New Delhi, May 30 -- Fifteen to 20 kids huddled around a TV, watching someone else play a game." That's how Shubham Sharma, 31, describes one of his oldest gaming experiences growing up in Ghugus, a small coal mining town Maharashtra's Chandrapur district. "I guess it was like watching a streamer live," recalls Sharma, now a technical product manager at consumer electronics manufacturer Asus India.

While people in metro cities were starting to experience gaming in the 1990s and early 2000s, Sharma's experience highlights that for others, it was a culture of passive participation, best described as watching and waiting.

Things have changed much since. Advertising giant Dentsu's India Gaming Report 2025 notes that gaming has become a "mai...