Gaming Operator CEO Shares his Thoughts
Sunil Yadav, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of PlayerzPot, an online casual games and fantasy sports platform based in Navi Mumbai, shares his views on the future of online gaming in India in a recent article written by him.
Yadav’s predictions on the upcoming changes to the country’s gaming ecosystem include further broadening of the already large user base with more women and with people from all age groups, a further rise of the significance of streamers and influencers, a focus on branding efforts, and an influx of more innovations in the fields of monetisation and NFT gaming.
The surge in online gaming brought by the pandemic-induced stay-at-home restrictions saw a lot of young and elderly citizens including many women join the ranks of Indian gamers. Yadav expects the growth of the desi user base to continue with increased marketing and brand awareness efforts by gaming companies backed up by more collaborations with streamers and influencers.
The growing number of female gamers is about to set a wave of transformations to the gaming environment making it a safer place for women. To avoid sexual harassment, a lot of them still choose to play incognito or under male aliases, but this is about to change with gaming studios introducing more female protagonists fueling a trend that will soon make women gamers feel as equals.
New revenue streams and opportunities for monetization will further strengthen the gaming industry and attract more gamers with the increase of real-world perks like vouchers and gadgets offered to players. The rise of crypto and NFT will continue and will bring a new surge in real money gaming, providing users not only with a source of income, but also with the feeling they are the owners now.
Indian Lottery will Inevitably Digitize
Bharat’s most popular game, lottery run by state governments, is set to adapt to current digitisation trends, as predicted by the analysts of Esse N Videri Media (ENV Media) in a recent research paper titled “Dissecting the Indian Lottery Market.”
Currently in India, the phrase ‘online lottery’ means “a retailer assisted lottery ticket being sold at the retailer but controlled through a central server by the concerned state government,” as per the words of a high ranking official of one of the large lottery distributors in the country, quoted by ENV.
The fast digitisation, the growing internet and smartphone penetration, and the availability of easy-to-use and reliable fintech payment options, will exert continuous and rising pressure on the existing lottery business model relying on sales of paperback tickets.
The introduction of a truly digital legal online lottery in India will provide state-run lotteries with “a better chance of controlling their operations, raising safety standards, solving payment issues, creating job opportunities, and fighting gambling addiction more effectively,” the Esse Videri analysts write.
The Gaming Sector will be a Remarkable Contributor to the Economy with a Proper Legal Framework
In a previous article authored by him, Sunil Yadav makes a prediction that India’s gaming sector will become one of the major contributors to the economy, if a sensible regulatory framework over gaming is enacted. “We look forward to transparent and progressive regulations that clearly differentiate games of skill from those of chance,” he writes.
The creation of a national regulatory body to oversee the operations of Indian online casino, fantasy sports, esports and casual gaming platforms can “help in drafting progressive policies that are beneficial to the nation by having a safe gaming environment.”
Such a gaming authority can be mandated with the task to examine and classify games into skill-based and chance-based categories, reviewing the specific rules and gameplay of each separate game title. This will eliminate the age-long ambiguities surrounding the skill vs chance distinction and will help with the implementation of standardized accounting and taxation principles.
“With a proper policy structure, legal framework, regulatory ecosystem and data privacy procedures, the online gaming sector can easily support the government’s initiatives under the campaign Digital India, Make in India and contribute remarkably to the economy,” PlayerzPot CEO Sunil Yadav concludes.
