There has been a meteoric rise of game streaming in the gaming industry worldwide. India being at the nascent stage has however started witnessing significant growth of streamers and platforms. According to StreamElements and Arsenal.gg, the live-streaming sector grew a full 45 per cent between March and April; year over year, the industry is up by 99 per cent.
At Gems 2020 Live Stream: The Upward Curve, moderated by Indian Television dot com group founder CEO and editor in chief Anil Wanvari, the panelists – YouTube streamer Raman Chopra, Pocket Aces founder Anirudh Pandita, Rooter Sports Technology founder and CEO Piyush Kumar, The Esports Club co-founder and CEO Ishan Arya shared insights on game streaming.
Today with the fast adoption of gaming and esports across the country, content creation around gaming and esports or watching live matches on streaming platforms is picking up in India. Chopra shared how he started his game streaming journey, “Back in 2016, I saw on Twitch that people were streaming their game and that’s when I decided to try it on YouTube. People started commenting and becoming a part of my stream. I never started streaming for money. I came here for my passion and to enjoy while playing games. I started as a guy with three viewers and now I have 2.75lakhs subscribers where people are also sponsoring me.”
While English was predominantly the language of choice earlier, it is no longer the leader in the country in every case. Live game streaming in vernacular languages has picked up pace only to prove that the content consumption will only grow in the coming years. As Chopra shared that in India his userbase is mainly from Delhi, Punjab, Bombay, and other Hindi speaking states whereas he could not identify users from non-Hindi speaking regions for example viewers from the south.
New esport players and creators are emerging each day thus the viewership of gaming and content creators of gaming is increasing each day. Because of such a hike in the number of consumers and creators Pandita expressed, “All over the country, people are connecting us for sponsorship and queries on how they can stream on our platforms. In addition to that, connecting the right audience is as crucial as engaging them in the correct manner. Thus they have sketched out a very simple framework, ‘Paisa Nasha Pyar’.”
The consumer behaviour of consuming esports content is also evolving today. Game streaming consumers are consuming content like any other content on any device according to Arya. That’s why they are constantly evolving in vast areas of esports from doing player profiles, interview, team profiles, highlights and so on. “We shifted from one-off event to a larger calendar. We are trying to learn and integrate learnings from traditional broadcast sports in India,” he added.
Technology plays a crucial role in game streaming and thus Kumar highlighted, “We are trying to balance game streaming and sports streaming and we are looking forward as to how we can balance game streaming in the coming time with real-time.”