How Gaming Startups Are Building India’s Gaming Creator Ecosystem

The late 90s and early 2000s were an interesting time to grow up in India. The country was getting its first taste of arcade gaming. Preteens, teenagers, and even young adults lined up at video game parlours for hours to test their skills against other players in titles like Tekken and Mortal Combat. 

Many wished they could play those games for a living. It was, after all, probably the first time they were exposed to an interest-based community outside of books and sports. However, gaming, at the time, was considered an idle hobby at best — not something that could be turned into a paying vocation.

Those video game parlours are now largely gone. So is the long-held belief that a passion for gaming cannot be turned into a career. There are more than 500 Mn gamers currently active in India, driving a market that is estimated to be worth over $2.6 Bn. Top names in the field, such as Lokesh Gamer, Jonathan and Ghatak are estimated to earn annual incomes comparable to top tech talent in data science, machine learning, AI and business intelligence.

In short, if gaming is your passion, there appears to be no better time than now to consider a career in this high-growth, high-potential industry. However, as with everything else, there is a catch or two that you should be aware of.

Building A Career In Gaming In India: Mapping The Challenges & Opportunities

If you’re interested in gaming content creation as a prospective career option, you are already aware of the basics. Build audiences, create relevant and relatable content, cross-platform outreach, and experiment with content formats and tone until you find the right mix. 

You may already have a gaming channel with a decent viewership and might be exploring either growing your audience or trying to monetise your reach. However, you may be unaware that the platform you choose as your primary outlet can have a significant impact on how quickly you grow or how successful your monetisation attempts are.

Global platforms such as YouTube and Twitch are designed to maximise engagement, with their algorithms often prioritising content from top streamers with large audiences over smaller content creators for user recommendations. So, for most early-stage gaming content creators who may not have the reputation of someone like PewDiePie, organic discoverability, audience growth, and monetisation become major challenges to scale.

Another factor that you should consider is that these platforms are designed for a broadly English-speaking audience. While some platforms are now prioritising regional language content to improve their market penetration and user adoption, most popular game streaming platforms are simply not built to highlight new content in regional languages.

As an Indian gaming content creator, you are forced to choose between creating content in English, which will severely limit your channel’s relatability and reach or being at the mercy of the algorithm gods. It also hinders your content monetisation attempts; low audience numbers translate to fewer views, which in turn puts a very hard cap on the ad revenues you can generate. 

There is also very limited support available outside streaming, leaving you, as the content creator, to fend for yourself when it comes to seeking brand sponsorships and associations and being wholly dependent on viewer support.

This knowledge might feel all doom and gloom but it is necessary, especially if you are just starting out. Knowing the nitty-gritty of how the tech behind the content works can help you build a more successful gaming content career – especially with indigenously developed platforms catering to your specific needs.

Building Creator-Driven Ecosystems: The Differentiation Of New-Age Streaming Platforms

One of the biggest pain points for Indian content creators has been the fact that most streaming platforms are optimised for a PC/console experience, even though most gamers in the country play games on a mobile device. Indigenously developed platforms are addressing this need gap by adopting a mobile-first, tech-driven approach.

Top platforms now come equipped with easy-to-use tools for streaming and content editing on the go. These tools can help to simplify complex tasks such as editing a gameplay video, managing live streams, creating professional-looking videos with layering effects, voiceovers, and more, as easily as posting a picture on Instagram. This frees you to focus on more value-driven tasks such as developing your strategy to put out more enriching content for your users and tracking and building your audience engagement.

Another aspect of this tech-driven and localised approach is the focus on talent development and creator enablement. Gaming-centric content platforms aren’t just targeting the top 1% of streamers, who include professional esports players and established influencers. They are also identifying the next million young and promising creators from across the globe in order to provide them with the assistance they require from the start.  

From providing granular metrics around their streams to helping creators tap into current and emerging trends within the community, these platforms have deployed interesting technology interventions to guide their creator base and feed personalised content to consumers. This is augmented by the hand-holding done by dedicated in-house community teams that analyse and help curate more engaging content on the platform.

Having established a strong framework for content creation and curation, some of the leading platforms have also tested a diversity of monetisation capabilities. For example, developing unobtrusive display ad integrations and synergistic brand-content integrations, as well as sponsorship opportunities between brands and creators. 

Simultaneously, vertical gaming platforms lend themselves to simple integrations for a rewards and gifting economy, which is a growing phenomenon in the gaming industry. Fans can look forward to winning gaming rewards and coupons, and they can show their appreciation by gifting in-platform currency to their favourite creators.

Tapping Into The Opportunity With The Right Tools

A recent IAMAI-Kantar report projects that India’s base of internet users will grow from its current 692 Mn to 900 Mn by 2025. Most of these users will access internet-based services on mobile devices, which will only get more affordable and powerful. 

This, combined with the imminent mass market rollout of 5G internet, will drive further adoption, popularity, and growth of gaming in India. Driven by these unique tailwinds, the sector is projected to achieve an almost fourfold growth to become a staggering $8.6 Bn market by 2027.

These projected statistics only serve to highlight India’s massive potential for gaming content. To make the most of this opportunity, you will not just have to be good at playing games — you have to be just as good at knowing how to package and sell it. Indigenous tech-driven platforms will be critical in achieving this goal of reaching the pinnacle of gaming content creation. 

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