The online gaming sector in India and across the world has grown exponentially over the past few years. With over 3 billion online gaming players worldwide, it is pertinent to understand the positive externalities that arise out of such growth in online gaming, especially after the onset of Covid. Some of these impacts include reducing social isolation, a space for community building, especially for women gamers, and its role in enhancing research, education and skilling.
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The Growing Impact of Female Gamers: One often overlooked factor within the online gaming ecosystem in India is the statistics involving female gamers. A report that surveyed 2317 respondents found that almost 41 percent of the gamers in India were women. Notably, these gamers are not exclusively from the metro or Tier 1 Indian cities but from smaller Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities. The online gaming space is also claimed by Indian women from smaller towns. This trend impresses upon the need to undertake more initiatives to ensure that this space becomes truly inclusive, diverse, and safe for all demographics of gamers. Online gaming spaces are reflective of offline spaces and just as we need guardrails for offline interactions, we also need thoughtful interventions to make the online gaming space safe for all. Such interventions may also successfully contribute to better offline behaviour of gamers. As a country that’s working towards getting more women involved in STEM from an early age, gaming could provide a confidence and interest building environment for young women to cultivate their skills.
As per a report by Lumikai in 2022, about 80 percent of gamers in India showed a proclivity towards content based on Indian Intellectual Property (IP). This shows a significant shift of the Indian gamer to more culturally resonant characters, game design and narratives. The growing appetite for narratives, stories and characters set in India demands that Indian studios step up and develop more and more games that cater to the Indian audience while also appealing to the global online gaming community through their visuals and game design. With the boom of the online gaming sector in India, the Indian gaming industry is likely to see more of Indian mythology, folklore and characters come alive given the growing demand for such themes in India and abroad.
The India Gaming Report 2024 by Interactive Entertainment and Innovation Council and Winzo shared that in the past, some of the most popular games have been set in the Western world and their narratives, designs and characters have emulated Western culture such as in Grand Theft Auto (GTA). Such games socialized the Western culture and further embellished the cities of Miami, New York, and Los Angeles in pop culture. Indian gaming studios such as Ayelet, Studio Sirah, Recreation Lab, and XSQUAD have also created games that are either set in Indian cities or use characters from Indian mythology such as Bheem and Arjun as part of the game narrative. Some games are also attempting to showcase the glory of previous empires from different regions of India.
One such example is “The Unsung Empires: The Cholas”. Most Indians have grown up playing board games such as Ludo, Snakes and Ladders and Monopoly. There have also been games such as “taash”(cards) linked to Indian festivals or ancient epics.