Until 2010, there were 20 million users in the budding video gaming industry of India. By 2020, this number saw a whopping 22x rise, with 450 million users playing a wide range of casual, hyper-casual, classic, mid-core, and hardcore games. In the last five years, the industry has seen phenomenal development and is predicted to triple in value to US $3.9 billion by 2025.
The global academic research has focused on understanding the boom in video games, representation of gender, race, and postcolonialism, the educative potential of video gaming and their adverse consequences on violence and aggression. Many have offered recommendations for game designers to ensure inclusivity, or to governments and video game players regarding means of regulation like parental control, time constraints, and warning messages. Despite the massive popularity of video games all across India, there is a surprising dearth of research in the fields of evolution of the video game industry and in-depth analysis of video games and policy interventions. With the rapid rise in the video gaming industry in India, research on its construction, implications and possible interventions is necessary going forward so that video game makers in India are encouraged to offer new and inclusive platforms of gaming moving away from relying heavily on existing popular games, violence, and stereotypes. Research can also help understand the role that governments and technology policy can play in regulating and encouraging constructive video gaming in the Indian context specifically. Using biometric analysis, this article highlights the paucity of academic research in the video gaming landscape in India; themes and shortcomings in the existing literature and proposes scope for newer and more holistic research. However, other types of popular and credible research (mainly market research and industry reports by consulting firms) are not covered in this article since they do not fit under the purview of a scientific research article.
While research on popular culture and mainstream media such as movies, books, music, TV series has gained traction in India in the last few decades, video games remain an under-researched caveat. Critical analysis of pop culture is often used to understand the shift in cultural and ideological narratives in the nation and when woven with critiques of gender, class, and caste reveal the pulse of the people. Video games offer a novel insight into analysis of cultural consumption, because they actively encourage the user’s participation in their ecosystem. Unlike films, music, and television series, the players are often invited (albeit in limited ways) to frame their own stories and choose their actions, avatars, and teams. Players embody the characters in the games, and their powers and responsibilities. This active participation in fixed designed environments (in games like Clash of Clans) or in self-created ones (in games like Second Life) can bring out interesting insights into what kinds of games people like to play, characters they like to embody, and who is left out or stereotyped and why. Numerous studies highlight the power of embodiment and complete immersion in video game narratives, and what it can do to its players. While some study the educational potential of this hands-on experience and how it can be employed constructively, many others fear an increase in violence and apathy of players who engage in aggressive and militant games.
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