What was initially introduced for the sole purpose of entertainment and recreation is now a full-time career for a significant amount of people. With the rapid increase of the deadly Coronavirus, people were forced to stay indoors which is in fact a silver lining for the gaming industry. The boredom lured people to befriend the web, most importantly Gaming.
From the classic arcade games like Donkey Kong, Tetris, Pong, Pac-Man, Street Fighter to the first console games like Super Mario, Contra, Pitfall, Sonic, Felix the Cat to the handheld consoles; PSP, Nintendo Switch, Gameboy to the current flagships of Microsoft and Sony i.e. Xbox Series and PlayStation Series, the gaming industry has grown immensely in the past few decades and so have the perspectives of the society towards the gaming industry.
According to Business Insider, “ An approximate of 600 million people in the country are expected to become active gamers by the end of 2020 with the industry’s value reaching as high as USD 1.5 billion in 2019 from a value of USD 253.6 million in 2014.”
What factors make the transition so massive? Is it just the boredom that begets people to start Gaming? Let's take a look!
Availability and Easy Access: Video Games are now available at the grass-root level. Smartphone users are expected to reach the 859 million mark by 2022 from 468 million in 2017, an increase of 84 per cent. The “Made in India” campaign has attracted many companies, resulting in cheap manufacturing which has deducted the cost of the product making it easily affordable.
Youth-Driven Country: 75% of India's population is under the age of 45, making it one of the largest potential markets for online gaming in terms of volume.
Data Connectivity: The Indian telecom companies are working hard to deploy 5G in our country. The number of active internet users is expected to sharply increase to 829 million users by 2021 from 451 million in 2019.
Technological Advancements: The number of Online Game developers rose to 275 in 2019 from a mere 25 in 2010. Digital payment users are expected to grow from 100 million users in 2019 to 300 million users in 2022. Greater ease in online platforms for payment would directly lead to in-app purchases, increasing the revenue collected by the gaming industries.
As per a study by the FICCI, online gaming in India is expected to grow faster than the global online gaming industry. According to Hindustan Times “The industry data showed that the online gaming industry in the country grew at a rate of 21% during the Covid-19 pandemic and lockdown months.”
With the advent of the Battle Royale and Esports games (Apex Legends, Fortnite, PUBG, FIFA series) large chunks of players between the age group of 18-24 years have been added to the list, especially in the time of the pandemic. Research shows Average time spent by a gamer is 28 minutes in a day while 76 per cent of the gamers play twice daily.
Many new registrations were seen in online gambling games like Rummy, Teen Patti, online casinos as well as board & strategy games like Ludo King, Clash of Clans, Mobile Legends and more.
The online-based Paytm First Games concluded in April, in collaboration with Supercell, was India’s biggest Clash Royale tournament online with over 11,000 participants. Tencent’s PUBG Mobile even recorded an 80% increase in the number of monthly active users and reached almost 19 million.
Are foreign investors readily investing?
India’s online gaming industry has already attracted $350 million in investments from venture capital firms between 2014-2020. French video game company Ubisoft has two development studios in India American video game publisher Rockstar Games acquired Dhruva Interactive, an Indian video game development company headquartered in Bengaluru in 2019. It was later merged into Rockstar India Studio and has around 500 employees in India. Baazi Games plan to invest USD $5 million in India’s gaming market in 2020. The investment will focus on gaming start-ups to nurture the latest gaming technology. Alibaba Group’s and PayTM’s Hong Kong-based AGTech Holdings formed a joint venture in 2018 to launch Gamepind – a localized platform hosting popular casual and sports games.
International travelling has become a mammoth task, all of us want to spend quality time even from a distance, leading to the popularity of online games like monopoly, Ludo king, UNO and more. Various Online platforms like House Party and Snapchat received a great response mainly because of its in-app mini-game feature.
The industry was already picking up the pace and WHO acted like a catalyst by supporting the #PlayApartTogether Campaign, which promoted people to stay indoors.
Despite the large financial strain that COVID-19 has imposed, the Online Gaming industry could come out even stronger. Adding to this, the industry can have a positive impact due to technology advancements like VR. In the coming years, this industry is capable of becoming one of the dominant financial forces across the whole world.
Written by: Hitanshu Raulji
He is a 2nd Year student at SLS, PDPU and is fond of numbers and calculations associated to it. At the same time, he has a keen interest in gaming and technology and thus is always eager to know about the new technological upcoming in the market.
Edited by: Ushma Doshi
Ushma is doing BBA(Hons) and is majoring in Finance. She is an avid reader and plays piano while her love for dog is unconditional.
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