‘Facebook committed to growing gaming ecosystem in India’

Hyderabad: Online gaming sector in India has seen robust growth over the past few years due to an increase in wireless internet users and smartphone usage. This further accelerated over the last 18 months with the Covid-pandemic, and the segment is expected to reach $3.8 billion market size by 2025. Manohar Hotchandani, director, Business Development, […]

Hyderabad: Online gaming sector in India has seen robust growth over the past few years due to an increase in wireless internet users and smartphone usage. This further accelerated over the last 18 months with the Covid-pandemic, and the segment is expected to reach $3.8 billion market size by 2025. Manohar Hotchandani, director, Business Development, Facebook India tells Y V Phani Raj how the platform is enabling creators and the gaming community. Excerpts-

Platforms & tools

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Our Play platform features games from titles such as Ludo King to racing games such as Asphalt 9, which are instantly playable with no downloads required. Any developer, large or small, can find an audience on the platform and use Facebook’s tools to build, grow, and monetise games. Facebook Gaming offers tools for gaming creators and aspiring creators, to stream games on Facebook Gaming, reach a global audience and monetise their content. More than 20 million members were active in Facebook gaming groups between July and August this year.

Market opportunity

Our investment in gaming in India is growing, and we are focused on creating value for people. While more than 380 million people globally play games each month on Facebook, India recorded 234 million game play sessions on Facebook in the two months during July- August this year, ranking third globally in game play sessions for the specified time period. Viewership of live gaming video in India has also grown by over 530 per cent over the last year and we are working with game publishers and home-grown creators to stream their games on Facebook, and are committed to growing the gaming ecosystem in India.

Consumer verticals

We have three consumer verticals, namely, Play, Watch and Connect. For developers and publishers, our goal is to build a platform which enables developers to reach new audiences, connect with players and monetise their games. For creators, our goal is to enable gaming creators to build and grow their communities on Facebook and earn a living through monetisation on our platform. We are working with top creators as well as nano and micro creators to expand their presence on Facebook. We aim to encourage diversity and inclusivity by encouraging more women into leadership positions, and elevating the stories of people from all walks of life using the power of games. We have been working with home grown gaming creators. For instance, Rog Stream, who is India’s biggest Facebook Gaming homegrown female creator with over 2 million followers, Mystic Ignite, who is FB Gaming India’s first ever female partner creator.

Vernacular focus

We understand that India is home to many languages and our team is working with creators who provide live streams in Telugu, Hindi, Tamil, Marathi and Punjabi apart from English. We are working with Bagha, one of India’s most popular Bengali gaming live streamers, and PunjabiGamer63, a father-son duo who stream games together in Punjabi. In fact, we are seeing Telugu-based gaming creators such as Munna Bhai gaming and VT Gaming.

Scope for monetization

The audience for gaming on Facebook is huge. Eligible gaming creators have access to a full suite of monetization tools on Facebook Gaming, from ad revenue, to Stars, Fan Subscriptions and more. We have Facebook’s Gaming Creator Program and Level Up Program, which help both established and emerging gaming creators to grow their audience and build sustainable businesses. Launched in June 2018, and currently available in more than 60 countries, up-and-coming creators can sign up to the Level Up program if they fulfill all the requirements. Once they are part of Level Up, they can begin streaming live on Facebook and can also monetise via Stars that fans send to creators. In India we have several micro and nano creators as part of Level Up, which allows them to leverage Facebook’s suite of monetisation tools.

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