With the Digital India Bill in the offing, we have a ripe opportunity to provide dignity to a legitimate sector that creates jobs, pays taxes, and is a partner in India’s growth story.
Eugen Ehrlich had a seminal idea in 1916. He proposed a distinction between Formal Law (what is written in statute) and Living Law (what is practised in courts). This provocative thesis suggests that lawmakers and adjudicators often deviate from stated law, and yield to biases and social norms.
The gaming industry is up against this dichotomy today. While the Supreme Court, High Courts, MeitY, and other agencies list gaming is a legitimate pursuit, some policymakers and jurists have taken a rather scornful view. This futuristic, tech-enabled industry is sadly conflated with “sin sector” industries like gambling, tobacco, lottery, alcohol, and pornography. Lee Atwater said, “Perception is reality”. The gaming industry seems to be a victim of a very slanderous social perception.
It is an exacting burden moving a conversation from an emotional one to a rational one. Galileo was held guilty of heresy for scientifically proving that the earth was not the center of the universe. Conversations based on beliefs tend to resist data and research. With GST Council convening, and the Digital India Bill around the corner, here is some data and research that might help us reframe some blind beliefs about gaming.
MYTH 1: GAMING IS GAMBLING
Multiple courts have now ruled that online games are a “game of skill”, as opposed to gambling which is a “game of chance”. A player’s success or defeat in most online games depends on their capability (cerebral, motor-skill, or analytical), while in gambling there is no correlation whatsoever. Moreso, gaming users play against one another, paying a small fee to the online gaming operators (OGP). However in gambling, players play against the house, where structurally the business/operator is one of the players.
Gaming and gambling are chalk and cheese at every level; regulatory, legal, structural, psychological, and sociological. However, perception is yet to catch on.
MYTH 2: GAMING CAUSES VIOLENCE
The European Journal for Criminology recently published a fascinating paper. A group of highly decorated PhDs at the Dutch Ministry of Justice made a highly counter-intuitive discovery. They learnt that playing Grand Theft Auto reduces juvenile crime rates amongst children. Yes you read that right. Who would have thought that video games would in fact curb violent tendencies, instead of furthering them?
A US Department of Health study from October 2022 found that children who played video games for three hours per day performed better on cognitive tests compared to children who had never played video games. As of 2023, numerous psychologists and neurologists concluded that playing video games enhances development in cognitive abilities, dexterity, resilience, multilayered thinking, and neuroplasticity.
MYTH 3: GAMING IS ADDICTIVE
The American Psychological Association defines addiction as, “n. a state of psychological or physical dependence (or both) on the use of alcohol or other drugs.” While games are structured to tempt, let us compare them empirically with social media, television, alcohol, tobacco, etc.
A study conducted at Montreal’s Sainte-Justine Hospital (covering 3,800 students over a six-year period from grade 7 to grade 11) investigated the relationship between depression and exposure to different forms of screen time, namely television, social media, video games, and other activities on the computer. Increased screen time for the first two categories showed an increase in depression, while the latter two did not.
Other “vices” like alcohol and tobacco create pathological dependence in users, by altering neurochemicals. Neurotransmitter systems linked to alcohol and tobacco include dopamine, serotonin, opiates, GABA, norepinephrine, acetylcholine, and glutamate acting at the NMDA receptor.
Compare this to online games. Would you consider it morally fair to bundle games in this category of “addictions”?
MYTH 4: GAMING HURTS SOCIETY AND THE NATION
Despite repeated recognition of its legal validity, the gaming sector continues to be looked down upon with scepticism. This perception is largely built around the belief that it does not create any value for society or the nation. However, a factual analysis indicates the opposite. The gaming sector is a stepping stone for futuristic technologies like Web3, AR, VR and other emerging trends. Many of these emerging technologies are likely to find their first use cases in gaming. On the exchequer front, the sector employs 50,000 people, of which 30% are programmers and developers. It has grown from being worth Rs 7,037 crore in FY 2019 to Rs 14,300 crore in FY 2022 (projected at Rs 38,097 crore in FY 2026).
MYTH 5: GAMING IS A FRINGE INDUSTRY
The western world has a less pejorative view of gaming. Barack Obama advertised in 18 video games. Celebrities like Taylor Swift, John Cena, Ed Sheeran, Blackpink, and many others have collaborated in games. Games are used in schools and universities to enhance learning outcomes. Due to this societal acceptance, the gaming industry is five times larger than Hollywood. Naysayers continue to ignore the industry’s potential, despite the FTC publishing these numbers.
India missed the bus on global manufacturing in the 2000s and social media in the 2010s. Perhaps we don’t want to miss the bus on gaming-enabled technologies of the future.
The public discourse about online gaming needs a fundamental reboot to ensure that the sector is seen with a rational lens, not an emotional one. With the Digital India Bill in the offing, we have a ripe opportunity to provide dignity to a legitimate sector that creates jobs, pays taxes, and is a partner in India’s growth story. Gaming already is an inseparable part of India’s many strategic initiatives like Make in India, Digital India, Atmanirbhar Bharat, etc. It is therefore critical that we reeducate ourselves in a manner that allows for rationality to trump emotions; for research to trump rhetoric.
It would be a terrible shame if India lost out because we ostracized a sector as a whole… just because we were stuck believing in myths.
- Anuraag Saxena is a board advisor, public affairs expert, and OpEd columnist. He has been featured in Washington Post, BBC, Vice, The Diplomat, Financial Express, Sunday Guardian, SPAN, etc. He tweets at @anuraag_saxena
Ravi Shankar Jha is an independent lawyer and policy consultant. He has been published in Economic Times, Financial Express, Firstpost, and The Print