“Streaming began choosing up quick in 4-5 months after I began and so I made a decision to stop my finance job and turn into a full-time gaming streamer. I’ve been doing this full time just for the final 8-9 months,” mentioned Hiranandani.
New Delhi-based Sakshi Sood, 22, is one other skilled gamer and content material creator who began streaming video games akin to GTA5 in the course of the lockdown. “After BGMI was launched, I began streaming that too and garnered over 1,000,000 followers inside a 12 months,” said Sood. She is mostly active on Facebook. Sood has also participated in several BGMI (Battlegrounds Mobile India) tournaments.
Hiranandani and Sood belong to the new breed of casual gamers and streamers who have taken the leap to full-time gaming as a career after the Covid-19 led boom in the Indian gaming industry.
On average, women gamers and content creators earn between Rs.30,000 and Rs.100,000 per month. This is what most male gamers also make. Top gamers make even more, according to Trinity Gaming. Brand deals, eSports tournaments, affiliate brand marketing, barter collaborations and platform remuneration are some of the ways both male and female gamers are making money.
According to a November 2021 report by Boston Consulting Group (BCG) and VC firm Sequoia, the Indian gaming industry generated $1.8 billion in revenue in 2020 at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 38%, which is faster than even the US (10%) and China (8%).
“During the pandemic, we saw immense growth in the gaming ecosystem. The participation of women gamers has grown a lot too. Two years ago, only 4% of gamers were women. Today women gamers account for 15% of the professional gaming community in India,” mentioned Abhishek Aggarwal, co-founder and managing director of Trinity Gaming, a gaming content material advertising and marketing agency. His agency is now working with 10 instances extra skilled girls players than earlier than the pandemic.
Anurag Khurana, founder and chief government of Penta Esports, corroborated that the presence of ladies within the recreation streaming house has improved considerably. However, he additionally famous that there are nonetheless not sufficient players in eSports. “There are solely 4 to 5 groups which have introduced their feminine rosters in India.”
Things, although, appear to be bettering. Last month, Acer organized a event on Valorant, a multiplayer on-line recreation, for ladies players in India as a part of its Predator Gaming League (PLG). The event obtained a complete of 1.2 million impressions and a viewership of 180,000. Thousands of ladies participated out of which staff Mollies received, in keeping with Acer. “We consider that ladies players would play an enormous function in driving the expansion of the eSports business. It is inspiring to see girls take up gaming severely,” said Sooraj Balakrishnan, head of marketing at Acer India.
The involvement of game publishers is important, according to Trinity’s Aggarwal. “The more publishers get involved the more validation and support women gamers will get,” he added.
Khurana, nonetheless, believes the business must do extra to get extra girls into eSports. “If you take a look at informal video games put collectively, 40% of players are girls. In skilled, critical gaming the quantity remains to be fairly low as in comparison with males. There is not any encouragement for ladies to take part in eSports. Some firms are taking such initiatives however they’re very restricted and extra symbolic than a norm,” said Khurana of Penta Esports. He rues that gaming is still not encouraged at home, especially for women.
Bullying and online harassment, for instance, are some of the other factors that women gamers have to face. “We get hate comments daily. Over time, I have learned to cope with these comments by ignoring them,” mentioned Sood. Hiranandani added that she hasn’t met one other feminine gamer who hasn’t confronted harassment and bullying. However, she mentioned that being a lady additionally provides you an higher hand as gaming is generally male-dominated and persons are curious after they see girls in gaming.
The ratio of ladies players to males isn’t skewed solely in India. “India isn’t lagging, In common all around the world there are few feminine skilled gamers,” mentioned Hiranandani. However, among the high girls recreation streamers within the US such Alia Shelesh, generally known as SSSniperwolf, have an estimated month-to-month incomes of $101,000 to $1.6 million, in keeping with SocialBlade, an internet site that tracks social media statistics. She has 32.7 million subscribers on YouTube. Similarly, high eSports gamer akin to Sasha Hostyn, also referred to as Scarlett, has made $423,000 by means of eSports gaming as of February 2022, in keeping with Statista.
Hiranandani mentioned that she’s going to proceed to give attention to recreation streaming for now and has no intention to get into eSports anytime quickly because it requires a unique ability set, lots of self-discipline, and a superb staff.
Sood, too, is targeted on streaming, however is now taking part in additional tournaments as that’s the place you get extra recognition, she added.
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