With an aim to aggregate the burgeoning gaming sector, GEMS (Games, Esports and More Summit) kicked off with Indian Television Dot Com Group CEO and editor-in-chief Anil Wanvari setting the tone of the event and welcoming the attendees and participants.
Followed by the welcome note, Tata Communications global head media and entertainment services Dhaval Ponda opened with a keynote address touching upon the facts and figures of India’s gaming scenario.
While the gaming sector has seen a significant uptick, especially during the outbreak, Ponda threw light on the need-gaps and opportunities India still needs to tap into. Diving into the research, he shared, “You will see how the growth into gaming has sort of accelerated and how it is poised to become mainstream. It is always good to evaluate an industry in terms of its participants and its potential. We also have a fairly large chunk of the global gaming pool of users.” Sharing what India needs to focus on to make inroads into the global industry, he added, “Gaming publishers are also only about 3 per cent of the total. This is something that we as an industry should look to substantiate the support because the global market for gaming has exploded and they’re doing exceptionally well.”
The first session was on “Building a robust backend and infrastructure network, and egaming: protecting yourself against the invaders” which opened with a power-packed discussion on the variables that contribute to a better and safer user experience. The first panel focused on building a sturdy backend and network along with optimum security mechanisms saw an insightful discussion on the best practices in the industry. The panelists unanimously agreed that the major risk that afflicts the landscape ranging from third party attacks to hacking to theft need to be reigned in with the help of a sturdy security infrastructure. The panel also threw light on the methods to provide a seamless and uninterrupted user-experience of gameplay in detail.
Moving on in a fireside chat with Wanvari, NODWIN gaming founder and managing director Akshat Rathee shared his insights on the overall esports and gaming sector growth and where it is standing right now. He opined that gaming and esports sector, revenue-wise is at a nascent stage with total revenue being less than Rs 10,000 crores. However, the sector is important because it controls the youth. “For example, there are 100mn people playing PUBG. Which is equal to many countries’ total population. Therefore, a designated federation for esports will help the sector to boom even more,” Rathee added.
Our next panel was on “Esports Production: Going Remote”, the discussion revolved around how esports organisations were dealing up with pandemic, how they have shifted the complete infrastructure for production online to work remotely during the pandemic. The panelists also poured light on how in the last six months they have been facing a constant challenge to achieve the same quality of content while working remotely.
The session was followed by a presentation by Google Play India ANZ business development manager, games Sharan Tulsiani who poured light on the number of users, engagement, gaming behaviour, demographics and more around the growth of the gaming and esports sector in India.
In the next panel “Live Stream: The Upward Curve”, insights on how game streaming sector evolved and what it has to offer in the coming years was talked upon. Due to pandemic, the game streaming sectors have evolved a lot; be it in the form of selecting streaming content as a mode of entertainment or the emergence of regional content. It has happened that new esports players and creators are emerging each day leading to an increase in viewership of gaming and content creators every day.
With that GEMS 2020 Day 1 concluded. Stay tuned for Day 2!!