During the recent Covid-19 lockdowns, India’s entry to the digital world of technology and online connectivity has been significantly hastened. This heightened presence, which was at the time a product of necessity and desperation, and warned against by public media as potentially harmful, both physically and otherwise, had soon revealed its multitude of benefits, resulting in a nation which now is unable to return to a pre-digital era. Alongside exponential progress in the fields of finance, academia, socialization, and entertainment, this push towards digitization had also brought in the dawn of gaming culture in India, resulting in massive growth of the industry in India within a relatively short period.
Alongside entertainment and monetary gains, gaming in the age of high-speed internet introduced an avenue of socializing hereto not experienced by the majority of Indian populace. Communities formed within and around games and gaming experience had either risen or had been revealed to the lockdown-stricken smartphone users, standing in as a substitute for the social gatherings of which they had been deprived, and contributing to emotional and mental wellbeing of many.
This paper seeks to study certain communities within two games on the smartphone platform – Battle Legion and Ludo King – which were released during the Covid-19 outbreak, and have intentionally or otherwise, served as a hub for people in lockdown to congregate, socialize, and offer each other the companionship which had been unavailable to them in real life. The paper also aims to explore whether or not socializing (secondarily) on the basis of a competitive/cooperative primary experience – such as a video game – is different from socializing on dedicated social media platforms where socializing itself is the primary purpose, based on the consensus of the respondents.
