Since Friday, over 20 million people of all ages would have been seen hunched over their phone in rapt attention only broken by sporadic winces and the occasional muffled curse. Gaming company Krafton’s Battlegrounds Mobile India, the sanskari version of PUBG, which had been banned from Indian servers last June by the powers that be, finally made its long awaited return, made for India, in India. And while the Indian gaming community and all the associated businesses are gleeful at the many opportunities that await them, there are some who can see the glitch in the matrix.
While I’m hardly a gamer, I did enjoy the occasional match of PUBG, and according to me, BGMI doesn’t live up to its predecessor. Without commenting (too much) on the social polity currently thrust on us, the new age restrictions, frequent reminders to take a break (which is good, if slightly annoying), lack of action, and the limitation to Indian servers which prohibit you from playing with people from other countries, all combine to make us feel like children, which is ironic considering that you need to be older than 18 to play, or require parental permission.
While these features can disabled if one is an adult, it is still infuriating to see this kowtowing to enforced standards of content. That being said, it’s still quite a historic day for Indian gaming, as “After much discussion, we can now finally roll on to the esports game, created just for Indian players. It is much celebrated because of the exclusivity it offers and it also portrays how important the Indian esports sector has become for global gaming developers. With the latest launch, we can envision that the gaming community will thrive and we can expect to see more exclusive multi-player games being curated for the Indian market,” says Lokesh Suji, Director, Esports Federation of India & Vice President of the Asian Esports Federation (AESF), explaining the significance of the launch, adding, “It would have been great to see if our Indian game developers will create a game based on Indian ethos and culture which will create the exact buzz and hype just like BGMI did in India.”
“Although the beta launch viewership has been decent enough, the industry at large had higher expectations. It was a clear indicator that the audiences and gamers have made themselves accustomed to newer and other games. Now that the game is launched, it will be interesting to see how the gamers and brands make the best use of it,” notes Pranav Panpalia, Founder, OP Gaming and OpraahFx (A Gaming talent management and marketing agency), adding, “While it is a great game to build a larger audience base on, I would suggest that the gamers stay diversified and play other games too even if the audiences demand one particular game.
It is only this that will help them build a stronger gaming community for themselves.” Speaking of the gaming community, we spoke to both casual and professional gamers, and the responses were varied. The professional gamers, understandably, wax poetic about it, given that its launch gives them more opportunities for tournaments and building their followers count, while casual players, who loved the OG PUBG are less enthused.
“This is a complete copy of PUBG, whereas I had hoped for more innovations given that they were creating a new game. There are not a lot of options for avatars so I am looking forward to updates with better features. Worst of all, I couldn’t load my old account meaning all the progress and efforts I had made in the previous version are lost,” says Delhi-based communications specialist Manvika Sagar, referring to a glitch in the game experienced by many, including myself. “Now that I have played BGMI, I don’t like it much. I did like the original PUBG game. This game lags too much. They have tried to keep all the guns and their features like the original one, but the guns are not stable. Let’s say the original game has M416, which was a very stable gun. But here in BGMI the weapon keeps moving too much while firing. The blood thing is hilarious too,” says musician and gaming enthusiast Shobhan Ghosh who chuckles, “Now we bleed green feathers”, referring to the game-makers’ decision to remove the original founts of blood from wounds and kills with more family-friendly fare, er feathers.
Those are not the only feathers that have been ruffled, given the game has, at the time of writing, only been published on Android through the Google Play app store, and not on iOS, leaving fans of the game who have Apple phones in the lurch. Social media is abuzz with complaints of the same by users of the latter, while their comrades with Android phones are having a blast at their expense.
In any case, there’s plenty of excitement this weekend as Magsplay (Mansi Gupta), one the fastest growing female gamers in the country, said, “Initially, people had suspected that BGMI might or might not get as much buzz as PUBG used to get during its core time. However, it is very evident that it still has so much buzz around it. Streamers are still getting 100K/200K watching when they stream BGMI. This is insane.” Aaditya Sawant a.k.a Dynamo Gaming, adds, “We have been waiting for this for quite a long time and Krafton, this Friday, kept their promise by launching Battlegrounds Mobile India and it is surely a historic day in the Indian esports and g aming industry. The much-awaited exclusive version of the game is here and the whole community, even people, in general, are now getting the chance of having a Chicken dinner and get that nostalgic feel.” Ujjwal Chaurasia, a gaming content creator who goes by the name Techno Gamerz, and has 18 million followers on YouTube alone, sums it up by firmly claiming, “PUBG Mobile is not just a game, It is an emotion for us gamers. I am eagerly waiting for the tournaments, custom games , live streaming with my audiences, and lots of fun.”