The majority of the world was stuck inside in March last year (2020), as there was an invisible virus outside. The pandemic of the Coronavirus forced people to try with and explore more windows for entertainment and social networking.
It turned out one of those was gaming. For the fanatics, there was always gaming, but it became more than just a time pass for those who were bonded to ‘Candy Crush’ on their mobile phones while commuting.
One of the very few better reasons to stay inside was to play a video game on a mobile device or console or PC. New players and, in some cases, new avenues were added by the gaming ecosystem, which includes both ‘noobs’ and ‘pros’. Many casual gamers became experts, and some of them even ended up challenging the clans who ruled the roulette for a long time.
Not only in India, but also worldwide, gaming has seen a spike. The Economist weekly newspaper reported that in late March (2020), with 25 million players logged in at one time, the number of players logged into ‘Steam’, a popular gaming platform on PCs, achieved record highs. In the month after March 16, the share price of Nintendo increased by 45 percent. From March to April, Amazon’s Twitch saw its traffic jump by 50 percent.
During the COVID-induced lockdowns, the lines between real sports and video games were further blurred. This brings us to the topic of debate at the recently concluded Gaming Week. Organized through the afaqs! The four-day webinar focuses on gaming and e-sports debates.
Akshat Rathee, MD and founder, NODWIN Gaming; Satya Raghavan, Head, YouTube India; Supratik Sen, CEO, and co-founder, U Sports; and Vivek Jain, COO, MX Player, shared their thoughts in a panel discussion on media rights and whether it is time for intellectual property rights developers to cash in. Anirban Roy Choudhury of afaqs! was the moderator of the session.
Raghavan said that the video-on-demand (VOD) platform is experiencing a huge gaming acceleration when it comes to YouTube India. He shared that the torque was already on an upward trajectory around gaming.
“There are many more streamers and games. Then, it became many streamers streaming many games in many different languages. Earlier, it was the Mumbai, Delhi, Bengaluru kind of crowd, but now, we are seeing people from smaller towns too. Youngsters, teenagers and now we also have women gamers and streamers.”
YouTube owned the rights last year to broadcast ‘Call of Duty’ and ‘Overwatch’ from Activision. In a bid to outperform Twitch to regulate the streaming business internationally, it will now stream the marquee tournaments.
The meeting ended with YouTube’s Raghavan saying that gaming is at a very interesting level in India.
Follow and connect with us on Facebook, Linkedin & Twitter
.
