs (ANPUD), that wrote the October 2017 open letter calling for the takedown of five mobile games, including Tsip Bato. But a month later, Apple silently complied with their request. The same week, PNP Chief Dela Rosa was quoted welcoming the decision to take them down, saying the games misrepresented the point of the government\u2019s anti-drug efforts.
\nGiven the chance to change any aspect of Tsip Bato, Cruz said he would want to somehow incorporate rehabilitation efforts into its gameplay. \u201cOnce the criminal was placed there, points will be given when they were rehabilitated and got out\u201d, he said.
\nIf Cruz had his way, the PNP \u2013 and the government at large \u2013 would continue exploring mobile games as a way to reach the community. To that end, Sales suggests exercising caution.
\n\u201cThere are so many things you need to look into,\u201d Sales said. \u201cThat involves a lot of people, not just a few [game] developers. It involves psychologists. It involves educators. You can\u2019t just publish a game right away because it\u2019s fun.\u201d
\nFollowing the initial outcry against Tsip Bato, the Drug Policy Alliance, a nonprofit advocacy group, has called for Google to follow Apple\u2019s lead in taking down the pro-drug war games from their Play Store.
\nHannah Hetzer, senior international policy manager of the Drug Policy Alliance, called these games inhumane and horrifying.
\n\u201cThis is a real tragedy, not something to be turned into a game,\u201d Hetzer said. \u201cIf these game developers wanted to be helpful in reaching out to youth, as they have claimed to, they should design games that give real, honest and evidence-based information about\u00a0drugs, health and harm reduction, not create games that glorify murder.
\nEarlier this year, Google announced they had taken down tens of thousands of apps from their Play Store for \u201ccontaining or promoting inappropriate content.\u201d However, Tsip Bato, along with a number of similar games, is currently still available on the Android marketplace.
\n![\"\"](\"/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/map1.jpg\")
![\"\"](\"/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/map2.jpg\")
![\"\"](\"/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Arnaiz-Trafficking-Detail2-225x300.jpg\")
Html code here! Replace this with any non empty text and that's it.
\n\n
Words by
\nSantiago J. Arnaiz
Art by
\nMags Ocampo
Eleonor Ramos couldn\u2019t sleep at all that night. The sound of sirens was keeping her up. Somewhere outside, a police car was approaching. Cold sweat dripping down her neck, she sat motionless. They were coming for her. She knew it.
\nIn another part of the room sat a pair of eviction letters. Her employers were supposed to have paid the rent. They docked her wages $150 for it every two weeks. The sirens grew louder. It had been three days since the water and electricity had been cut, and all the food in the refrigerator had spoiled. Ramos shifted slowly, careful not to make a noise. Against the wall, she could see the subtle rise and fall of her husband\u2019s silhouette, lying prone on the bed bug-ridden mattress they shared. She couldn\u2019t see his face, but she knew he was awake. Their two co-workers in the room next door must have been awake, too. None of them slept. How could they, with the constant fear of arrest and deportation hanging over them. She held her breath, afraid to make a sound.
\nThe sirens passed. She waited for the silence to set in again before letting out a sob. Ramos thought of her three children waiting for her back in the Philippines, how she had promised to visit them every year. She thought about the crippling debt that waited for her as well \u2013 how, after more than six months working for her current employers, she and her husband were barely making enough money to survive, much less pay it back. They had sacrificed so much to get here, to this dingy apartment they shared with two strangers.
\n\u201cSometimes, you can\u2019t help but be pushed to tears thinking about what you’ve experienced,\u201d Ramos said.
\nIt\u2019s a brisk February afternoon in Queens, New York, when Eleonor Ramos recounts her journey to America. It had been eight years since she left the Philippines in 2009, in the hopes of finding work as a seasonal laborer. She had planned to stay in the United States for no more than three years, working wherever she could to make enough money to get her children back home through school. She and her husband had applied through the H2B visa program, a program designed for temporary workers doing seasonal, non-agricultural jobs in the U.S. At the time, their only focus was getting to America and providing their family a better life. They had no idea they had just sold themselves into the modern slave trade.
