Many of you may remember playing the legendary ‘snake game’ on your old mobile phones at one point. That one mobile game on a primitive display would bring hours of enjoyment and thrill in a time when the mobile phone industry was just about blossoming.
Today, one would be hard pressed to find a person without a smartphone. Owing to the rapid advancements in technology over the last two decades, mobile phones have become an all-in-one device in which people, quite literally, carry their world in. The boom in internet connectivity and the availability of internet services in the deepest corners of the country have helped bring millions of people into the technological mainstream. It’s little wonder that mobile gaming too has come a long way since.
According to research conducted and published by the Statista Research Department, the average time a mobile phone user spent using their device increased from 152 minutes in 2014 to 215 minutes in 2018. This figure is projected to increase to 234 minutes this year. It is no surprise that more and more people are preferring to browse the internet on their mobile phones rather than using a PC or a laptop. As it turns out, half of the time that people spent online in 2019 was through mobile devices. In 2013, people spent, on average, 27% of their time online on mobile devices. This increase is almost double, and indicates the sheer importance of mobile phones in our daily lives.
Today there is virtually an unlimited choice when it comes to games one can play on a mobile phone. Whether you want to play card games, chess, fantasy cricket, arcade games or racing games, the variety is limitless. And all one needs to do is download an app to get started. It’s that simple!
Playing games is always much more fun when you play with friends. In this blog, we look at some of the best multiplayer mobile games that have users hooked.
1. PUBG
PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, known more popularly by its acronym PUBG, is an online multiplayer battle royale game – i.e. a genre which blends the elements of survival, exploration and scavenging in a survival game with a ‘last man standing’ format of gameplay. PUBG has been one of the most widely played games in recent years. PUBG allows you to team up with up to three other players, making it very easy to play with your friends. The entire game environment is highly detailed and provides tremendous scope for players to explore. As the popularity of PUBG grew, it led to the creation of various national and international PUBG tournaments for gamers to showcase their skills, such as the PMPL South Asia tournament.
2. MPL’s Fantasy Cricket League
Fantasy cricket is part of the fantasy sports genre, and this format of cricket is immensely popular among cricket enthusiasts. Fantasy cricket is basically an online, virtual version of the classic bat-and-ball sport that is played through a fantasy cricket app. To play fantasy cricket, click on https://www.mpl.live/fantasy-cricket/app. Once the app is installed, players need to select an upcoming cricket match and create their own virtual team that is composed of real cricketers. Players then earn points on the basis of how these players perform on the day of the actual match. Fantasy cricket is especially popular in India where the majority of sports enthusiasts are cricket lovers and this genre of the game allows them to utilise both their cricket knowledge as well as their intelligence in player selection and team creation.
3. Call of Duty Mobile
Developed by TiMi Studios and published by Activision and Garena, Call of Duty: Mobile is the mobile version of the hugely popular Call of Duty, which is a first person shooter game.Call of Duty: Mobile witnessed one of the largest launches in gaming history, and had generated over 327 million dollars in revenue with over 250 million downloads by June 2020. This game also follows a battle royale format and the mobile version of the ever-popular game allows the inclusion of maps, modes, characters and weapons from across the Call of Duty franchise. Its immense popularity led to the creation of the Call of Duty: Mobile World Championship 2020 and offered more than $1 million in total prizes for players.
4. Rummy
Rummy is undoubtedly one of the most loved card games that has made its way into online gaming circles with equal popularity. There are several variations of rummy that exist today as a result of the game’s widespread appeal. Despite the modified rules in each of its variants, the basic format of rummy is the same. Players have to form valid groupings of cards, called ‘melds’, through the process of picking and discarding cards by turn. The melds or groups of cards can be consecutive cards of the same suit (these groupings are called sequences or runs) or they can be a combination of cards belonging to the same rank but belonging to different suits (these groupings are called sets). Rummy is a classic card game that has only found more and more players thanks to the internet.
5. Minecraft
Developed by Mojang, Minecraft is both a single player and multiplayer game which takes players through a ‘blocky, procedurally generated 3D world with infinite terrain’, according to Wikipedia. In this environment, players extract raw materials, craft tools and other items, build structures and so on. This game gives players the flexibility to play in cooperation with or in competition with other players in the same world, as well as offers a creative mode in which players have unlimited resources at their disposal. The game is highly versatile and its open-world format gives players unlimited scope to mould their gameplay as they prefer. Minecraft has been credited as being one of the greatest videogames of all time.
These are just a few of the online games that have taken the youth of India by storm. In this pandemic era where social distancing, working and studying from home and a largely internet driven lifestyle are the ‘new normal’, playing mobile games with friends is a sureshot way to maintain one’s social connections as well as have fun together while staying safe. Happy gaming!
