The Challenge
Battlegrounds Mobile India – popularly known as BGMI is one of India’s leading Mobile games with an active and fameworthy community of 200 million gamers. It is an online multiplayer battle royale game and was launched in 2021by Krafton, a South Korean video game publisher. Since its launch, it’s turned into a cultural phenomenon, shaping conversations and connections. Infact, there are gamers who owe their fame and fortune to BGMI – crediting the game for expanding gaming as a legit pathway to growth. But while gamers credit BGMI with personal, professional and emotional growth, the non-gamer community carry an archaic view of gaming overall and BGMI specifically. From government stakeholders to authority figures in society (parents, teachers, community leaders), they all believe that online games are violent, addictive and create isolated individuals. This view is based in bias and rarely derived from actual experience of the game, and yet it has had an adverse impact on the game’s social acceptance. The lack of social acceptance often leads to ridicule and judgement for gamers. So, despite the global gamer community growing strength to strength and influencing pop culture conversations, India’s gamer community find themselves forced into their own echo chambers – not being allowed to advocate themselves or celebrate their love for BGMI openly. Forcing the gamers into silence, even as the gamer community grows in numbers. BGMI needed to champion the true value of gaming – giving gamers the ammunition to show why they game.
The Solution
Globally, the gamer community is thriving, yet in India the non-gamer community is outshouting gamers into silence. But gamers share actively within the community. Gamers spend 3X more time on BGMI message-boards than in the game. All this chatter revealed something sweet. Gamers aren’t simply forming teams within BGMI, they’re forming lifetime partnerships. Many gamers had found love and turned connections online into relationships offline. And one such couple was on the cusp of turning their love into marriage. So, we decided that a relationship that started in-game deserved a wedding of epic proportions INSIDE the game. A wedding that was the best opportunity to invite non-gamers to come experience the game as they enjoy the wedding. And the best opportunity to reinforce the gamer’s belief that BGMI is a phenomenon – impacting more than a score and leaving imprints in all parts of a gamer’s life in the best ways.