\nIt\u2019s a scenario that plays out every day around the world. According to a report published in 2012 by the International Labor Organization, there were a recorded 18.7 million victims of human trafficking in the world who, like the Ramoses, were trapped in jobs from which they could not leave.\u00a0
\nThe United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime has identified North America as one of the largest destinations for trafficking across regions. Through the use of fraud, force or coercion, men and women looking to find a better life abroad are forced to work indefinitely for little to no pay as modern day slaves.\u00a0
\nIn its most recent Trafficking in Persons Report, the U.S. Department of State acknowledged the continued risks of human trafficking within the nation\u2019s borders. Victims hail from almost every region of the world, and of the foreign countries identified as points of origin for these men and women, the Philippines tops the list.
\nLike the Ramoses, most victims of labor trafficking arrive on U.S. soil legally through temporary worker visas like the H2B. These visas allow foreign workers to stay in the country for a defined period of time and on the condition that they remain employed by a sponsor.
\nThese temporary visas give employers access to a rich international labor market and provide overseas workers with job opportunities they often lack in their home countries.
\nU.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services approves H2B visas for periods of up to three years. Job contracts for H2B workers, however, usually only last between six to nine months as these visas are intended for seasonal work. So towards the end of their contract periods, workers begin looking for other employers willing to take them on and sponsor their continued stay in the U.S. The anxiety of not finding new work and getting deported often pushes these people into desperation.\u00a0
\nThis has set the stage for international syndicates that have cropped up to ensnare workers in the loopholes of these temporary visa programs, turning them into an underground railroad for the modern slave trade.
\nRamos and her husband found themselves caught in this system. Their employers had hidden the fact that they failed to renew their workers\u2019 required work visas. But even after the Ramoses found out, there was nothing they could do. In the eyes of the law, they were illegally employed and shouldn\u2019t have been working in America. But if they stopped working, their employers had threatened to have them arrested and deported. They were trapped.
\n\u201cThey rule you,\u201d said Ramos. \u201cYou end up constantly afraid because you really have no choice but to follow them.\u201d
\nThere is an old Filipino saying that goes, \u201cAng taong nagigipit, kahit sa patalim kumakapit.\u201d Translated: \u201cPushed to the point of desperation, a man will find anything to hold onto, even the edge of a blade.\u201d According to Geraldine Mendez, a lawyer in the chief prosecution division at the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA), it\u2019s desperation that makes stories like Ramos\u2019 possible.
\n\u201cIt\u2019s the search for a greener pasture,\u201d Mendez said. \u201cIt\u2019s basically wanting to go abroad, to work abroad, and finding any opportunity to do it.\u201d\u00a0
\nThe POEA provides a number of services to protect Filipinos looking for foreign employment from abuse and exploitation. That comes with a very strict, and often time-consuming, set of protocols that make sure any and all jobs offered are up to standard. So if an employer offers a potential domestic worker anything below $400 a month, the minimum amount stipulated by the POEA, that contract would be flagged and disapproved.\u00a0
\nAs a result, a black market for foreign job opportunities has emerged. Circumventing the government\u2019s rigid protocols, workers are ensured immediate deployment. Here, Filipinos willing to make compromises on salaries and working conditions aim to find a way out of their desperate situations at home. But along with the protocols, go the protections. The concern is no longer if there are any jobs available, but how much one is willing to risk for it.
\nThe human trafficking industry in the Philippines is built on a type of shadow syndicate that includes job agencies, government workers and port authorities, working together to fuel the international market for exploitable workers.\u00a0
\n\u201cIf you need a new name, they could get a new name for you,\u201d Mendez said. \u201cThey could easily get birth certificates of people unrelated to you and allege they are your relatives. Once you have the workers \u2013 say you\u2019re the one processing the documents \u2013 then you\u2019d throw the ball to another person in charge of making sure that the person would be able to go through immigration in the airports or in the seaports.\u201d
\nBut often the troubles begin well before workers even make it out of the country. Of the many means by which workers become enslaved by their traffickers, the most common is debt bondage. Like Ramos, many of these workers are charged unreasonable fees by recruiters, forcing them into crippling debt. The years that follow are spent working to pay that debt back.
