Meet India’s biggest female gaming creators on Facebook
HerStory spoke to two women gaming creators on Facebook – Aparna Shukla from Kanpur, who goes by the name Rog Stream with over 2.3 million followers; and Kangkana Talukdar from Guwahati, who goes by Mystic Ignite on Facebook that has around 67,000 followers.
The COVID-19 pandemic may have pushed many businesses and livelihoods off the edge, but it has also given opportunity to innovate in the digital sector. As many businesses moved online, creative people found different ways to earn a living in the cyber space.
One of the vocations that picked up massively during lockdown was online gaming content creators. While men dominate this space like most other fields, Indian women too are making a room for themselves in the online gaming creator zone.
The Indian online gaming sector reached $1.027 billion in 2020, a growth of 17.3 percent from $543 million in 2016, according to the the EY - All India Gaming Federation (AIGF) report ‘Online gaming in India – The GST conundrum.’
India stands fifth in the world as the largest mobile gaming market, as per a Q1 2021 research by Indian mobile advertising company InMobi.
As the online gamers in India are estimated to grow from 360 million in 2020 to 510 million in 2022, we analyse how gender-sensitive online gaming creator zone on Facebook is by speaking with two of the biggest female gaming content creators on the platform – Aparna Shukla from Kanpur, who goes by the name Rog stream and has over 2.3 million followers and Kangkana Talukdar from Guwahati, who runs Mystic Ignite on Facebook that has around 67,000 followers.
Breaking into the online gamer streaming space
Aparna was preparing for competitive entrance exams to join the banking sector before she took to online gaming in September 2018.
“My father worked in accounts at a small firm, so he didn’t have enough money to fund the equipment. So he took a small loan that we pledged to repay with the earnings from gaming. We didn’t have a camera, so we used our phone camera” shares Aparna.
“Giving competitive exams a couple of times without reaping good results can be very stressful. I wasn’t into gaming at all as I didn’t even have my own phone. One day, my brother gave me his phone and asked me to play some game to relieve my stress. The first game I ever played was Candy Crush. Then I played PubG with my younger brother. Then my elder brother suggested some gaming tournament that was taking place where one could earn money and I just participated in it as a side hustle,” Aparna tells HerStory.
Aparna didn’t have a computer to actively join gaming and used her brother’s friend’s computer in the beginning. Once she got the feeling that she could make a profession out of gaming, she and her brothers asked their father to get them a computer.
Aparna Shukla from Kanpur goes by the name Rog stream and has over 2.3 million followers
“My father worked in accounts at a small firm, so he didn’t have enough money to fund the equipment. So he took a small loan that we pledged to repay with the earnings from gaming. We didn’t have a camera, so we used our phone camera,” adds the 28-year-old.
While both Aparna and Kangkana got first mover advantage as women gaming creators on Facebook, Kangkana is the first female the platform partnered with in the country.
“I grew up playing games on the computer with my cousins, but I was never regular. Since I played PubG and Sims on my laptop, some of my friends suggested that I should stream it. This was a couple of years ago and back then I already knew two partners on Facebook from India, but they were under the Malaysia Creator Service Providers (CSP). Soon when it came to India, FB approached me to become one of their first partners and I was happy for the opportunity,” says Kangkana.
Kangkana Talukdar from Guwahati runs Mystic Ignite on Facebook that has around 67,000 followers
Being from a small city, Aparna felt nervous to stream initially. She decided to stream from 12:00 a.m. to 3:00 a.m. as no one used to stream at that time.
“In the beginning my parents used to feel concerned as I would play at night. But my real concern was having the camera on my face while streaming and getting comments and responding to them. I am not an out-going person, so it was overwhelming,” she says.
Sexist comments and trolling
Women in male-dominated spaces face sexism and misogyny when they are the first ones to break gender stereotypes. Aparna and Kangkana were also trolled and faced online shaming periodically, but they have learnt to deal with it by blocking trolls or engaging with them sometimes.
Aparna shares, “Since I play with several male streamers, I see their comment sections as well, but what is different between my comment section and theirs is that I get comments for being a female creator and how I might not be good at it. Along with it there are several negative, weird, and bigoted comments that do rounds in my comment section.”
“When I started off, I had bangs in my hair and because of my appearance, people used to think that I was from a different country. But I don’t have bangs now and people think that I am Indian now,” Kangkana laughs.
“I used to get extremely bothered in the beginning and I shut the stream many times because of the trolling, but my brother supports me a lot and he made me understand that I should ignore such comments and that’s when I realised that I am letting the trolls win every time I quit streaming because of them, and that I need to win over them,” she adds.
Twenty-two-year-old Kangkana was mostly trolled for her appearance as she had coloured hair when she started off. “When I started off, I had bangs in my hair and because of my appearance, people used to think that I was from a different country. But I don’t have bangs now and people think that I am Indian now,” she laughs.
Kangkana says women creators are increasing in number in India from 2019 - the year she started off, but both Aparna and Kangkana don’t know any other female creators from their own respective cities in Kanpur and Guwahati.
Indian women are making a room for themselves in the online gaming creator zone
Serious profession or side hustle?
Online gaming creation is soon becoming a money minting profession as Aparna made around Rs 68,000 in a month, which was her first highest income from gaming, which she invested in buying a camera. Now she says that she makes around two lacs per month on an average from various gaming platforms, including Facebook.
Aparna now considers gaming and streaming her full-time profession, but Kangkana considers it as something she loves to do.
“Although my parents support me in gaming, they are concerned as well and want me to have a stable job and continue streaming on the side. Currently, I am thinking about it, but I haven’t decided on anything yet,” says Kangkana, who recently completed her graduation in English Honours from Handique Girls College in Guwahati.
Edited by Megha Reddy