Stage 1What This Hobby Is, and How to Use This Guide

A video game is a set of rules that a machine enforces and a player tries to bend. That is the whole of it, and it covers an astonishing range: a two-line tennis game on an oscilloscope, a hundred-hour role-playing epic, a phone puzzle played in a bus queue, a football match watched by a stadium crowd.

This guide treats video games as three hobbies that happen to share the same objects.

Playing is the one almost everyone starts with. It has its own craft: learning a genre, choosing the right machine, playing with friends and strangers, and doing all of this without wrecking your wrists, your eyes or your sleep.

Collecting is the hobby of owning games as objects: cartridges, discs, boxes, manuals and the consoles that run them. It has grades, variants, regional editions, a market with real money in it, and a great many fakes.

Preserving is the newest of the three and in some ways the most urgent. Games are disappearing. Cartridge batteries die and take saved games with them. Discs rot. Online games switch off their servers and cease to exist. Digital shops close. A game you "bought" can be withdrawn from sale, and in some cases from your own library. Anyone who owns games is, whether they meant to be or not, a custodian of something that may not survive.

Who this is for

The main text is written for two readers: someone new to games, or returning after years away, and anyone who simply enjoys the story of how a laboratory curiosity became one of the largest entertainment industries in the world.

Two other readers are served by boxes set into the text. First Steps boxes say what a beginner can actually do, cheaply, today. For the Player boxes carry the detail a practised player or collector wants: specifications, identification points, market realities. Sidebars are for everyone: a story, an argument, a scandal.

How the guide is arranged

Part I is video games anywhere in the world. Stages 2 to 4 cover the history, the genres and the choice of machine. Stages 5 and 6 cover playing well, playing healthily and playing with others, including keeping children safe. Stages 7 and 8 are the collector's stages: what to collect, what things are worth, how regions and variants work, and how to spot reproductions and fakes. Stage 9 takes on emulation and its legal grey areas. Stage 10 covers speedrunning and esports, and Stage 11 introduces game preservation as a field.

Then comes the band this guide considers the most valuable: Storage and Preservation, Stages 12 to 14. It covers cartridges, discs, consoles, controllers, boxes and manuals, save data and digital libraries, with a full section on the Indian climate.

Part II is the Indian story: imported and grey-market consoles, the clone "TV game" machines and brick games of the 1990s, cyber cafés and LAN gaming, the leap to mobile, Indian studios, esports, and the law on online and real-money gaming.

Stage 2A Short History by Hardware Generation

Historians of games argue about firsts, and the arguments are rarely settled. What follows is the broad shape, told the way collectors and players usually tell it: by generations of console hardware. The generation numbers are a convention, not a law, and different writers draw the lines slightly differently.

Before the living room

The earliest games were made on laboratory and university computers. Tennis for Two was shown to visitors at Brookhaven National Laboratory in the United States in 1958, on an oscilloscope screen. Spacewar!, written at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1962, spread from one computer lab to another and became one of the first games that people outside the building knew about.

The arcade came next. Computer Space (1971) was the first commercially sold coin-operated video game, and Atari's Pong (1972) was the first to become a hit.

The console generations

The crash, and the rebuild

In 1983 the North American home console market collapsed. Too many machines, too many poor games and a flood of unsold stock drove prices through the floor. In Europe and elsewhere, home computers such as the ZX Spectrum and the Commodore 64 were already carrying much of the hobby, and they kept it alive.

Nintendo's Famicom, launched in Japan in 1983 and sold in North America as the NES from 1985, rebuilt the console business. It did so partly through games such as Super Mario Bros. (1985) and partly through control: publishers needed Nintendo's approval, and a lockout chip in the North American console refused unlicensed cartridges.

Handhelds, computers and phones

The generations above describe home consoles, but three other lines run alongside them. Handhelds run from Nintendo's Game and Watch LCD games of 1980 through the Game Boy (1989) to the Nintendo DS, the PlayStation Portable and today's handheld PCs. Personal computers carried whole genres, especially strategy and first-person shooters, and in 2003 Valve's Steam began turning the PC into a download-first platform. Phones went from Snake on Nokia handsets in the late 1990s to the app stores that opened in 2008, and they are now the machine on which most of the world plays.

Stage 3Genres, and What Each Asks of a Player

A genre is a promise about what you will spend your time doing. Genre names are loose and overlap constantly, but they are still the fastest way to find games you will like, and to understand why a game you expected to love left you cold.

The useful question is not "what is this game about?" but "what does this game ask of me?" A war story can be a slow strategy game or a frantic shooter. The subject is the same; the demand on the player is completely different.

Short games and long games

Genre also predicts time. A fighting-game match lasts a few minutes. An online battle royale match lasts twenty or thirty, and you cannot pause it. A large role-playing game can ask for fifty to a hundred hours over months. Before buying, it is worth asking honestly how much time you have, and in what size of pieces. A player with twenty spare minutes a day is better served by a puzzle game or a roguelite than by a sprawling open world that takes ten minutes to remember where you were.

Difficulty is part of the design

Some games are meant to be hard, and the struggle is the point. Others are meant to be relaxing. Many modern games offer difficulty settings and accessibility options: remappable controls, subtitles, colour-blind modes, aim assistance, the ability to slow the game down. Using them is not cheating. They exist so that more people can play.

Stage 4Choosing a Platform: PC, Console, Handheld or Mobile

There is no best machine, only the best machine for your games, your budget, your space and your household. Go back to the list of favourite games from Stage 1. The machines they are on are the first clue.

Console

A home console plugs into a television and works. Games are tested for that exact hardware, so there are no settings to tune and no compatibility worries. Each console family has exclusive games, made or funded by the platform holder and not released elsewhere, at least for some years. Playing many games online on consoles requires a paid subscription, which is a running cost to add to the price of the box. Consoles are the natural choice for families, for local multiplayer on one screen, and for anyone who wants to play rather than tinker.

PC

A gaming PC is the most flexible and, at the top end, the most powerful option. It plays the largest library of games, including many old ones, supports mods made by players, and benefits from frequent digital sales. The costs are real: a capable graphics card can cost as much as a whole console, and parts age. A PC also asks you to manage drivers, settings and updates. It suits players of strategy, simulation and competitive shooters, and anyone who enjoys the machine as much as the games.

Handheld

Handhelds let you play anywhere. Nintendo's Switch family blurred the line by working both as a handheld and, docked, as a home console. Handheld PCs such as Valve's Steam Deck carry a PC library in portable form. The trade-offs are battery life, screen size, and a body that takes knocks and falls in a way a console under the television does not.

Mobile

A phone is the machine most people already own, which makes it the cheapest way to start. The library is enormous. The catch is the business model: most mobile games are free to download and earn money through advertising and in-game purchases, and many are designed to encourage frequent short sessions and spending. Touch controls also suit some genres far better than others, although phone controllers exist.

Cloud gaming

Cloud services run the game on a distant server and stream the picture to your screen. They reduce hardware costs, but they depend entirely on a fast, stable internet connection, add a small delay between pressing a button and seeing the result, and give you nothing to keep if the service ends.

Stage 5Playing Well, and Playing Healthily

Games are sedentary, repetitive and absorbing, and those three qualities are exactly what make long sessions hard on the body. None of this means gaming is dangerous. It means the same sensible habits that protect office workers and musicians protect players too. The advice here is deliberately conservative; it is not a substitute for a doctor.

