As gaming grows in India, Facebook focuses on diversity and monetisation

India is the world’s fifth-largest mobile gaming market, according to Q1 2021 research by Indian mobile advertising company InMobi. The company has estimated that 44% of India’s smartphone users are likely to be playing games on their phones by the year 2022. Facebook has sought to have the first-mover advantage amid the growing gaming culture. The integration of Facebook Gaming within the Facebook app gives it a potential advantage. Ahead of the company’s first-ever gaming showcase in India, Press Start, Facebook Gaming is riding a wave of momentum.

Manish Chopra, Facebook India’s director and head of partnerships, said India is now ranked third in global gameplay session volume. He said three verticals make up Facebook Gaming in the country. Play is all about online gameplay while Watch rivals platforms such as Twitch for live game streaming videos and Connect attempts to bring the burgeoning creator community with followers. Play is particularly interesting for India since it allows users to play games without having to download them on their phones.

The Play vertical has clocked 380 million users playing games monthly on Facebook. In July and August, India recorded 234 million gameplay sessions, said Chopra. “The remarkable thing is that India is the third-largest globally. If you look at gaming, there are a lot of markets where gaming has been very well established and there is a perception that India is not a top gaming market as such,” said Chopra.

The gaming sector in India attracted an investment of $544 million during the August 2020-January 2021 period, according to Girish Menon, partner and the head of media and entertainment at KPMG in India.

Gaming in India is expected to grow at a faster than usual pace in the next 12-18 months, with the momentum of 2020 and early 2021 providing the push. Statistics indicate that the momentum, which picked up early last year as India went into a lockdown due to the pandemic, has not tapered off. “We also thought hard about that when we saw the peaking happened. It was a nice bump up during the first phase of the pandemic. But it did not come down, even when lockdown opened,” said Chopra.

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The trends for July and August, which coincided with the normalisation phase post the second Covid-19 wave, lend credence to this argument. Facebook insists that the momentum has remained strong and the organic trajectory for gaming is picking up further. Facebook’s positioning with cloud gaming instead of downloading games will further push interest. According to KPMG India numbers, India clocked the highest game downloads in casual mobile gaming in 2020, with Q1-Q3 2020 downloads standing at 7.3 billion. That’s 17% of the global mobile game downloads, excluding China.

The gaming creators are the backbone of the Watch and Connect verticals for Facebook’s gaming push in India. There is focus on diversity, including livestreams available in multiple Indian languages including Hindi, Punjabi, Tamil, Telugu and Bengali.

Rog Stream now has over two million followers on the platform, making her the most popular woman creator in India. Mystic Ignite started this trend and was the first woman partner creator on Facebook Gaming in India. According to InMobi’s numbers, women make up for 43% of the mobile gaming demographic in India, of which 12% are between ages 25-44 and 28% over the age of 45.

The most popular game titles that gamers streamed in India and were the most-watched include PUBG Mobile, Garena Free Fire, Grand Theft Auto V, PUBG: Battlegrounds, and Mobile Legends. These are the game titles that top the download charts on the Google Play Store for Android devices and feature heavily on the App Store charts for the Apple iPhone and iPad ecosystem.

But how big a challenge is it for Facebook to push the Play vertical with newer and better game titles? Chopra said that AAA titles, an informal classification for gamers that have a major publisher or investment, are the big focus for Facebook. “Krafton and Garena are making gaming content for us,” he said.

Chopra said the platform gives them a full suite of monetisation capabilities. Ad-revenue sharing allows creators to get a slice of the revenue from ads placed on their game streams. Facebook does not share the ad-revenue share percentage specifics but insists it is the standard revenue sharing model available across the platform. “We have that same thing for our publishers in entertainment, in news and in other categories also. Ad revenue share is a standard approach, and we do not differentiate on the basis of number of followers they have.”

Creators also have the option of fan subscriptions as well as stars, which is a way for fans to appreciate their streams. “Building a loyal follower community is important for the streamer,” said Chopra.

Facebook insists gamer feedback is what pushed it to also make gaming products available as a standalone app. Facebook Gaming is free to download app for Android phones and the Apple iPhone. It is available across multiple platforms, including the web browser and Android. India’s unique trends show an overwhelming preference for mobile devices to access Facebook Gaming. Android is the most popular platform. “It is not that there is a platform limitation as such for us,” said Chopra.

Hardware limitations, device specifications, and other factors do not really play as variables in Facebook Gaming’s Play vertical, because of the HTML5 technology. Facebook points to the availability of faster and more reliable internet across broadband and mobile networks, as factors which have helped push online game streaming.