\nRamos, 42, was born and raised in Santa Cruz, Laguna. There she lived with her husband, Ferdinand, 43, and their three children, Trixia, Trina and Troy. She worked as a department clerk for a semiconductor company called Amkor Technology, supervising the assembly line. Ferdinand worked as a seaman on a crew ship and was often away from home. Together, they pulled in about 40,000 pesos a month, approximately $800 U.S.
\nAs hard as they were working, they struggled to pay all their bills. \u201cThe money I was getting from my salary wasn\u2019t enough to support my kids\u2019 schooling and everyday expenses,\u201d Ramos said.
\nLike many Filipinos looking for work in a land of limited opportunity, Ramos thought to apply abroad. In 2016, the POEA documented that over 2.5 million Filipino workers were working overseas. These men and women spend months, if not years, away from the Philippines, toiling in strange lands in order to provide for their families back home.\u00a0
\n\u201cEven if it was really hard to leave our children at their young age, we decided to leave the country,\u201d Ramos said.
\nRamos\u2019 co-workers often spoke of friends who had found great-paying work in the U.S. Intrigued, she asked how they had managed to make it there and was referred to a Manila-based agency called Northwest Placement. Excited by the prospect, she convinced her husband to contact them and apply for a job. He did, and in 2007 was sent to Michigan to work as a housekeeper.
\nBuoyed by the prospect of improving her situation and reuniting with her husband, Ramos reached out to Northwest Placement in July 2008. Initially the agency played up how easy and great the opportunity to work in the U.S. would be, she said, but the next few months became quite taxing on Ramos and her family.
\nOver the course of her application, the agency charged her over $3,000 in processing and miscellaneous fees. As they had already spent most of their savings sending her husband abroad, Ramos was forced to take out a loan from a local bank using her mother\u2019s home as collateral.
\nIt was only until much later that Ramos discovered that the H2B visa regulations prohibited job agencies like Northwest from charging placement fees. But by then, she and her family were already thousands of dollars in debt.\u00a0
\n\u201cWe were just following orders,\u201d she said. \u201cThis was our first time to apply for an H2B. It was only when we were already in the U.S. that we realized the employers would pay the agency as well to process our papers. They were making money off of us anyway.\u201d
\nIn Jan. 2009, Ramos received a job offer from a company called Coastal Ventures making $7.50 an hour as a housekeeper at Holiday Inn on the Beach in Destin, Florida.\u00a0
\nOn Feb. 28, 2009, Ramos left the Philippines for the U.S., promising her children she\u2019d be back to visit them as soon as her contract expired.\u00a0 \u201cI only expected to work for three years, go home for vacation and see my children,\u201d Ramos said. \u201cWhat ended up happening was I stayed on for such a long time, seven and a half years.\u201d
\nAt the Holiday Inn in Destin, Florida, Ramos struggled to make enough money to send back home. Though the contract she signed promised 40 hours of work a week, her employers quickly began scaling that back. When the hotel had no guests, workers were sent home early. Ramos recalled one week when she only worked for seven hours and took home $50 for the week.\u00a0
\n\u201cI sacrificed a lot for myself to save money,\u201d Ramos said. \u201cThe housekeepers would take the untouched food left behind during check-out and we\u2019d take it home just so we had food. That\u2019s all we had at the time. I canceled the transportation service and walked an hour each way to go to work and back to my apartment every day.\u201d
\nRamos worked in Destin for about six months. \u201cI just persevered through it, thinking, maybe in the next cycle I\u2019d have a better contract,\u201d she said.
\nRamos realized the housekeeping job in Florida just wasn\u2019t going to be enough to pay back her debts and support her children. Towards the end of her contract period with Coastal Ventures, she started looking elsewhere. Her husband, Ferdinand, was moving back and forth between Michigan and Arizona at the time and though they kept in contact through phone calls and Skype, Ramos missed him. When he told her that a group of his co-workers were applying for new jobs through their agency DHI, she decided to join them.
\nDespite being hard on cash, Ramos said she and her husband each had to pay DHI a processing and insurance fee of $399. After wiring the money and sending their documents, Ramos got word that they had been secured housekeeping positions at another hotel in Florida. They were overjoyed.