Posture and ergonomics

• Sit supported. A chair that holds your lower back, feet flat on the floor or on a footrest, knees roughly level with your hips.
• Screen position. A monitor at about arm's length with its top edge at or slightly below eye level; a television far enough away that you are not turning your head to see the corners.
• Wrists neutral. Keep wrists straight rather than bent up or sideways on a keyboard and mouse. Hold a controller firmly but without a death grip.
• Handhelds and phones. Raise the device towards your eyes, rest your elbows on a cushion or armrest, and avoid long stretches with your head bent forward.
• Move. Get up every hour at least, walk around, and stretch your hands, forearms, neck and shoulders.

Ordinary tiredness that fades after a rest is normal. Pain that lingers, numbness, tingling, weakness in the hands or wrists, or pain that returns each time you play is a signal to stop and see a doctor or physiotherapist. Do not play through it and do not rely on wrist supports or painkillers to keep going. Repetitive strain injuries are far easier to treat early than late.

Eyes

When people concentrate on a screen they blink less, which dries the eyes. A widely used rule from eye-care professionals is 20-20-20: every 20 minutes, look at something about 20 feet (6 metres) away for 20 seconds. Avoid playing with a bright screen in a completely dark room, keep brightness comfortable, and keep any glasses prescription up to date. For children, time outdoors in daylight is associated with healthier eye development, which is one more reason to balance play with outside time. If headaches, blurred vision or eye pain persist, see an optometrist or eye doctor.

Flashing lights

A small proportion of people have photosensitive epilepsy, in which flashing or flickering images can trigger seizures. That is why games carry warnings. Many games now include options to reduce flashing effects. If anyone playing experiences dizziness, altered vision, eye or muscle twitching, loss of awareness or convulsions, stop immediately. Anyone who has what may be a first seizure needs urgent medical attention.

Sleep

Exciting and competitive games raise alertness, and a match that "should take ten minutes" rarely does. Stop playing at least an hour before bed, switch off notifications, and keep consoles and phones out of children's bedrooms at night. Persistent sleep loss affects mood, school and work long before it feels like a problem.

Hearing and motion sickness

Keep headphone volume moderate; if people nearby can hear your headphones, it is too loud. Virtual reality and some first-person games cause motion sickness in some players. Stop at the first sign of nausea or dizziness and do not try to push through it.

Time, and the design of engagement

Many games are built to be hard to put down: daily login rewards, limited-time events, season passes, and loot boxes, paid random rewards that regulators in some countries, Belgium among them, have treated as a form of gambling. Knowing the techniques weakens them. Decide how long a session will be before you start, use the timers built into consoles and phones, and set a spending limit on every account.

Recognising problem play

The World Health Organization's classification of diseases, ICD-11, includes gaming disorder. It describes a pattern of impaired control over gaming, gaming taking priority over other interests and daily activities, and continuing despite clear harm, usually evident over at least twelve months. It affects a small minority of players. Playing a lot is not, on its own, a disorder.

Signs worth taking seriously, in yourself or someone else:

• Repeatedly failing to cut down despite trying.
• Missing school, work, meals or sleep to play.
• Losing interest in friends and activities that used to matter.
• Lying about time or money spent.
• Anger or distress when unable to play.
• Borrowing or taking money for in-game purchases.

If several of these fit, talk to a doctor, a psychologist or a counsellor. For a child, approach it calmly and without confiscation as the first move; sudden bans often drive play into secrecy. Indian services are listed in Stage 22.

Stage 6Playing With Others: Communities, Toxicity and Children

Games have always been social. Two players sharing one screen, a queue at an arcade cabinet, a hostel room full of networked computers, a voice channel full of friends in four cities. The best of gaming culture is generous: people write guides for free, teach newcomers, and organise tournaments for the love of it. The worst of it is anonymous cruelty. A player who knows how to find the first and shut out the second will enjoy the hobby far more.

Finding good company

Good communities are moderated, have rules that are actually enforced, and welcome beginners. They include friends you already know, local clubs and gaming cafés, college societies, community tournaments, and online forums and chat servers built around a single game. Fan wikis and guide sites are communities too, run by volunteers.

Before joining a new online group, read its rules and watch for a while. If people are mocked for asking basic questions, there are better places to be.

Toxicity, and what to do about it

Competitive online games attract insults, slurs, harassment, cheating and deliberate sabotage of your own team, known as griefing. Most of it is words from strangers who will never be seen again. Some of it is serious.

• Mute first. Every major platform lets you silence individual players' voice and text.
• Block anyone who follows you from game to game.
• Report through the game's own tools. Reports are how bans happen.
• Turn off voice chat with strangers, or play only with friends, if matches are spoiling your evening.
• Do not retaliate. It rarely helps and can get your own account suspended.
• Keep evidence of threats, stalking or the publishing of someone's personal details, known as doxxing: screenshots with names and dates. Those go to the platform and, where there is a threat to safety, to the police.

Children and online play

Age ratings describe content, such as violence, language, gambling themes and online interaction. They say nothing about difficulty.

Parental controls on every major console, PC store and phone let a parent set up a child account, limit daily play time, require approval for purchases, restrict chat to approved friends, and filter content by age rating. They work best alongside conversation, not instead of it.

The real online risks for children are less about the content of games and more about people and money:

• Strangers. Adults who target children may offer gifts of in-game currency or items, ask for secrecy, flatter, or try to move the conversation to a private messaging app. Any of those is a warning sign.
• Scams. "Free currency generators", fake giveaways and links promising rare items are almost always phishing: they steal account passwords or payment details.
• Spending. In-game purchases on a saved card add up quickly.
• Oversharing. Real names, school names, locations and photographs should never go into a gaming profile or chat.

If something goes wrong, do not blame the child, who may already feel ashamed. Save the evidence, report the account to the platform, and where a crime may be involved, contact the police. Indian reporting channels are covered in Stage 21.

Stage 7Collecting: Cartridges, Discs, Complete Copies and Prices

Some people collect games to play them on the machines they were made for. Some collect the games of their childhood. Some collect a whole console's library, or every game in a genre, or every edition of one favourite. All of them are handling objects that were mass-produced, were never meant to last, and are now surprisingly hard to find in good condition.

What you are actually collecting

Cartridges are plastic shells holding a circuit board with the game on read-only memory chips, and a row of metal contacts along one edge that connect to the console. Many cartridges with a save feature also carry a small battery. Stage 12 explains why that battery matters.

Discs are CDs, DVDs, Blu-rays and several proprietary formats, usually sold in a plastic case with a printed cover insert and, in older releases, a manual.

Packaging and paper matter as much as the game. Many cartridge games of the 1980s and 1990s came in thin cardboard boxes that most children tore open and threw away. That single fact explains a great deal about prices: a loose cartridge may be common, while the same game with its original box and manual is scarce.

The vocabulary of completeness

Condition

Condition is judged separately for each part. For a cartridge, look at the label (tears, fading, water stains, writing, stickers), the shell (cracks, yellowing, scratches) and the contacts. For a disc, look at the playing surface under a bright light, the label side, and the case hinge and hub. For boxes, look at crushed corners, creases, tears, fading on the spine, and old price stickers. Many second-hand games carry a previous owner's name written on the label, or a rental shop's sticker. Some collectors mind; others like the history.

