You don’t belong here, the chat says as Sakshi Sood, 21, misses a crucial shot in the online shooter video game, PUBG. Her annoyance is visible on the facecam and she tries to steady her aim for the next round. With more than 139k followers on Facebook, Sood is one of the many smart, attractive, sparkly young Indian women who are changing game streaming as a career.

Game streamers, also called gaming content creators, play video games while streaming the feed live on platforms that facilitate it, such as Facebook and YouTube. Often appearing on facecams, they interact with the viewers real-time through integrated chats. As India’s hunger for content grows, especially during lockdown, gaming as an industry is booming.

Even though the perception of a game and gamer is still largely around the male persona, the industry is trying hard to capture the female audience. The number of female streamers is on the rise though streaming is primarily male-dominated.

Lockdown has been a catalyst.

“I graduated in 2020. During lockdown there was not much to do, but I did enjoy playing games. A friend suggested streaming games. Though I started hesitantly, the response I received in the first week itself made me continue,” says Sood.

Streamers on a sharp upward trajectory are usually spotted by brands, keen on sponsorships to reach out to the young audience that consumes such content.

Streaming comes with its challenges, especially for a woman. Like in the rest of the Internet, anonymity can often empower hate here. A recent report by Reach3 Insights and Lenovo says 59% of women players use either a non-gendered or male identity online to avoid being harassed.

Shagufta Iqba, Lakshmi Prasad &Sakshi Sood

But as streaming often encourages interactions with the viewers, content creators are far from invisible. Often, family helps.

“While men in the gaming industry would always call out that ‘You don’t belong here’, I always had incredible support from my family. During a short phase my family was a bit confused about what I was doing, but they never stopped me,” says Shagufta Iqbal, 27, “Xyaa” in the gaming world.

Iqbal moved out of her house at a very young age to pursue a career in IT. Only to realise that gaming was where her heart was. After she got a call from the gaming hardware company NVIDIA to be a part of their content creating team in 2018, she never looked back, rising through the ranks to be one of the top gaming content creators of the country, backed by a plethora of brands.

Support is equally important for Sood. “Unlike at the start, my parents are supportive now,” says Sood. “Their support pulls me through the hate I receive sometimes.”

Lakshmi Prasad, 20, or “Sonam9gamer”, also started streaming during lockdown. Like Sood, she was inducted into Gurugram-based talent management agency Trinity Gaming. “I love gaming and it feels great to make a career out of it. Initially, you are bothered by the hurtful salvos thrown at you during live sessions,” she says. “But I realised it was not something I faced alone. I have learnt to ignore the hate and focus more on my content.”

These women push on despite the challenges.

“Personally, the most important goal for me is to reduce the gender gap in gaming by encouraging more women to take it up, and also to reduce toxicity in the industry in terms of language and comments,” says Iqbal. “I feel the only way gaming (and gamers) can be taken more seriously is when we start treating one another as a part of one big community, look out and support one another. When we grow together, the industry grows as a whole, and we will all be able to make our careers here with pride,” she adds.