\nThe elation didn\u2019t last long. On September 8, 2009, Ramos received an email from Wioletta Olszoweic, the program director of Hospitality and Catering Management Services, confirming their job offer. The job however, was in Louisiana, not Florida.
\nThrough email exchanges, Ramos tried to clarify the details of their employment. Olszoweic and her agents never gave a straight answer. One message said it would be in Lafayette. Another said Bossier. When Ramos asked for a copy of the job offer, a document that should have listed the location, nature and payment of the work, none was provided.\u00a0
\n\u201cWe were terrified, of course,\u201d Ramos said. \u201cYou never know what could\u2019ve happened, who these people were. We only conversed through email. We were worried if we had jobs there at all. And since we didn\u2019t know them, we were worried if this was going to be a job that would take us to God knows where.\u201d
\nWithout any other prospects, they stuck with it. On October 4, 2009, Ramos flew to Shreveport, Louisiana, still unsure as to what her job with Hospitality and Catering Management Services would be. Ferdinand had already arrived, and they were reunited for the first time in four years.\u00a0
\nThe next morning, they were picked up by Anya Kempinska, a staff person of Hospitality and Catering Management Services, and brought to the apartment that would be their home. On the way, Kempinska explained that she was to be their supervisor and that they would be working as housekeepers at Boomtown Hotel and Casino in Bossier, Louisiana. She collected another $300 from each of them as a security deposit for the apartment and handed over their job contracts for signing. Ramos was alarmed that the forms were full of blank lines, to be filled in later by the management. With reservations, she signed the document and Kempinska explained to them the specifics of their job.
\nHospitality and Catering Management Services promised the Ramoses 40-hour workweeks at $8 an hour, as well as a fully furnished apartment for the two of them. When they arrived at Alexis Park Apartments, however, what they found was a dingy, barren two-bedroom they shared with two other people working at the hotel. The apartment was completely empty, save for a table, three dirty mattresses and some food left in the cupboards by previous tenants.
\n\u201cIt was uncomfortable,\u201d Ramos said. \u201cThere was nowhere to lie down. The beds, to be honest, they took them from the dump. You know how some people leave their old furniture there? Pretty much all our furniture came from that dump, by the garbage. We found out because there were other workers that they’d order to pick them up and bring it to the apartments.\u201d
\nRamos ended up spending most of her time at this apartment, as the 40-hour workweeks she was promised were cut down to 20-hour weeks with her pay scaled back accordingly.\u00a0
\nAll of this amounted to a terrible working environment, but one from which the Ramoses would find themselves unable to escape \u2013 a fact that their employers made very clear to them on an almost daily basis through emails and direct threats of deportation.\u00a0\u00a0
\n\u201cThey gave us letters saying, if you\u2019re trying to find another employer, we are going to report you to immigration so your visas are cancelled and you\u2019re deported,\u201d Ramos said. \u201cThey often went to our apartments to check up on us and say the same.\u201d
\n\u201cIt\u2019s hard to know how serious that stuff is on the employer side,\u201d said Sean McMahon, a lawyer from the Urban Justice Center that helped the Ramoses out of their situation. \u201cIt\u2019s not like there\u2019s some magical number they can call which will bring [immigration enforcement] down on their employees. But it is true that they could make a report and say that this person is undocumented.\u201d
\nAccording to McMahon, the problems that the Ramoses faced centered on their temporary workers visas. These visas prevent the holder from legally staying in the country unless they\u2019re working for their sponsor. This is meant to protect employers from runaway workers who might leave to find jobs elsewhere once in the country.
\nWhen Ramos\u2019 first visa to work in Florida expired, Hospitality and Catering Management Services had promised to sponsor and roll over her and her husband\u2019s H2B visas. As long as they were employed by this company, they could continue to live and work in the U.S. This gave Ramos\u2019 employers considerable leverage over their workers, leverage they were more than willing to use.
\nSitting in their apartment, the Ramoses would wait every day for a knock on their door. Kempinska, their supervisor, lived in the same compound as the workers and would visit each of their rooms, reminding them that if they ever thought of leaving \u2013 and they did so almost everyday \u2013 she would report them to Homeland Security and have them deported. Kempinska would accompany them to their workplace, often checking in on them and making her presence felt.