Above all, test. "Untested" in a listing usually means the seller knows it does not work, or does not want to find out.

Choosing a focus

A collection without a focus becomes a pile. Common directions:

• A single console's library, or a defined part of it, such as every game released in one region.
• The games you owned or wanted as a child.
• A genre across all machines, such as every fighting game.
• One series in all its editions and translations.
• Hardware: every model and colour variant of a console or handheld.
• A country's story, including clones, local packaging and imports. Stage 16 argues that Indian material in this area is under-documented and worth saving.

What games are worth

Prices move with a few forces:

• Demand, more than rarity. A common game that everyone wants often costs more than a rare game nobody wants.
• Condition and completeness. The gap between loose and complete, and between complete and sealed, can be many times the base price.
• Region and variant. A first print may be worth more than a budget reissue of the same game.
• Nostalgia cycles. Collectors often buy the games of their own childhood once they have an income, so demand tends to rise as each generation of players reaches its thirties.

Research sold prices, not asking prices. An optimistic listing that never sells tells you nothing. Auction sites and price-tracking services that record completed sales are a better guide, and even then the figure is a range, not a price tag. Buying from a shop costs more than buying privately, and selling to a shop returns far less than you paid; the gap is the dealer's margin.

Stage 8Regions, Variants, Reproductions and Fakes

The same game can exist in a dozen physical forms, and some of the forms were never made by the publisher at all. This stage covers the three things that most often confuse buyers: which region a game is from, which version of it they are holding, and whether it is genuine.

Regions

Games and consoles were sold for three broad markets, and collectors use television-standard shorthand for them:

• NTSC-U or NTSC-U/C: North America.
• NTSC-J: Japan, and often other parts of Asia.
• PAL: Europe, Australia, and many other countries, including India.

Older televisions in NTSC countries refreshed at 60 hertz and those in PAL countries at 50. Many older games converted for PAL ran more slowly and showed black borders at the top and bottom of the screen, which is one reason some collectors prefer other regions' versions.

Manufacturers also locked regions on purpose. Some consoles use differently shaped cartridges for different markets; Japanese Super Famicom and North American Super Nintendo cartridges, for example, are shaped differently, and neither fits the other's console without an adaptor or modification. The North American NES used a lockout chip that checked for a matching chip in the cartridge. Disc consoles used region codes. Most recent consoles play games from any region, but there are exceptions and online services may still be regional, so check the specific machine.

Variants

• Print runs. Early and later printings can differ in label, box art or small details.
• Budget reissues. Popular games were reissued at lower prices under labels such as Nintendo's Player's Choice, Sony's Greatest Hits in North America and Platinum in Europe, and The Best in Japan. They are usually worth less than first prints.
• Limited and collector's editions with extra objects in larger boxes.
• Promotional and "not for resale" copies, rental copies and demo discs.
• Errors and misprints, which interest some collectors and not others.
• Competition cartridges. A tiny number of cartridges were made for events such as the Nintendo World Championships in 1990 and are among the most sought-after cartridges ever produced, which also makes them among the most faked.

Reproductions

A reproduction or "repro" is a newly made copy: a salvaged or new circuit board carrying a copied game, in a shell with a printed label. Reproductions are made openly for fan translations of games never released in English, and for games that were never finished. Sold honestly as reproductions, they are a hobby product. Sold as originals, they are fraud, and the market has plenty of both. Mass-produced counterfeit cartridges, especially for handhelds such as the Game Boy Advance and Nintendo DS, are also common.

Fake consoles and accessories

Tiny "retro" consoles and handhelds preloaded with hundreds of games are widely sold. Many contain unlicensed copies of commercial games. Knock-off controllers and memory cards are common too, and some cheap memory cards lose saves. Stage 16 tells the story of the clone consoles that were many Indian players' first machines.

Stage 9Emulation, and Its Legal Grey Areas

An emulator is a program that imitates the hardware of one machine on another, so that software written for the first can run on the second. A modern computer or phone can pretend, convincingly, to be a console from 1990. A related approach uses FPGA devices, chips that can be configured to reproduce the behaviour of old hardware circuit by circuit rather than simulating it in software.

Emulation is one of the most important tools in game preservation and one of the most argued-about subjects in the hobby. Both things are true at once.

What emulation is good for

• Playing games whose original hardware is failing, scarce or unaffordable.
• Preservation and research: documenting how games actually behaved.
• Accessibility: remapped controls, slowed-down play, larger displays.
• Modern conveniences such as save states and clean output on flat-panel televisions.
• Fan translations of games that were never released in the player's language.

Game companies use emulation themselves. Official classic collections, subscription libraries of old games, and small "classic mini" consoles such as Nintendo's Classic Mini NES and SNES and Sony's PlayStation Classic all run old games under emulation.

The legal grey areas, in general terms

This is not legal advice, and law differs from country to country. The questions are easier to understand if you separate them.

The emulator itself. An emulator written independently, without copying the original maker's code, has been treated as lawful in some jurisdictions. In the United States, litigation around 2000 over PlayStation emulators went in the emulator makers' favour on the points argued. An emulator that includes copied code, or is built and promoted around bypassing a console's encryption, stands on much weaker ground. In 2024 Nintendo sued the makers of Yuzu, an emulator for the Switch, and the case ended in a settlement and the project's shutdown.

The firmware. Many consoles need a BIOS or system firmware, which is copyrighted code. Sharing or downloading it is generally not permitted.

The games. Downloading copies of commercial games you do not own is, in most countries, copyright infringement, however old the game and however hard it is to buy. "Abandonware" is a description, not a legal status. The popular belief that owning a cartridge makes any download of that game lawful is not reliable either. Whether you may copy your own cartridge or disc for personal use depends on where you live, and a copy downloaded from someone else is a different matter from one you made.

Copy protection. Many countries have laws against bypassing technological protection measures, sometimes regardless of the reason. Stage 21 notes where India stands in general terms.

There are practical risks as well as legal ones. Websites offering game downloads are a common source of malware, and cheap boxes sold "with 10,000 games" almost always contain unlicensed copies.

Stage 10Speedrunning and Esports

Most players want to finish a game. Two communities want something else: to finish it faster than anyone, or to beat other people at it in front of an audience.

Speedrunning

A speedrun is an attempt to complete a game, or a defined part of it, as quickly as possible. Runners study a game until they know every shortcut, every trick of movement and many of its bugs, then practise until they can execute a route under pressure.

Each game's community sets its own rules: which version of the game is allowed, whether emulators count, how timing works, and what video evidence must be submitted. Volunteer moderators check runs before they reach the leaderboard. Cheating does happen, by splicing video or modifying a game, and communities have removed records after careful analysis.

Speedrunning also has a charitable side. The Games Done Quick marathons in the United States, held twice a year, show runs live for a week at a time and have raised millions of dollars for charity.

Esports

Esports is organised competitive gaming, from a college tournament to international leagues watched by millions online. Competitions go back a long way; Atari ran a large Space Invaders tournament in the United States in 1980. In the early 2000s South Korea built a professional scene around real-time strategy games, broadcast on television. Today the largest circuits are built around team games such as League of Legends, Dota 2, Counter-Strike and Valorant, fighting-game events such as Evo, and mobile games, which dominate in much of Asia. Esports appeared as demonstration events at the 2018 Asian Games and as medal events at the 2022 Asian Games, held in Hangzhou in 2023.

