By Siddharth Sharma, Head of Strategy,  Head Digital Works,Pvt Ltd
April 19 2022: The online gaming landscape in India has witnessed tremendous growth in the past few decades. Mobile gaming technology now dominates the gaming industry, re-enforcing the sector’s determination to grow despite existing restrictions. Today, with technological advancements, players enjoy an increased immersive experience right from the number of options they can choose from, features of a game, who they can play against, privacy settings, and payment protection coupled with high definition graphics, to begin with. 
The onset of the pandemic in 2020, left people with more time in hand, leading to increased screen time for students and working professionals ranging between 25-40 years of age. This was furthered by gaming platforms creating popular global games, and re-equipping them to suit the average Indian gamer. Skilled-based gaming gained popularity among gamers soon enough. However, given the increasing demand, it also became essential for gaming companies, like ours, to support simultaneous traffic with the help of technological advancements. This also saw a growth in mobile-based gaming, which led to a culture of pocket-sized gaming in the country.
With increasing numbers of average hours spent by gamers engaging in competitive skilled-based gaming, it became important to keep innovating and coming up with newer games at regular intervals. Variations like the single player to multiplayer games, smaller price points ranging as minimal as  Rs 5, casual gaming including the likes of carrom and pool, live streaming of games are all testimony to the technological advancements in this sector. Monitoring gameplay behavior for focused recommendations to having a game performance section to help gamers understand how they can improve their gameplay and consequently increase their chances of winning, the gaming sector uses technology in multiple ways.
Deep tech and AI
While the introduction of new features and implementations is only the start of a good experience and increasing business, what is most important is sustenance. With massive data flow across digital platforms, gaming companies, especially skill-based games, have successfully implemented AI-based engines and Deep Tech to heighten the level of difficulty for gamers, better motion capturing, call for competitive gaming, and create a realistic user experience for gamers. Cloud-based gaming – allowing games to run on remote servers – holds huge potential for growth in the future. In addition to this, the use of AI-based engines help in identifying potentially problematic gaming patterns to enforce responsible gaming policies and maintain safe gaming habits. 
Skill versus chance
What distinguishes skilled-based gaming from chance-based ones,  is the fact that a player’s performance and wins/ losses are dependent on the player themselves. Players make moves based on calculative risk alongside their understanding of the game and knowledge to play it in the most optimum manner possible.  This makes maintaining fair play and integrity critical. Implementing regulations that ensure clean gaming, especially when it comes to Real Money Gaming (RMG) is key for all companies in the sector. 
Last but not the least, with our country progressing towards building a digital economy faster than ever before,  several online gaming platforms that use RMG, have benefitted. However, it was important to ensure safe transactions for all stakeholders involved.  Thanks to technology, security techniques like Random Number Generation (RNG) algorithms, this was made possible and technology lay at the forefront, yet again. 
Today, while the gaming industry as a whole still has a long way to go, its steady growth trajectory cannot be discounted. Being the second most populated country in the world, India has over 365 million online gamers as of 2020, expected to reach 510 million by FY 2022. Technology will continue to remain at the centre of innovation in this sector as gaming becomes more secure and competitive in times to come. 
Head Digital Works Pvt. Ltd is a Hyderabad-headquartered, gaming and entertainment solutions provider.