\nThe Ramoses also began getting letters from the management echoing Kempinska\u2019s threats. One letter from the company\u2019s executive vice president Janece Burke read: “If we suspect you are leaving, we will go ahead and contact [the Department of Homeland Security] to cancel your status… We take our commitment to you very seriously and hope you do the same.”
\nBut it was not until immigration enforcement actually did show up that Ramos realized how grave her situation was.
\nOne day, word spread in the workplace of a raid being conducted by Homeland Security at Boomtown Hotel and Casino. By the end of the day, a large group of undocumented Mexican workers had been arrested and escorted off the premises. The effect this had on Ramos and her companions was profound.
\n\u201cSometimes we’d bump into police and we’d be terrified,\u201d she said. \u201cWe were the only Filipinos in the area, so it would’ve been very easy for us to be singled out. That’s what we were terrified of, that we’d be approached by police and end up in jail.\u201d
\nOther than never providing the Ramoses with their job offer, Hospitality and Catering Management Services never handed them their visas either. When pushed, the management would only say their visas were still under appeal.\u00a0
\nIn November 2009, after three months working for Hospitality and Catering Management Services, Ramos heard rumors that the workers\u2019 visas had been denied by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. By Nov. 4, Burke, the Hospitality executive, sent a letter hoping to clarify the situation. \u201cHCMS has properly filed your H2B extension with USCIS,\u201d she wrote. \u201cThis means it can take up to 3-4 months before we hear whether or not the petition is approved.\u201d\u00a0
\nUnsatisfied with the response, Ramos and her co-workers did some digging of their own. One person in their group had a friend working in Immigration Services who secured a copy of a letter informing Hospitality and Catering Management Services that the visa application had been denied. The management had failed to prove that the jobs they were fielding workers for were seasonal and not permanent. Worse, they had misreported the job location and omitted payroll records for multiple months between 2007 to 2009.
\nThe denial letter was dated Nov. 3, 2009, the day before Burke messaged her workers.\u00a0
\nNow it was clear. The management was lying to them.\u00a0 And regardless of whether or not the Ramoses continued to work for Hospitality and Catering Management Services, they were officially undocumented workers.
\n\u201cWe were incredibly scared, to the point that we didn’t want to go out on our off-time, in case someone caught us and put us in jail,\u201d Ramos said. \u201cWe ended up having no freedom to leave.\u201d\u00a0
\nThe fear was crippling, and compounded by the fact that Ramos\u2019 debt meant she could not afford to lose her job.\u00a0
\n\u201cI didn’t want the family to be homeless back home,\u201d she said. \u201cMy mom lent me the deed to her home and in a moment, everything would’ve been gone. That would’ve been my fault. I was the one who used the money. I was thinking, I need to pay this back, even if there’s no money left for me here.\u201d
\nMcMahon stressed that it was her situation at home that pressured Ramos to stay on. \u201cShe was fearing real economic ruin in her home country based on her debt,\u201d he said. The decision to put her mother\u2019s home up as collateral was a gamble Ramos was regretting having made more and more each day. \u201cIt’s the kind of move that might make sense if the promises that you were told are true and you have a good job here. But if those promises fall through and you end up not getting paid at all or getting paid very low wages, then the debt just keeps mounting until it becomes impossible to pay.\u201d
\nThe pressure was building for Ramos. She was still not making enough money for her family back home, and now she was stuck working for abusive employers, unable to leave whether she wanted to or not.
\nAccording to Song Kim, a lawyer with the Asian American Legal Defense Fund, migrant workers like the Ramoses are especially vulnerable to abusive employers. \u201cAs soon as they come to the U.S., now they\u2019re isolated,\u201d she said. \u201cThey don\u2019t have any social contacts. They don\u2019t speak the language. They don\u2019t know anything about the laws. And so they are now primed to be exploited.\u201d
\nThe employer must have known, said McMahon. \u201cThey had received the documentation stating that their visa renewal had been denied. But she was in the dark, all of the other workers were.\u201d
\nThe night they learned about the visa denial, Ramos and her coworkers were shocked \u2013 the full reality of their situation finally made clear. In the eyes of the law, they were illegally employed and shouldn\u2019t have been working in America. But if they stopped working, their employers had threatened to have them arrested and deported. It seemed like they had no alternative.\u00a0
\nThat night, none of them could sleep. The anxieties were piling up on them. They were terrified of deportation, living in squalor and threatened with eviction. The landlords had sent them a pair of eviction letters claiming they had failed to pay their $625 monthly rent. Among the four of them in that apartment, the management had been collecting over $1,200, claiming that money would go towards paying the landlords. Ramos realized that their employers had found yet another way to cheat them.