One difference from traditional sport matters a great deal. Nobody owns football, but a company owns every esports game. The publisher decides the rules, licenses the tournaments, and can change the game or end its competitive scene.

The honest picture of a career

For every professional player there are many thousands of hopefuls. Careers are short, income is uncertain for all but a few, and contracts vary widely in quality. The practice hours cause the same strain injuries and sleep problems covered in Stage 5, and burnout is common. Many people build real careers around esports as coaches, analysts, casters, organisers, video producers and marketers, but that too is competitive. A young player with genuine talent is best served by keeping education going alongside play.

Stage 11The Vanishing Library: Why Games Disappear, and Who Saves Them

Film had its lost films and television its wiped tapes. Games are going through their own version of that loss now, while the people who made them are still alive to be asked about it. Game preservation is the field that tries to keep games playable, and their history knowable, before they are gone.

The scale is larger than most players realise. In 2023 the Video Game History Foundation, working with the Software Preservation Network, published a study estimating that about 87 per cent of classic games released in the United States were not commercially available in any form. If a player wanted to buy most of them legally, new, there was no way to do it.

Why games disappear

• Media decay. Magnetic tapes and floppy disks lose their data. Discs can rot. Cartridges lose their saves when a battery dies. Stages 12 to 14 deal with these at home.
• Hardware death. Consoles, arcade boards and computers fail, and replacement parts stop being made.
• Server shutdowns. A game that depends on its publisher's servers can stop working completely when they switch off. Some online games leave nothing playable behind.
• Delisting and store closures. Digital games are withdrawn from sale when licences for music, cars, sports teams or film characters expire. Whole shops close too: Nintendo closed the Wii Shop Channel in 2019 and ended new sales on its Wii U and 3DS shops in 2023.
• Lost source code. Companies merge, close and clear out offices. Source code, design documents, art files and prototypes have often simply been thrown away.
• Copy protection. Games that check an online licence can become unplayable when the check stops answering.
• Undocumented history. Magazines, advertisements, shop displays, packaging from smaller markets and the memories of the people who made and sold games are rarely collected systematically.

Who does the saving

Museums collect hardware, software and the paper around them. The Strong National Museum of Play in Rochester, New York, houses the International Center for the History of Electronic Games. The Computerspielemuseum in Berlin and the National Videogame Museum in Sheffield are two of the best-known European examples.

Non-profits and libraries. The Video Game History Foundation collects and digitises material and researches games' histories. The Internet Archive holds large software collections, many playable through emulation. Some national libraries collect games as part of their wider remit.

Communities. Much of the most detailed work is done by volunteers. MAME documents arcade hardware (see Stage 9). Groups of hobbyists maintain databases of verified copies of cartridges and discs. Fan translators, scanners of manuals and magazines, and the editors of wikis about unused content in games all add to the record.

How it is done

• Dumping and imaging. Reading the data from a cartridge or disc into an exact file copy.
• Verification. Checking that copy against a database of known-good copies (see the box below).
• Documentation. Photographing packaging and printed material, scanning manuals, recording gameplay video.
• Oral history. Interviewing developers, retailers, players and tournament organisers.
• Rescuing development material. Prototypes, development kits, backup discs and old hard drives from studios can hold unreleased games and early versions.
• Legal work. Preservation often runs into copyright and anti-circumvention law, and institutions in some countries have sought legal exemptions so that they can preserve games properly.

Storage and Preservation

Stage 12Storage: The Enemies, Cartridges and Discs

Most damage to game collections is done slowly, at home, by owners who meant well. A cartridge kept in a hot cupboard, a disc left in a car, a box on a sunny shelf, a console that became a cockroach nest. None of these looks dramatic on the day. All of them are permanent.

This band is written for someone who has just bought something they cannot replace. Stage 12 covers the enemies and the two kinds of game media. Stage 13 covers hardware, controllers, boxes and manuals. Stage 14 covers save data, digital libraries, the Indian climate, records and a routine.

The enemies, one by one

Heat speeds up almost every kind of decay. It drains and ruptures batteries, dries out the electrolyte in capacitors, yellows plastic, weakens the glue in boxes and labels, and damages the layers inside discs. The worst places are a parked car, a sunny windowsill, the top of a television or amplifier, and any shelf near a kitchen.

Humidity feeds mould on paper, card and disc cases, and corrodes metal contacts and circuit boards. Swings in humidity and temperature are worse than a steady level: materials expand and contract, and a cool object carried into warm, humid air collects condensation on and inside it.

Light, especially sunlight and its ultraviolet, fades labels and box spines and yellows many plastics.

Dust is abrasive on discs, clogs cooling fans, coats the lenses of disc drives, and holds moisture against circuit boards.

Pests are a real threat to electronics. Cockroaches like warm, dark consoles and can nest inside them; their droppings and bodies corrode and short circuit boards. Silverfish eat paper and the glue in manuals and boxes. Termites attack cardboard and wooden shelving. Rats and mice chew cables.

Salt air in coastal cities speeds corrosion of every exposed metal part.

Handling leaves skin oils on contacts and disc surfaces, and drops crack shells and cases.

Well-meant fixes round out the list: blowing into cartridges, polishing contacts with abrasives, "home remedies" for scratched discs, sticky tape on torn boxes, and bleaching yellowed plastic (see Stage 13).

Handling

Wash and dry your hands before handling valuable games; clean, dry skin is fine for most items. Cotton gloves reduce grip and make drops more likely, so they often make things worse. Use nitrile gloves when handling anything with a leaking battery or corrosion. Hold discs by the edge and the centre hole. Never touch cartridge contacts or the playing side of a disc. Work over a soft surface. Always switch a console off before inserting or removing a cartridge; pulling a cartridge out while it is powered can corrupt saves and damage hardware.

Cartridges

Save batteries

Many cartridges, from the 1980s into the early 2000s, keep saved games in memory that stays alive only while a small lithium coin cell powers it. These batteries often last well over a decade, but they do not last for ever, and when one dies the saved games vanish. The first sign is usually a game that no longer keeps its save after being switched off. Other cartridges store saves in memory that needs no battery, and are free of this problem.

Replacing a save battery means opening the shell with the correct security screwdriver, removing the old cell from the board, and fitting a new cell of the right type with solder tabs, or a holder. Back up the save first if a dumping device can read it; replacing the battery erases it. Never solder directly onto a bare battery, which can overheat and rupture it. If you have not soldered before, this is a job for a repairer, not a first project. Record the date of replacement.

Corroded contacts

Dull, dark or green contacts cause games that will not start or that glitch. The safe home method is simple: with the console off, wipe the contacts gently with a lint-free swab moistened with high-concentration isopropyl alcohol, then let the cartridge dry completely before inserting it. Repeat if necessary. Avoid metal polish, abrasive pads, sandpaper and erasers, which can strip the thin plating from the contacts and make corrosion worse. Heavy corrosion is a job for a repairer. A console's own cartridge connector wears too; on some machines, such as the original NES, it is a known replaceable part.

