Women who love gaming: In pursuit of thrill and triumph

During one of her ‘meet-up’ events in Delhi, a vlog of which she posted on her channel, hundreds of fans, mostly men, can be seen jostling to catch a glimpse of Payal Dhare. At one point, the crowd begins to chant her name. The 23-year-old is seen taking selfies with eager fans, fist-bumping them, and signing her name on their shirts with much aplomb. Her online presence is impressive, too: Dhare (@payalgaming) has over 3.3M subscribers on YouTube and 2.7M followers on Instagram. This kind of fandom and fame for a female gamer was, perhaps, unimaginable until a few years ago.

Gaming has caught the fancy of women across the country. While some like Dhare have turned their passion for gaming into a lucrative career opportunity, several other women, young and old, have discovered the joy of gaming in recent years. According to the State of India Gaming Report 2022 by Lumikai and AWS, women spend more time gaming than men — time spent by women on average is 11.2 hours per week, while men spend around 10.2 hours a week.

Tryst with gaming

Gaming was not the first or even a plausible career choice for most female gamers I spoke to. A lot of them got bit by the gaming bug either in college or after landing their first job. Delhi-based Monika Yadav aka Savage Girl was preparing for the civil services examination to secure a “government job” like her family members.

Sanjana Badne, who goes by JaLeBeeYT on social media, was pursuing BAMS (Bachelor of Ayurvedic Medicine and Surgery) at the insistence of her parents. Adi Vyshnavi, 24, popular on YouTube as Natasha Gaming, quit her TCS job to pursue gaming full-time.

Another common thread among these female gamers was their fascination with PUBG, and its successor BGMI (Battlegrounds Mobile India), both combat and survival mobile games. Smartphones are, unsurprisingly, the most preferred (98 per cent) devices for playing games, followed by PCs/ laptops, and gaming consoles. The BGMI gaming experience led them to level up and start streaming their gameplay on platforms like YouTube and Rooter.

Their happy place

After a hectic day in college, Yadav would “find peace in PUBG”. After the game got banned, she explored PC games like Valorant and Grand Theft Auto 5, before getting back to BGMI. It was during the COVID-19 lockdown, when she was in Bengaluru on an internship while also preparing for the UPSC exam, that she decided to start streaming on YouTube. “It was great because it gave me an outlet to talk to people,” says Yadav, who has over 58K followers on Instagram and 249K subscribers on YouTube.

For over two years, Vyshnavi, who hails from a small town called Bhimavaram in Andhra Pradesh, worked in the day, and streamed at night. But as this routine became “stressful,” the computer science graduate gave up her 9 to 5 job and immersed herself in gaming full time.

For her, the fun, thrill, joy, and sense of achievement gaming offers is incomparable. Gaming, she says, helps improve mental well-being, too. “When I was working 9-5, I used to think I was a failure. There was no recognition for the work I did. But in gaming, your efforts pay off; when you win, it boosts your confidence.” Vyshnavi’s Telugu YouTube channel has over 576K subscribers.

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Even for casual gamers, gaming is a way to let off steam and feel good. Priya Patankar, 38, who works as a process trainer at an online travel agency, sets aside an hour every day to play games on her newly acquired PS5. “After a after a busy nine-hour workday, getting lost in a video game makes for perfect me-time,” she says.

For 31-year-old Preethika Nethala, a homemaker and mother of two, playing games — three hours a day — on her smartphone is like “meditation”. She prefers immersing herself in games like Delicious World and Gardenscapes to watching TV, YouTube, or Netflix.

Going against the norm

Even until three years ago, the thought of women making a living from gaming was met with shock and scepticism. “Where I come from, it is a big deal to be a gamer. People are very conservative, and cannot imagine a girl sitting and playing games,” says 22-year-old Sanjana who lives in Narhe Gaon in Pune, Maharashtra, and has over 21K subscribers on YouTube.

Most of the women gamers I spoke to did not initially reveal to their parents about their YouTube debut fearing disapproval. Some of them, for this reason, did not use a face camera while live streaming at first.

Aman Garg, co-founder, Ebullient Gaming, shares that his talent management firm has 22 women gamers in its talent pool today, up from two in 2017. Although aspirations and scores run high, parents’ approval is key in whether they choose gaming as a profession. In fact, Garg’s agency routinely meets with the parents to assure them of the bright prospects that await their daughters.

“We give them an idea of the remuneration gamers can expect and the kind of recognition they get on social media platforms,” he explains. A gamer with one million YouTube subscribers and around 300K Instagram followers could earn Rs 8-14 lakh a month, as per estimates.

The inclusion of e-sports in Asian Games is now an important part of the discourse. Big brands teaming up with top gamers has helped bring in far more respectability to this profession than before, Garg shares.

More than just fun and games

Once a gamer starts streaming on YouTube, she must wear the content creator hat, too: collaborations with other gamers, reaction videos, vlogs that offer a peek into their personal lives, and Shorts help add variety to their YouTube channel. Gamers’ reactions to when they ‘die’ in the game is one of the most sought-after parts of a livestream. It is, hence, prudent that they rise to the occasion.

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Entertainment and learning gameplay, though, are not the only reasons people come to watch a gamer. There are those who come looking to make virtual friends. “I often have people sharing their problems with me on the live chat. I, too, share some of the things that I am going through. It helps build a bond,” says Yadav.

Vyshnavi says gaming offers a fun outlet for “introverts” like her. For 66-year-old Pramila Khatri, gaming is a way to “keep the brain active” post-retirement. She also credits her daily 30-minute word game session with helping her overcome depression.

Fame at a cost

But this fame also comes at a cost. A live stream typically lasts about four hours and is accompanied by a steady flow of comments — “love you” and “how can I propose you” are ubiquitous in a female gamer’s chat box. Then there are comments that are downright insensitive and obscene relating to the gamer’s appearance, from taunts about weight, snide remarks on the choice of outfit or make-up, to cuss words.

Every gamer I spoke to said they seldom acknowledge or react to such comments. “Initially it would bother me; over time, I have learnt to ignore. It is pointless to let an anonymous guy, who is probably in a bad mood, ruin my mood as well,” says Yadav, rather stoically.

But their love of gaming, and the fame and money associated with it, ensure they are back on the virtual battleground every evening. After serving at the community hospital in Pune in the day, where she is currently doing an internship, Sanjana rushes back to start her gaming session. She is an outlier of sorts among her other doctor friends. “I would constantly ask for money from my parents earlier. Now that I have started monetising my channel, I am financially independent,” she says, pleased with her newfound success.

From being ‘just another IT employee’ to becoming a gamer has sent Vyshnavi’s popularity soaring. “The perception is that I make a lot of money by virtue of being a YouTuber, so people treat me differently now.”

Sapna Nair is a Delhi-based journalist who writes on social media, pop culture, and travel