\nThe situation was dire, but Ramos was desperate. She held on, keeping her head down and reporting for work.
\nAs the months rolled by and their work hours continued to dwindle, the steady stream of deportation threats went on, until suddenly, they stopped altogether. \u201cThey weren’t replying anymore to our emails,\u201d Ramos said. \u201cWe stopped seeing Anya. They didn’t need us anymore. They already replaced us.\u201d
\nBy May 2010, the Ramoses found they had been assigned three more roommates in their already cramped apartment at Alexis Park. At that point, Ramos decided enough was enough. Despite the very real threat of deportation, she and her husband joined a coworker and left for New York.\u00a0
\nLiving in the basement of a contact\u2019s home in Queens, the Ramoses took any jobs they could find to get by. Eleonor Ramos found work as a nanny and a housekeeper. Her husband worked laundry. While they were lucky enough never to have heard from their former employers again, they had more immediate problems. Having landed in New York, they were still undocumented, still unable to find work they desperately needed and still living in fear of deportation.
\nIn 2013, Ramos was introduced by a friend to Juana Dwyer, a board member of the Damayan Migrant Workers Association. Founded in 2002 as a community support group for Filipino domestic workers, Damayan has since expanded into a grassroots community organization with 8,000 members and a dedicated campaign against the labor trafficking of Filipino workers. Through Damayan, the Ramoses met with lawyers from the Urban Justice Center and began their application for legal immigration.
\nCaught in the aftermath of forced labor, often with the burden of debt bondage in tow, securing legal status to live and work in the country is one of the best ways to alleviate the problems of labor trafficking survivors. Once legally permitted to stay in the U.S., survivors can finally look for decent work, the reason they set off on their journeys in the first place.\u00a0
\nIn 2018, the Department of Homeland Security granted T-visas \u2013 special visas for trafficking survivors \u2013 to 580 victims and 698 of their family members. Though these numbers haven\u2019t changed much over the years, the Department of State has reported that these figures represent an overall decline in immigration relief, owing to a lack of support by law enforcement.\u00a0
\nHuman trafficking has garnered a lot attention in the U.S. following the passage of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act in 2000. But while law enforcement officers have cracked down heavily on the crime, their efforts have focused almost exclusively on sex trafficking cases, leaving victims of labor exploitation on the wayside.\u00a0
\nA report released in 2014 by the Urban Institute, a Washington D.C.-based economic and social policy think tank, found that while the U.S. Department of Justice identified 64 percent of trafficking victims as victims of labor trafficking and 10 percent as victims of both labor and sex trafficking, labor trafficking cases accounted for only 17 percent of human trafficking cases handled by law enforcement.\u00a0
\nThe result is an entire group of workers exploited with relative impunity for their employers.
\n\u201cLaw enforcement going after labor trafficking doesn\u2019t happen on the level that we need it to,\u201d said Kim, of the Asian American Legal Defense. Currently, the laws on human trafficking place higher penalties on sex trafficking than on labor trafficking. \u201cThat\u2019s really unfortunate,\u201d Kim said. \u201cWhen something is a \u2018bigger\u2019 crime under the law, law enforcement is going to go after it more, even though in reality, it\u2019s not a worse thing.\u201d
\nTo end trafficking would require shutting down the means by which people get trafficked in the first place \u2013 both at the source and at the destination. The lack of accurate data and the need for international cooperation make the war against trafficking an especially complicated one to wage.\u00a0
\n\u201cThe Philippines is a source country for trafficking in persons, owing to the rich supply of labor and desire for overseas work,\u201d said Mendez of the POEA. While her government agency was only able to identify four cases of labor trafficking of Filipinos in 2015, the office has made great strides in attempting to address the issue. It shut down 12 unlicensed recruitment agencies that year \u2013 agencies similar to the one Ramos used \u2013 and conducted public seminars to educate potential applicants about the hazards of trafficking and the warning signs of illegal recruitment.