Labels and shells

Paper labels fade, stain, peel and tear, and none of that can be truly undone. Do not tape a peeling label, do not remove old price stickers with solvents, and never write on a label. Store cartridges upright in a box, like books, or in individual dust cases. Clean shells with a barely damp cloth, keeping moisture well away from the label and contacts.

Optical discs

How discs fail

On a CD, the data layer lies just beneath the thin lacquer and printing on the label side. A scratch on the label side can destroy data, while the clear playing side is protected by thick plastic. On a DVD, the data sits in the middle of two bonded halves. On a Blu-ray, it lies close to the playing surface under a hard protective coating.

Scratches on the playing side are often read through by the drive's error correction. A scratch running around the disc, along the direction of the data track, is usually worse than one running straight from centre to edge, because it hides a long continuous stretch of data.

Disc rot is the decay of the reflective or bonding layers, from manufacturing flaws, poor edge sealing, or heat and moisture getting in. It shows as pinholes of light when the disc is held up to a lamp, cloudy or discoloured patches, or separation at the edge. It cannot be reversed and it tends to progress. If a valuable disc shows it, make a verified copy while it still reads, where the law allows you to (see Stage 9).

Cleaning and storing discs

• Blow off loose dust with a rubber air bulb.
• Wipe with a clean microfibre cloth in straight lines from centre to edge, never in circles.
• For grime, dampen the cloth slightly with distilled water or a little isopropyl alcohol.
• Never use acetone, household cleaners, toothpaste or abrasive "remedies".
• Treat resurfacing machines as a last resort; each pass removes plastic.
• Store every disc in its case, standing upright like a book, not in tall piles.
• Never stick labels on discs or write on a CD's label side with solvent markers.
• Never leave discs in heat: a car in an Indian summer can ruin one in an afternoon.
• Do not leave a disc sitting in a console for months, and replace cracked cases and broken centre hubs, which can scratch the disc.

In humid weather, printed paper inserts can stick to the inside of a plastic case and leave their ink behind. Dry storage prevents it.

Stage 13Preservation: Consoles, Controllers, Boxes and Manuals

A game needs a machine to run on, and a boxed game is mostly paper. This stage covers the hardware and the printed matter, both of which age faster than most owners expect.

Consoles and handhelds

Capacitors

Old electronics rely on electrolytic capacitors, small components holding a liquid or gel electrolyte. With age and heat the electrolyte dries out or leaks. Symptoms include no sound, a faint or dim screen, a picture fault, or a machine that will not switch on. Leaked electrolyte also corrodes the copper tracks on the circuit board, so the damage spreads. Some 1990s handhelds, Sega's Game Gear among them, are well known for it. Replacing capacitors, called recapping, is skilled soldering work. Find an experienced repairer, and do not leave a leaking machine in storage hoping it will keep.

Clock and settings batteries

Many consoles and computers keep a clock or settings alive on a small internal battery. When it dies, the machine may ask for the date and time at every start, lose settings, or refuse features that depend on the clock. Some use a coin cell in a holder that is easy to swap; others have the battery soldered in.

Removable batteries

Remove AA and AAA batteries from handhelds, controllers and light guns before putting them away. Alkaline batteries leak, and the residue corrodes contacts and spreads into circuit boards. To clean light residue, wear gloves and eye protection, dab it with a cotton bud dampened with a little white vinegar, follow with isopropyl alcohol, and let everything dry fully. Heavy corrosion is a repair job.

Lithium-ion batteries in modern handhelds and controllers should be stored partly charged, at around half, topped up every few months, and never left completely flat for long periods. A battery that swells, bulging the case or lifting the screen, is a fire risk. Stop using and charging the device, do not press or puncture it, keep it away from anything flammable, and take it to an electronics repairer or e-waste collection point.

Power supplies and televisions

Check the label on every power adaptor. Japanese machines were built for about 100 volts and North American machines for about 120. Indian mains is 230 volts at 50 hertz. Plugging a 100 or 120 volt adaptor straight into an Indian socket can destroy it and is a fire risk; such machines need a suitably rated step-down transformer. Many modern adaptors accept anything from 100 to 240 volts, but only the label can tell you. Replace frayed cables. Never open a power supply, and never open an old cathode-ray-tube television, which can hold a dangerous electrical charge long after it is unplugged.

Yellowing plastic, and why retrobrighting is risky

Many console shells were made from plastics containing flame retardants that react with light and heat, turning the case yellow or brown. The change is often uneven: some Super Nintendo consoles are famously yellow on one half and grey on the other, because different plastic batches aged differently. Prevention is simply darkness and cool storage.

Retrobrighting treats yellowed plastic with hydrogen peroxide and ultraviolet light. It can lighten the colour, but it carries real risks:

• The yellowing often returns.
• Results can be streaky or blotchy.
• It is suspected of making some plastics more brittle.
• It damages labels, paint and printing, and heat from lamps or sun can warp thin plastic.
• Strong hydrogen peroxide burns skin and eyes.
• It permanently alters an original object, and many collectors value untouched shells more.

The conservative advice is not to retrobright anything valuable or rare. If you ever do, treat only a low-value spare part, with gloves and eye protection, knowing it cannot be undone.

Storing machines, and powering them on

Store consoles in their original boxes or a closed cabinet, cables loosely coiled, with a breathable cloth dust cover. In a humid climate, do not seal a machine in a plastic bag unless it is dry and the bag also holds silica gel. A few times a year, switch each machine on for a short session. Before the first power-on after long storage, look inside the vents for pests, leaks or bulging parts, sniff for burning, and stay with it: if you see smoke, smell burning or hear crackling, unplug at once. Whether regular use helps old capacitors is debated; the certain benefit is finding faults early, while they are still repairable.

Clean vents with a soft brush and a rubber air bulb, machine unplugged. If you use compressed air, hold the fan still so it cannot spin up.

Controllers and accessories

Controllers wear from use as well as age. Rubber membranes under buttons flatten, analogue sticks develop drift, a slow movement when untouched, and cables break where they meet the plug or the controller. Coil cables loosely and never wrap them tightly around the controller. Soft-touch coatings and rubber grips can turn sticky in heat and humidity, and the foam in headphones and packaging crumbles. Clean hard plastic with a barely damp cloth and a little isopropyl alcohol; keep liquids off soft-touch surfaces, printed parts and anything with a gap into the electronics. Store small accessories in labelled bags so that each one stays with the machine it belongs to.

Boxes, manuals and inserts

Cardboard game boxes are acidic, weak and moisture-hungry. They crush, crease, fade and cockle, and silverfish and termites eat them. Protect each valuable box with a clear box protector made of polyester (often sold as PET), sized for that format. Store boxes upright on a shelf, not crammed tight and not stacked under weight. Keep inner card trays. Never flatten an assembled box, never tape or glue a tear, and leave old price stickers alone rather than peeling them or dissolving them with solvents.

Keep manuals in their box, or separately in polyester or polypropylene sleeves labelled with the game. Staples rust in humid storage and stain the pages; dry storage is the answer, and a rusted staple on a valuable manual is a question for a paper conservator. Fold posters and maps only along their original folds.

Mould on paper or card needs care. Move the item away from the rest of the collection into a dry place, do not wipe damp mould, and for anything valuable consult a paper conservator. Mould spores can affect health, particularly for people with asthma or allergies.

