Gaming trends to watch out for in 2018

CHENNAI: Everyone has a mobile phone and it is inevitable to not play games in it. The number of smartphones will soon reach 500 million in India this year and the number of people consuming data (3G, 4G and yet-to-be-launched 5G) may reach 350 million.

According to Google KPMG report, an average casual gamer spends 7-10% of his mobile time on games, spending 1/3rd of its entertainment budget. The research adds that they play across genre like sports, arcade, puzzle, action, racing or strategy. Chinese biggies Alibaba, PayTM, Tencent, Youzu, etc are tying up with the game developers.

There was a massive growth of social real money games, like poker and rummy or fantasy games like cricket and kabaddi. It garnered active users in an instant and started becoming some of the top grossing games to invest in advertising. Most of these gamers are men aged above 25 and who spend a lot on these games. Companies like Games 24X7, Dream11, HeadInfoTech, Adda52, Octro Inc, Junglee Games & Moonfrog labs stood out and will continue to grow stronger in 2018. There will also be many fantasy sports games on football, basketball and others. E-sports on online platform is a trend to look forward to as it is now a medal game in Asian games in 2022 and being considered for 2024 Olympics.

In India, games like Subway Surfer, Candy Crush and Temple Run were some of the top played games but Indian games too – Ludo, Snakes & Ladder, Teen Patti and Callbreak have been on the top of the list. Indian IP-related games like Bahubali and Sachin Saga was also top grossing games of the year. This year will see several such games on Indian movies, politics, sports and celebrities.

Monetization has been important for Indian game developers because of our low propensity to pay along with friction to pay. With digitisation, carrier billing and smaller denominations, there were many in-app purchases in 2017. This trend will continue this year. Monetization through ads will also increase as brands realise they can reach an highly engaged audience.

Pokemon Go was the first commercially successful AR (Artificial Reality) game in 2016. Ninatic Labs will now bring out a similar game on Harry Potter in 2018. Apple’s AR kit and Google’s AR Core are compatible with many new phones that will be released this year. VR (Virtual Reality), an immersive, 3D environment is slowly dying, as the equipment involved is costly. While few local developers like EmpowerLabs, PaperBoat apps might create games around AR/VR tech, commercially it might be available only in a game parlour.