\nAccording to Kim, prevention happens through education. \u201cMaking sure people are aware of their rights, making sure they\u2019re not putting themselves in these risky, vulnerable situations,\u201d she said.\u00a0
\nKim, who has long advocated for policy reform in the U.S., said it is also essential that temporary worker visa programs like the H2B be restructured to prevent these types of abuses. \u201cThese are visas that are very protective of the sponsors, without having built-in protections for the people receiving the visas themselves.\u201d
\n\u201cEven if something bad happens to them, they are afraid to go to the police,\u201d she added. \u201cYou have rights here as a worker. You have rights here as a victim of a crime.\u201d In the U.S., grassroot community groups like Damayan play a vital role in helping survivors and educating workers on these rights.
\nSince 2011, the Damayan Migrant Workers Association has assisted over three dozen trafficking survivors escape their dire situations, find legal and social services and reunite with their families. As big an accomplishment as that is, it\u2019s still an ongoing struggle. According to Rose Alovera, a board member at Damayan, the association handles anywhere from 30 to 40 trafficking cases at any given time.
\nOn Oct 29, 2015, after a year of filing and investigations, poring over receipts and documents she had meticulously organized over the years, Eleonor Ramos was finally granted a T-Visa, awarding her, her husband and their children legal status in the U.S. After six years struggling to survive in the country, scrimping and saving for a better life for their family, Eleonor and Ferdinand Ramos were finally reunited with their three kids.
\n\u201cI was shocked when I saw my children,\u201d Eleonor Ramos said. After securing clearance to fly back to the Philippines for the first time in six years, she described the experience as surreal. \u201cI asked myself: Are they really that grown up? When I left them, they were so small, my youngest was only seven.\u201d
\n\u00a0
\n\u201cI was so happy when I finally saw them,\u201d she said. \u201cI finally got to see my family, that they were healthy, that everything was alright. The work we do here in New York, my husband and I really work very hard, the result has been good. We’re able to put them through the schools they want to go to. We were able to put up a house back in the Philippines. I paid back the loans of my mom and got back the land title.\u201d
\nToday, the Ramoses still live in New York City, in an apartment in Woodside, a Queens neighborhood home to a stretch of Filipino establishments called Little Manila. Eleonor Ramos is a full-time nanny, employed by a family in Brooklyn. Ferdinand Ramos works as a warehouse clerk. Their two youngest children, Trina and Troy, live with them and study at The International High School at LaGuardia Community College. Their eldest, Trixia, just finished her university studies in the Philippines, graduating with a bachelor of science in tourism management from the PATTS College of Aeronautics last April.
\nEleonor Ramos had already missed so many of her children\u2019s milestones, trading those memories for a better future for them. But when Trixia took the stage to get her diploma, her mother was finally there cheering from the audience.
\nOn April 18, Ramos flew with her daughter back to New York \u2013 their family reunited and living together for the first time in almost ten years.
\nThe Ramoses hope to continue working in the U.S., at least until their younger children finish their schooling and get settled. After that, they plan to retire back in the house they\u2019ve built for themselves in the Philippines.
\nEleonor and Ferdinand Ramos fought through and survived their experiences of labor trafficking. But while their perseverance was remarkable, their story is all too common. \u201cI think people like me, they just want to work abroad,\u201d Ramos said. \u201cPeople just want to go to the U.S., but they don’t see the risks, what might happen. Even if they have to sell their homes, and they don’t even know what they’ll end up working as or how many hours they’ll have. Kapit sa patalim talaga.\u201d
\nDespite all she\u2019s suffered, Ramos said that had she known the actual risks she was facing back in 2009, she would have still chosen to find work in America. \u201cI needed to work,\u201d she said. \u201cI needed to provide for my family.\u201d Still, knowing what she knows now, she\u2019d be more careful and more vigilant. \u201cI’d be more bold in fighting for my rights,\u201d she said. \u201cNow that I have more experience, I know the rules involved in going to work abroad. I wouldn’t make the same mistakes.\u201d
\n