Materials: use and avoid

Rubber bands deserve a special word: they perish, go sticky, and leave permanent stains on card and labels.

Display versus storage

Display shelves should be out of direct sunlight. A closed glass-fronted cabinet keeps out dust, and ultraviolet-filtering glazing helps further. LED lighting gives off little heat and little ultraviolet. Rotate boxes on display every few months so no single spine fades, and keep the rarest items in dark storage.

Stage 14Archiving: Saves, Digital Libraries, the Indian Climate and a Routine

A cartridge can sit on a shelf. A saved game, a digital library and a catalogue of what you own cannot; they live on batteries, accounts and drives. This stage covers them, then the climate that most Indian collections have to survive, and the records and routine that hold the whole band together.

Memory cards and save data

Saved games live in several places: battery-powered memory in cartridges, memory cards and units, a console's internal storage, files on a PC, and cloud servers. Each can fail. Batteries die (see Stage 12), memory cards wear out or are corrupted when pulled out mid-save, cheap unofficial cards lose data, internal drives fail, and some saves are locked to a single account or machine.

• Never switch off or remove a card while a game is saving.
• Copy important saves to a second memory card using the console's own menus, where it allows.
• Use a save-reading device to copy cartridge or memory-card saves to a computer, where one exists for your system.
• Copy saves to USB storage on modern consoles where the system permits. Some games block copying.
• On a PC, find each game's save folder and include it in your regular backups.
• Check cloud save terms. Some services keep cloud saves only while a paid membership is active and may delete them some time after it lapses.

An unplugged memory stick is not an archive. Flash storage, including memory cards, USB sticks and solid-state drives, can lose data if left without power for years, especially when warm. Keep important files on more than one device and check them at least once a year.

Digital libraries

When you "buy" a digital game you usually buy a licence to play it under the store's terms, not a copy you own. You generally cannot resell or lend it, and your access depends on the account and the store both continuing to work.

• Delisting. Games are withdrawn from sale, often when a licence for music, cars or characters expires. Earlier buyers can usually download them again, but that is a policy, not a guarantee. Keep a downloaded copy on the machine's own storage where the platform allows.
• Store closures. Whole shops close, as Stage 11 describes.
• Account loss. Accounts are lost to phishing, forgotten passwords, lost email addresses, bans for breaking the terms, and sometimes disputes over payments.
• Installers you may keep. Some stores sell games without copy protection, with installers you can download and keep. Save them with the version number and date, on two separate drives. Other stores let you play only through their own software, which works only while the store and your account do.

Protect every account: a strong, unique password, two-factor authentication, recovery codes printed and kept somewhere safe offline, and an email address and phone number that are current. Do not share, buy or sell accounts; it usually breaks the terms and puts the whole library at risk. Keep purchase receipts.

The Indian climate

Everything in this band gets harder in India, and a few hazards are specific to it.

Monsoon humidity. For weeks at a time, relative humidity across much of India stays very high, and in coastal cities it is high all year. Manuals, boxes and disc inserts grow mould; contacts and circuit boards corrode.

Salt air. In Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata and other coastal cities, salt in the air speeds corrosion of every exposed metal part, from cartridge contacts to console connectors.

North Indian summer heat. Daytime temperatures in much of north India regularly pass 40 °C. A top-floor room under a flat concrete roof becomes an oven, and a parked car far worse. Batteries, discs and plastics all suffer.

Dust storms. Pre-monsoon dust storms in north and west India push fine dust into vents, fans and disc drives. Cover machines, clean vents afterwards, and do not run a console with clogged vents.

Power cuts and fluctuations. Surges when power returns can damage electronics. Use a good surge protector. A UPS lets a console finish saving and shut down properly. Some home inverters produce a stepped rather than smooth waveform, which some electronics tolerate less well; a pure sine wave inverter is the gentler choice. Remember too that a power cut stops air conditioners and dehumidifiers, and humidity climbs back within hours. A sealed box with silica gel keeps working without electricity.

Termites and cockroaches. Termites live in walls and wooden furniture. Use metal shelving, keep it a few centimetres from walls and off the floor, and look for thin mud tubes on walls. Keep food away from the gaming area, check console vents for cockroaches, and move the collection well away during any pest-control treatment.

Condensation. Carrying a cold item from an air-conditioned room into humid air covers it in moisture, inside and out. Leave it in its closed box or bag for an hour or two to warm up before opening it or switching it on.

Affordable answers

• Silica gel. Indicating gel changes colour as it absorbs moisture. Recharge it by drying it in an oven as the maker's instructions direct, then let it cool in a sealed container. Use plenty, and check it monthly in the monsoon.
• A dry box. A lidded, well-sealing polypropylene tub with silica gel inside is a small controlled climate for cartridges, memory cards and manuals. Only seal in things that are already dry.
• A digital hygrometer, roughly ₹300–1,000 (2026), placed inside the cabinet or box, tells you whether the gel is working. Compare two if the readings seem odd.
• A dehumidifier for a storage room, or an electronic dry cabinet of the kind sold for cameras, costing several thousand rupees or more, for a serious collection.

Where to store in an Indian home: an interior wall of a middle floor, away from bathrooms and kitchens, off the floor in case of flooding, never under a hot roof, never beneath an air conditioner that drips, and never against an outside wall.

Inventory and documentation

A collection without records is harder to insure, harder to sell, easier to steal from, and a burden on whoever inherits it. A plain spreadsheet is enough, and outlasts most specialist software.

Follow the 3-2-1 rule for the catalogue, your photographs and your saves: three copies, on at least two different kinds of storage, with one kept off-site, such as a cloud service or a relative's home.

Disaster planning. Keep nothing on the floor in flood-prone areas. Keep the catalogue off-site in case of fire. Photographs and serial numbers are what police and insurers need after a theft, and it is wise not to post pictures of a valuable collection alongside anything that reveals where you live. Decide in advance the few items you would save first, and keep them together. Household insurance policies may limit or exclude collectables; ask the insurer whether valuable items need to be listed separately, and keep the records they would require. Finally, tell someone in your family what is valuable and where the catalogue is.

A routine

Stage 15Grey-Market Consoles and the Official Arrivals

For most of the 1980s and 1990s, video game consoles were not sold officially in India in any serious way. Import duties were high, electronics were expensive, and the big Japanese and American companies saw little market. The machines came anyway, by the routes that brought so many other things into Indian homes in those decades.

Suitcases and markets

Many families' first console arrived in a relative's luggage, bought in the Gulf, Singapore, Britain or the United States. Others were bought from electronics dealers selling grey-market stock, meaning genuine goods imported outside the manufacturer's official distribution. A handful of city markets became known for imported electronics and games, among them Palika Bazaar in Delhi, Lamington Road in Mumbai and Burma Bazaar in Chennai, with equivalents in most large cities.

Grey-market buying had consequences that collectors still see today:

• Mixed regions. Indian homes held Japanese, American, European and Southeast Asian versions of the same consoles, often without the games to match.
• Voltage. Japanese and American machines were built for lower mains voltages than India's 230 volts, so they needed step-down transformers. Machines that were plugged in without one did not survive.
• Television standards. India uses the PAL standard. Some consoles built for other standards showed a black-and-white or rolling picture on older PAL-only televisions, though many sets sold in India later handled more than one standard.
• No warranty. Repairs went to market technicians rather than the manufacturer.

