Top 5 mobile games that Indians enjoyed the most amidst pandemic
Top titles to which the Indian audience was glued to this year.
Varun Gavankar 
Mobile gaming took by the storm as pandemic hit in and as a safety measure for people staying indoors, mobile gaming increased exponentially. People ended up spending more and more time sticking to their smartphones.
A November report by CyberMedia Research states, "mobile gaming has increased among three in every five serious gamers, with four hours being average duration of increase since the lockdown began in India."
Statistics note that men were inclined towards adventure/action and first-person shooter games while women were playing casual multiplayer and puzzle games.
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The top 5 games:
Among Us
Among Us had to be the first game on the list. The social deduction multiplayer player game developed by a small studio of three people (now 4) became a game that was played by almost everyone not just in India but worldwide. Among Us had over 83.8 million installs by September.
The multiplayer game about teamwork and betrayal grabbed not one but two awards at the Game Awards 2020 becoming 'The Best Mobile Game' and 'The Best Multiplayer Game' of the year. Among Us also had over staggering half-billion player registrations in the last month of November.
Ludo King
Originally launched in 2016, the game that replicates the classic board game into a virtual one. Developed by a Mumbai based studio called Gametion Technologies Pvt. Ltd.
Ludo King supports cross-platform and it managed to surpass all the existing popular games in India including PUBG Mobile, Clash of Clans, Temple Run, Candy Crush etc. It established a heavy monthly user base.
PUBG Mobile
The game has already managed to garner a revenue of $2.6 billion throughout the year of 2020 via Google Play Store and Apple's App Store. A straight 64 per cent rise upwards than what of last year.
The popular battle royale game was sitting on the top charts of app leaderboards on both the platforms. However, despite the popularity, PUBG Mobile was announced as banned by the government of India being one of 118 apps that compromised data and security.
Two months later that PUBG Mobile announced that they are returning with an Indian version of the game. It is December and things are taking a while, there's no actual word since then and still cites uncertainty if the game will ever return in the first place.
Call of Duty: Mobile
Call of Duty is one of the biggest FPS franchises, since porting the game to the mobile platform it became of the biggest launches in history. Only close to seven months later as of June 2020 it generated over US$327 million and 250 million downloads.
Call of Duty: Mobile has had a great year. Recently the game celebrated its one year anniversary and after the ban of its rival game PUBG Mobile in India, it attracted some of its player base to it.
Garena Free Fire
Garena Free Fire is another battle royale game who's popularity is blowing off the roof. It is available on Android and iOS, developed by 111 Dots Studio and is published by Garena. Free Fire already had a good enough player community in India but the ban of PUBG Mobile helped it grow even further. Just like some switched to Call of Duty: Mobile rest considered Free Fire to call their home.
Ryan Wyatt, Head of Gaming at YouTube released numbers in November, he said that Free Fire content on YouTube has surpassed over "100B (billion) lifetime views" with the largest contributor being the Indian audience with a share of 26.2%.
Free Fire keeps expanding across the world since its launch in 2017 including India.
