The ongoing Covid 19 pandemic has brought various changes in the consumption trends that were previously been followed in our country India, especially in the field of media and entertainment. Where we can see a gaming surge as a large number of consumers shifting towards various gaming platforms and digital media.
What is causing the gaming surge?
According to a recent media and entertainment report, it is clearly seen that people are shifting from consuming television, newspapers, radio, and all other forms of mass media to the gaming industry. In the last 2 years, there can be seen a major gaming surge.
With approximately 560,000,000 Internet users, India is considered to be the second-largest consumer of the Internet in the world and during the pandemic time where people cannot go out and enjoy with their friends the consumer’s in India are using the Internet and technology to virtually spend time with their family and friends and also in order to play casual entertainment games like online Ludo, among us, Call of Duty, etc.
It is also seen that the Indian gaming market according to the ENV Media Research largely based on mobile gaming due to the mass ability of low-cost mobile phones and high-speed Internet available along with the affordable data plans. This not only resulted in millions of Indian gamers but also the consumption of huge amounts of digital content which directly or indirectly led to a gaming surge in the industry.
How do the Indian gaming numbers compare to those of the world?
Gaming surge is evident from the fact that in a recent report of the state of online gaming 2020 was found that Indian gamer spends an average of 8.61 hours on games each week which places the country in 3rd place where Chinese gamer averaged 12.39 hours of gaming per week.
During the pandemic because of the lockdown which promoted to stay home a large number of non-gamers also started playing online games in order to enjoy together with their friends where this led to increasing in a download of games such as Ludo, Call of Duty, Clash of Clans and another search online multiplayer games.
Globally the video game industry is nearly around 4 times of box office revenue. If we talk about the current scenario in India the gaming industry is currently less than half of the box office collection. But during a pandemic, this gap has expected to be narrow owing to the gaming surge.
Since India is a country with a large population, India has over 5 60,000,000 Internet users and out of which at least 30% of them are gamers. During lockdown gaming platforms such as Google Play and Apple play almost had 50% increases in engagement.
The gaming surge basically came from the need for virtual entertainment with friends family and peer groups where they wanted to interact engage together since they could not meet physically. With the increase in digital consumption, the demand for more diverse content such as games with a high engagement rate also increased.
Not only this last year during the pandemic when PUBG was not banned in our country large number of PUBG players were from India which included people from all age groups who came together and played the game and enjoyed it. The funniest part was even when PUBG was banned in India people still continue to play it by struggling heart to continue their game. Not only this but various alternatives for PUBG were also launched and people switched to it. Whereas games such as Ludo which is set to be originated from India, people continue to play it virtually and enjoyed it. After PUBG, Ludo King became the most common and popular game among the Indians.
With this note, PUBG is also planning to relaunch in India and make its comeback soon which will again contribute to the gaming surge in India’s mobile game industry. And everyone is eagerly waiting for it.