The grey market also sold modified consoles that could play copied discs, and cheap pirated games to go with them. This was piracy, plainly, and it shaped how a generation of Indian players experienced consoles. Today a modified console carries legal risk and is likely to be banned from online services.

The official arrivals

By the mid-2000s Sony and Microsoft had begun selling consoles officially in India, Sony's PlayStation 2 and Microsoft's Xbox 360 among them, and later generations from both companies followed. Official distribution brought Indian warranties, Indian invoices and games in local shops, although boxed games stayed expensive relative to most incomes. Digital stores that price games in rupees, and frequent sales on PC, later made legitimate buying far more affordable.

Nintendo's official presence in India has been limited, and for long stretches its consoles have reached Indian players mainly through importers and the grey market. This can change; check the current position before buying.

Stage 16TV Games and Brick Games

Ask Indians who grew up in the 1990s about their first video game and many will not name Nintendo, Sega or Sony. They will say "TV game", or describe a small grey handheld with a grid of black squares on its screen. These were clones and cheap electronic toys, mostly made in East Asia, and for millions of children they were video games.

The TV game

"TV game" was the everyday name for a plug-in console that connected to the family television. Most were clones of Nintendo's Famicom, the Japanese original of the NES. They were sold under a long list of brand names, often in cases styled to look like other, more famous consoles, usually with two controllers and sometimes a light gun for shooting games.

They used cartridges in the Famicom's 60-pin format. The most famous were multi-game cartridges, whose labels promised hundreds or thousands of games but held a few dozen, repeated with small changes. Titles that people commonly remember from these machines include Super Mario Bros., Contra, Duck Hunt, Road Fighter, Circus Charlie, and "Tank 1990", an unlicensed modification of Namco's Battle City.

Almost none of this was licensed. The clones copied Nintendo's hardware design and the cartridges copied other companies' games. That is part of the story, not a reason to ignore it: these machines were how video games reached ordinary Indian homes a decade or more before official consoles did.

The brick game

The brick game was a handheld LCD toy with a grid of square dots for a screen. Its main game dropped blocks for the player to fit together, in the manner of Tetris, the puzzle game created by Alexey Pajitnov in Moscow in 1984. Around it came racing, tank, shooting and snake-style games, all drawn in the same chunky squares. Labels made the same wildly inflated claims as the multi-game cartridges. Brick games ran on AA or AAA batteries, cost little, and were sold in markets and small shops across the country. Their ancestry runs back to cheap LCD handhelds such as Nintendo's Game and Watch, but in India they were simply "brick games".

Collecting and saving this history

These objects matter precisely because nobody took them seriously. Their boxes were thrown away, their manuals lost, and very little about their brand names, packaging, prices or sellers has been systematically recorded. A collector who documents them is doing original history.

Two hazards need care. Brick games and old controllers left with batteries inside have often leaked, so remove batteries at once (Stage 13 covers cleaning). And old TV game power adaptors can be unsafe; do not plug one in without checking it, and replace it if in doubt.

Stage 17Cyber Cafés and LAN Gaming

In the late 1990s and 2000s, most Indian households had no computer and no internet connection. What many towns and cities did have was the cyber café: a room of desktop computers rented by the hour, used for email, school projects, job applications and, very quickly, games.

How the café became an arena

Cafés linked their computers on a LAN, a local area network, which meant the machines could play against each other with almost no delay. That made them ideal for multiplayer PC games at a time when home internet connections were slow or absent. Games commonly remembered from Indian cafés of that era include Counter-Strike, Age of Empires II, Project IGI, Road Rash, the Need for Speed series, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, and DotA, a player-made modification of Warcraft III.

A culture grew around them: after-school sessions, friendly and unfriendly rivalries between groups of regulars, small tournaments organised by café owners, and players who learned to install games, fix networks and eventually build their own PCs. College hostels ran their own networks, and college technical festivals commonly included gaming competitions. Indian players also entered national qualifiers for international events such as the World Cyber Games during the 2000s.

Rules and worries

Cyber cafés drew official attention for reasons that had nothing to do with games: anonymous internet access worried the police. Rules framed under the Information Technology Act in 2011, along with local rules in various states and cities, required cafés to check customers' identity and keep records. Parents worried too, about truancy and about children spending long hours in rooms full of older players. Many of those concerns are the ones Stage 5 and Stage 6 deal with today.

Decline and return

Cheaper home computers, home broadband and then, after 2016, very cheap mobile data emptied most gaming cafés. Many closed or went back to printing and form-filling. In larger cities the idea returned in a new form: gaming lounges with powerful PCs, consoles and comfortable seating, charging by the hour for the hardware most players cannot afford at home.

Stage 18Mobile First: How India Learned to Play on Phones

Most of the world's players now play on phones. In India the shift was sharper than almost anywhere, because for hundreds of millions of people the phone was the first and only gaming device they ever owned.

Before the smartphone

Feature phones came with simple built-in games, Snake on Nokia handsets being the most famous. Later phones could download small games written in Java, sold through mobile operators. An Indian games industry grew up around them. Indiagames, founded by Vishal Gondal, was one of the best-known companies making mobile games in India in this period, including games based on cricket and films.

The data revolution

Cheap Android smartphones spread through the 2010s, and in 2016 the launch of Reliance Jio, with free and then very cheap mobile data, drove data prices down dramatically. Almost overnight, downloading and playing online games on a phone became affordable for a huge new audience. That is why so much of India's gaming culture is mobile: players who skipped consoles and PCs entirely.

What India plays on phones

• Board and card games. Ludo King, made by Gametion in Navi Mumbai, turned a board game of Indian childhood into one of the country's most downloaded games, and its popularity surged during the 2020 lockdowns. Card games such as teen patti and rummy are also hugely popular, and their real-money versions are covered in Stage 21.
• Cricket games, unsurprisingly.
• Battle royale games. PUBG Mobile became a national phenomenon before it was blocked in 2020, and Free Fire drew a vast audience before it was blocked in 2022.
• Casual and puzzle games, played in short sessions on commutes and in queues.

Mobile-first gaming has its own shape. Many phones are low-cost, so game size, storage and battery matter. Most games are free to download and earn money through advertisements and in-game purchases. Phones are often shared within families, which makes parental controls and purchase settings more important, not less.

Stage 19Indian Game Studios

India's games industry grew up doing other people's work. For years its best-known strengths were art, animation, testing and development services for international publishers, and mobile games for the Indian market. Original Indian games for PC and console came later, and in smaller numbers, but they have arrived.

Services and international studios

Dhruva Interactive in Bengaluru was among the longest-established Indian studios, providing art and development work for international games for many years. Rockstar Games acquired it in 2019, and it became part of Rockstar's Indian operation. Several international publishers run studios in India, among them Ubisoft in Pune. Much of the country's development talent learned its trade in studios like these.

Mobile and casual

• Indiagames, founded by Vishal Gondal, was a pioneer of Indian mobile games in the feature-phone era (see Stage 18) and later became part of the Disney group through its acquisition by UTV.
• Gametion, based in Navi Mumbai, makes Ludo King.
• Moonfrog Labs, in Bengaluru, is known for the card game Teen Patti Gold.
• Nazara Technologies, based in Mumbai and listed on Indian stock exchanges since 2021, is a games company whose interests have included the esports organiser NODWIN Gaming.

