Gaming moving towards becoming a much more inclusive & diverse industry

Authored by Sunil Yadav, CEO, PlayerzPot

In recent years, the gaming fever has caught on in India, with a massive following among the youth. India’s $1.8-billion gaming market, while small in global terms, is growing rapidly on the back of mobile-first games, according to the recent Sequoia-BCG report. The year 2021 has just taken the sector ahead in terms of revenue, user growth, marketing trends, etc. 

The gaming industry is raring to go, as digitisation has been driving industry-wide disruption, deepening smartphone penetration and availability of affordable data. All the said factors resulted in more than 300 million people playing mobile games in India, parallelly expecting to reach about 510 million gamers by FY 2022. It is moving towards becoming a much more inclusive and diverse industry. Women actively participate in the industry, either as players or decision-makers, making it a level-playing field for everyone. 

The gaming business has not remained immune to the trend of digital and performance marketing in its effort to attract customers and increase revenues. Industry players are going beyond performance marketing to focus on concrete conversions and customer stickiness. Companies were also seen adopting casual and free-to-play games this year, improving usage and retention by diversifying genres to increase engagement and retention, and driving monetisation through localised pricing strategies, among others. 

Multiplayer games have seen higher traction and time spent. Various learnings like wider suits of payment options, sachet pricing, in-game product variety, and perception of payers, etc., were also explored by industry players to enhance user monetisation. Familiarity in content and live communication features have worked to onboard users, for example, board games that are growing rapidly. Companies were actively investing time in fair play to gain consumers’ trust and restrict fraud activities on their platforms. 

When it comes to upcoming trends & projections, the gaming community can expect to disrupt the influencer marketing segment by strategically creating highly engaging content & customised products for users. Players are open to explore gaming content trends like short video, live streaming, new genres of gaming, GENZ-focused games, etc. International investors and companies are likely to show interest and invest in the Indian gaming industry. Also, sponsoring Indian esports teams and companies will be on the list of many Asian and Western esports organisations. 

The gaming sector today has become a global giant that will continue to grow rapidly with each trend and innovation. The Sequoia-BCG report has rightly projected the growth of mobile gaming to triple in size, $5 billion+ market by 2025. With groundbreaking technology and widespread adoption, further expansion in the gaming area is inevitable. 

DISCLAIMER: The views expressed are solely of the author and Adgully does not necessarily subscribe to it.