The country’s mounting middle class are actually willing to pay for the content and the experience from the online gaming sector in the form of mobile gaming. Automatically an increase in the demand for digital games can be noticed which further pushed the upward curve of innovative gaming platforms in India.
Today at the tap on a screen, one can download games onto a smart device and this has surged the popularity of real money gaming in hyper casual section. Few days back AnimationXpress spoke to women hyper casual players who play games while travelling in Mumbai local trains and we found out majority of them like playing them because it doesn’t require much of brain racking (it require skill to master it) and it can be easily played while travelling in local trains. What will happen when they start getting return in terms of real money by playing hyper casual games? The response will be similar to the popularity buzz of Indian fantasy sports or Rummy.
Earlier in an interaction WinZo Games co-founder Paavan Nanda says, “Gaming has changed the contours of the entertainment industry and the onus lies majorly on the easier availability and affordability of smartphones and cheap data rates in India. Today on an average a user spent around 55 minutes on mobile phone playing games. The three key segments of online gaming, which has seen engagement includes – real money games (RMG), mobile-centric/casual games and esports.”
Today Indian gaming community is at the point where RMG has the potential to become the key driver of the gaming economy. Real money gaming has evolved since the past generations with new trends and features and it has now become that unexplored place where everyone wants to explore RMG with hyper casual and casual games.
As Junglee Games head of games Puneet Mehrotra shares, “A lot of companies are now experimenting with RMG versions of casual and hyper casual games; this is the space to watch this year. These are exciting times at Junglee Games. 2020 will see us venturing out into casual games RMG space.”
Today the RMG space has evolved from rummy to fantasy sports and now it is hyper casual and casual games. To an online news portal Entrepreneur Baazi Games founder Naavkiran Singh said “In under 10 years, the gaming industry in India has recorded a yearly turnover of over Rs 1000 crore, with more than 100 organizations have mushroomed in the RMG area. The RMG online market in India is evaluated to associate with Rs. 2,200 crore and is pegged at a development rate of 30 per cent per annum.”
Factually, it can be observed that there is a convergence of real money gaming in its multiple forms of entertainment, video streaming, live playing that involves real time money too. As users in the real gaming money market are growing at a steady pace therefore from medium players to big players all are diving to transform the prospect of real money gaming in casual and hyper casual games.
Even indie game developer and founder duo Karan Khairajani and Surojit Roy initiated the journey of
hyper-casual gaming platforms with a team of eight members. The hyper-casual game platform Pocket League, an android app launched in early November 2018 where one can earn real cash by playing hyper-casual games available in the platform. Hyper casual games are something where the gamers can be anybody irrespective of age and one can play the game irrespective of time and place as well. Both Roy and Khairajani have been huge fans of hyper-casual games, which have been heavily popularised by Ketchapp and Voodoo, over the last few years. These games are easy to get into yet hard to master and mastering these games requires a lot of practice and skill. Pocket League enables gamers to compete against each other for real money.
Although even today a large number of people believe when real money is involved in gaming they directly consider it as ‘game of luck’ which is illegal, which seems to be a prevailing stigma. Today the other side where real money is involved is in skill based games or game of skill which is legal as per the Supreme Court order and this has boosted a lot of fantasy sports platforms and Rummy platforms in 2019. And now in 2020 it is time for casual and hyper casual games where one requires certain skills and need to follow patterns to ace it. Earlier there was no opportunity for audience to earn money through casual games but now player can earn real money by playing and winning at hyper casual games.