New Delhi, Mar 18 (IANS): The onset of the pandemic and the subsequent lockdown resulted in a significant shift in mobile usage and consequently has been a catalyst in boosting mobile gaming in India.

InMobi's 2021 Gaming Report, India found that during this period, 45 per cent of Indians started playing games on their smartphones.

This also resulted in a spike in the amount of time spend on mobile gaming as well as the number of apps they experimented with. Among the committed gamers, 40 per cent spent more time on gaming apps while 38 per cent of them increased the variety of games they played.

During Covid-19, on an average day, time spent on gaming apps surged through the day as people played a lot more often starting as early as 7.30 a.m. till 11.30 p.m. The sharpest surge in the use of gaming apps occurred at 11.30 a.m., with a 6.6x increase in gameplay.

Commenting on the changing gaming pattern in India, Vasuta Agarwal, Managing Director, Asia Pacific, InMobi, said, "Mobile gaming accelerated due to the lockdown in India as people continued to shelter at place and work from home. What was seemingly an emerging trend is now a lasting behavior with a 1.5x growth in gaming users. With over 80% of mobile gamers playing every day, it has evolved to become an integral part of the connected consumer's life!"

Gaming in India is no longer restricted to young men. Majority of Indians are committed gamers who play at least once or more every day. Accessibility and affordability of smartphones and high-speed internet are some of the factors which have made mobile gaming a popular source of entertainment for people regardless of age and location. The report highlights that women constitute 43 per cent of the Mobile Gaming audience in India of which 12 per cent are in the age group of 25-44 and 28 per cent are over 45 years.

Typically, Indians play mobile games in multiple short spurts during the day. 40 per cent of the respondents who participated in the InMobi Pulse survey indicated that they usually play in 10-minute sessions - in between meetings, chores, meals, etc. However, committed gamers, on the contrary, spend substantially more time per session than other gamers, with over 84 per cent of the players spending up to an hour on mobile gaming in a single sitting.

According to the report, committed Indian gamers love experimenting with new games. More than half of the survey respondents said they download a new game every week while over 40 per cent have more than three games on their smartphones at any given time.