Back in the game

With the gaming industry witnessing record-breaking growth during the pandemic, experts and enthusiasts discuss why this isolating hobby was the distraction everyone needed

When stay-at-home orders were imposed in March last year to control the transmission of the Coronavirus, we scrambled for ways to fight cabin fever and isolation. For Dr Alpes Panchal, a consultant psychiatrist at several Mumbai hospitals, gaming became a lockdown distraction. “It stemmed from the need for social contact,” he says. “When you’re playing online with your friends, it’s a more interactive experience than Zoom calls.” 

Dr Panchal has invested in a new controller and bought four new virtual games. His interest, he adds, gradually snowballed. “It started with Rocket League, a vehicular soccer video game and then moved to RGP games in which players assume the roles of characters in a fictional setting. And then, I switched to open-world games, where a player can explore and approach objectives freely, as opposed to a more linear and structured gameplay.” 

Gamestacy’s new title Influenzer is a social, multiplayer mobile game that offers a taste of the influencer life, where you dress up your character in the best of outfits and travel the world

A recent KPMG report reveals that COVID-19 has been the proverbial tipping point for gaming in India. The report states that the Indian online gaming market was on a strong growth trajectory even before the pandemic, but COVID-19, and the ensuing lockdowns and WFH models, led to “casual gaming” emerging as a major channel, both in terms of the game base at 420 million in FY21, and the revenue contribution to the gaming industry at R60 billion (of the total gaming industry size of R136 billion in FY21). Both Microsoft and Sony recently published record growth figures for their gaming revenue streams; the console sector alone made over $45 billion in 2020. 

Dr Panchal, who typically spends Rs 10,000 on games annually, says it helps him escape from the harsh realities of life. “You immerse yourself in a whole different universe. There are other ‘harsh’ realities [in the game], but those are under your control. It [gaming] has been stereotyped as isolating, but when done in moderation, it can help. You are playing with friends and strangers.”

Gagan Gupta, Sudarshan Ranganathan and Abhijit Dey

Bengaluru-based Sudarshan Ranganathan, Vice President, Gaming Practice (iXie Gaming), Indium Software, notes that many titles declared record-breaking revenues in the pandemic, regardless of the size of the publishers. “Distribution portals such as Humble Bundle, GOG and Steam were able to leverage this trend and capitalise it further with discounts and offers. Publishing titles reviewing these games, distributing them, and even YouTube channels [part of spectator sports], sprang up. What stands out is the success of the game title, Call of Duty: War Zone in the Battle Royale Genre.  In the mobile platform games, Among Us unexpectedly shot up as one of the most popular titles despite its simplicity.” He adds that the gaming industry is reported to have overtaken even Hollywood and has been garnering higher revenues for the last five years.  

Incidentally, earlier this year, a global semiconductor shortage led to difficulties in buying the latest gaming gear, including a PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, Series S, and high-end graphics cards from Nvidia or AMD.

Danish Sinha, founder of Gamestacy, is working towards creating women-friendly games

Abhijit Dey, Head of Corporate Communications at e-xpress Interactive, a PC and console video game distributor in India, says several global manufacturing plants had to be temporarily closed down due to the emergence of COVID-19 positive cases. “This had a ripple effect on shipping and logistics. So while there was high demand [for gaming devices and accessories], it’s the disruption in supply chains that caused a chip shortage.” Dey is yet to get his hands on graphics cards, a piece of computer hardware, which produces the image you see on your monitor and enables the user to play games. These, too, have been difficult to secure, with exorbitantly hiked pricing and most restocks selling out within minutes. 

According to Gagan Gupta, head of marketing and PR at Team Vitality India, the huge shortage of consoles in India and around the world, has led to a boom in the grey market. “The prices have doubled. For instance, a PS5 which costs around Rs 50,000, now costs around Rs 70,000 in the grey market, and a mid-tier graphic card, which ideally costs under Rs 40,000 is now sold at a whopping cost of around Rs 1 lakh. However, the shortage of graphic cards is also related to the rise of cryptocurrency in the world,” he says. Graphic cards, he explains, are the best way to mine any cryptocurrency and thus, crypto miners have bought graphic cards in bulk due to which gamers are suffering. “Despite this shortage, Sony managed to sell more than 10 million PS5 consoles, which happen to be around 2 million more than what they previously sold.” Companies like ASUS, NSI and other graphic card manufacturers have assured that they are coming up with more stock in India. More so, Ethereum, the most popular form of cryptocurrency, isn’t graphic intensive, which experts say is a positive development for the gaming industry.

Danish Sinha, founder of Gamestacy, a women-friendly game developer company, believes that the gaming market in India has risen mainly because of mobile gaming. Gupta agrees. “The launch of Reliance Jio gave the power of broadband to everyone, no matter where they lived in India. Gaming was no more for people who could buy expensive consoles,” he says. 

According to a joint report by Google and games market intelligence firm Niko Partners, India has the lowest overall percentage of women gamers in Asia, at 18 per cent. It’s a gap that Sinha’s company is trying to fill with their content. They have introduced three mid-core game titles, which are more complex than hyper-casual and casual games, to the mobile market—Turny Road, NuclearReaction, and Instagame. Their latest game, Influenzer, is a social, multiplayer mobile game that offers a taste of the influencer life, where you dress up your character and travel the world. “A rise in the  female audience will create new kinds of feminine games like social media simulation, and those revolving around real-life storylines with an emotional connect,” Sinha shares. Mythology, he predicts, will be the next big thing in the gaming area.

Rs 60 bn
India’s revenue contribution to the gaming industry of the total industry size worth R136 billion in FY21

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