What 2023 holds for India’s gaming industry

The future is here - and it's looking pretty wild! Yes, we're talking about the Indian Gaming Industry. While there are no guarantees that you'll be included in this booming industry, there are some factors you can watch over the next few years. 

The gaming industry is recession-proof, and the reason is simple: gamers are gamers. Given the fact that India was the world’s largest consumer of mobile games in FY22 with 15 billion downloads in the year, there’s an immense market for developers to experiment and execute on emerging technologies.

Virtual Reality

In 2023, we're going to see the rise of a new economy that thrives on creativity and collaboration. The world is going to become more connected than ever — and games are at the forefront of it. With Augmented and Virtual Reality (AR/VR) in the picture, games become more of a social platform with no boundaries. There arises a misconception regarding the kind of games that can be a part of the metaverse being mostly open world games. The possibility of hosting esports events in the metaverse is also another angle to this, where players can now experience being amidst the other fans while witnessing professional players compete. 

Metaverse is changing the very nature of user experience. Even though the masses still find it hard to understand the new form of the internet, video games remain the primary entry point for them to this emerging idea. The growing Indian gaming industry coupled with the decentralization of the In-game economy puts us at the right moment as a country to leverage this opportunity and become a global frontrunner.

Shift from casual games to midcore games

Gamers who initially start their gaming journey through casual or hyper casual games eventually end up transitioning into midcore games; sounds like a no-brainer right? Well, as gamers immerse themselves more into gaming, their interests are also influenced by more challenging games and hence the transition begins. 

From a retention standpoint, the games must compete with each other, finding the right balance between  easy to learn and hard to master. As this is what keeps the in-game competition and communities thriving.

Esports, a potential goldmine to look out for 

The marketability for the Esports industry is also immense with the development of upcoming technologies such as tradable NFTs in-game which might create hype within the growing communities. This creates various opportunities for the gaming industry to steer toward the direction of a wider audience by leveraging it via Esports.

This creates enormous potential for esports icons to engage and drive a push among their fans toward various new adoptions for innovative games that integrate trades within the blockchain such as NFTs. Like fans of football purchase physical tradable cards of their favourite players, Esports can opt for an alternative route in the form of NFTs given its electronic mode.

Blockchain and P2E — Real Earnings on Games

As for the industry trends to incorporate NFTs in-game by a few gaming tech giants, it would open up new opportunities for attracting crowds from developing countries to utilize this as a primary source of income. As a result, boosting creative inputs from users also boosts the economy to a certain degree during the predicted periods of recession. This at the same time also impacts the shift in employability in a positive manner by creating new job opportunities within the Web3 ecosystem for game developers & other related tech roles.

In closing, there is a huge opportunity for the Indian gaming industry to cater to its growing user base by employing technologies all set to shake up the status quo.

We predict that  2023 will be a big year for virtual reality games, and we will see some serious changes in how we play games on mobile. The coming year will introduce India to the new global trends in the gaming world, but the most important of all may be the interaction between real and virtual realities.

Kashyap Reddy

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Kashyap Reddy is the Cofounder of Hitwicket.