Original games for PC and console

Nodding Heads Games of Pune made Raji: An Ancient Epic (2020), an action-adventure drawing on Hindu and Balinese mythology, released on PC and consoles and widely noticed as a milestone for Indian-developed games. SuperGaming, also in Pune, has built a battle royale game, Indus, around an Indian-inspired futuristic setting.

Indian mythology, history, cricket and city life are natural subjects, and increasingly developers are treating them with the care that players in India, and players of Indian origin abroad, have long wanted.

A growing ecosystem

The India Game Developer Conference brings developers, students and publishers together each year, and game jams, where people make a game in a weekend, are held in several cities. Design and animation institutes offer courses in game design and art. In 2022 the Union Budget announced a task force to promote the animation, visual effects, gaming and comics sector, often shortened to AVGC.

Stage 20Esports in India

Indian esports began in the cyber cafés and college hostels of Stage 17, with Counter-Strike and DotA tournaments and national qualifiers for international events. It became a mass phenomenon with mobile games.

The mobile boom

When PUBG Mobile and Free Fire took off, tournaments followed at every level, from college contests to professional leagues streamed to very large online audiences. Organisers such as NODWIN Gaming built businesses around them. Teams and creator-led organisations, such as S8UL, combined competition with streaming and video, and many of the best-known Indian players became as famous for their streams as for their results. PC and console scenes, including Valorant, Counter-Strike, football games and fighting games, are smaller but active.

The dependence on a few mobile titles has also been the scene's weakness. When a game is blocked, as happened in 2020 and 2022 (see Stage 18), teams, leagues and players' incomes stop with it.

Recognition

At the 2018 Asian Games in Jakarta, where esports was a demonstration event, India's Tirth Mehta won a bronze medal in Hearthstone. Esports became a full medal sport at the 2022 Asian Games in Hangzhou. At home, in late 2022 the government placed esports under the Department of Sports, while online gaming more broadly went to the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology. The online gaming law of 2025 (see Stage 21) also provides for esports to be recognised and promoted. Bodies such as the Esports Federation of India work on national teams and representation. How these arrangements develop is worth following, because they are still being worked out.

The honest picture for Indian players

Stage 10's caution applies with extra force. Indian prize pools are growing but are generally modest by international standards, and few players earn a steady living. Contracts vary widely. Some "academies" charge fees on the promise of a professional career; any such promise deserves scepticism.

Stage 21Online Gaming, Real-Money Games and the Law

This stage explains the broad shape of Indian law as it touches players. It is not legal advice. The law on online gaming in particular has changed quickly, and it may have changed again since this was written. Check the current position before relying on anything here, and take professional advice for any real decision.

Why it is complicated

Under the Constitution, betting and gambling is a subject for the states. Each state makes its own gambling law, many of them descended from the colonial-era Public Gambling Act, 1867. These laws have generally treated games of skill differently from games of chance.

The Supreme Court held in 1968 that rummy is mainly a game of skill, and later treated betting on horse racing as involving substantial skill. Courts have since held some formats of fantasy sports to be predominantly skill-based. A large real-money online gaming industry was built on that distinction. Several states tried to ban online real-money games, and courts struck down all or parts of more than one of those laws.

Taxes

In 2023, GST on online money gaming was set at 28 per cent on the full value of money deposited, and net winnings from online games became taxable at 30 per cent, with tax deducted at source. Rates and rules can change.

The online gaming law of 2025

In August 2025 Parliament passed the Promotion and Regulation of Online Gaming Act, 2025. As passed, it prohibits offering online money games, meaning games played by paying or depositing money in the hope of winning money or other stakes, whether they depend on skill or chance. It also prohibits advertising such games and facilitating payments for them. At the same time it provides for promoting esports and online social games, and for a regulatory authority. As described when it was passed, its offences are aimed at those who offer, advertise or process payments for money games rather than at players. Many real-money gaming companies stopped their paid contests after it passed.

Its rules, its enforcement and legal challenges to it were still developing when this guide was written. Check the current position.

Blocking of apps

Section 69A of the Information Technology Act, 2000 allows the government to block apps and websites. It was used to block PUBG Mobile and many other apps in 2020, and further apps, including Free Fire, in 2022.

Children, data and age ratings

The Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 requires verifiable parental consent before a child's personal data is processed, with detailed rules phasing in. This guide is not aware of a government age-rating system for video games in India, or of a law dealing specifically with loot boxes; parents generally rely on the ratings described in Stage 6.

Copyright, piracy and modification

Games are protected under the Copyright Act, 1957. Amendments in 2012 added protection for technological measures, such as copy protection. How that applies to a specific emulator, modification or personal backup is not something this guide can settle; Stage 9 sets out the general cautions, and they apply in India.

Imports

Imported consoles and games attract customs duty and GST. Rates change, so check them before ordering from abroad, and keep the invoice.

Reporting fraud and online harm

Online financial fraud and cyber crime can be reported through the National Cyber Crime Reporting Portal, and financial fraud through the national helpline 1930. Report quickly: the sooner fraud is reported, the better the chance of stopping the money.

Stage 22Playing and Collecting in India Today

A player in India today can buy new consoles and games from official retailers, play PC games priced in rupees, and join communities in every major city. A collector has a harder time, and a more interesting one.

Buying new and second-hand

Buy new hardware from authorised sellers, with a tax invoice and the serial number recorded. The second-hand trade runs through local game shops that buy, sell and exchange, online classified sites, and collectors' groups on social media. The usual risks apply: sellers who take payment and never ship, counterfeit handheld cartridges, consoles banned from online services, and stolen goods. Meet in public places, test before paying, pay in ways that leave a record, and walk away from any deal that has to be done in a hurry.

Retro collecting in India

Original 1980s and 1990s consoles and games were never sold here in large numbers (see Stage 15), so local supply is thin. Many Indian retro collectors import, often from Japan, which has a large second-hand market. Importing adds shipping, customs duty and GST, and the risk of damage in transit. It also brings every issue from Stage 8 and Stage 13: Japanese region, 100-volt power, and video outputs that modern televisions may not accept without a converter.

Old televisions. Cathode-ray-tube sets give old games their intended look, but they are heavy, and they can hold a dangerous charge; never open one. When disposing of old electronics, use an authorised e-waste collector rather than a scrap dealer who will break it open.

Climate. Everything in Stages 12 to 14 applies, and the monsoon section in Stage 14 is written for Indian homes.

Health and help

If gaming is causing real problems for you or someone in your family (see Stage 5), start with a family doctor or a school counsellor. NIMHANS in Bengaluru runs a clinic for problems with technology use, known as the SHUT clinic, and the government's Tele MANAS mental health helpline can be reached on 14416. Numbers and services change, so confirm them before you need them.

Saving India's own gaming history

Almost no public institution in India systematically collects the country's gaming history. The TV game boxes, the brick games, the cyber café price lists, the computer magazines that shipped demo discs, the Java games sold for feature phones, and the memories of the shopkeepers, café owners and early developers are all disappearing. This is where an Indian collector can do something no museum abroad can.

Glossary

A

• Age rating — a label, such as PEGI or ESRB, describing the content a game is suitable for. [Stage 6]
• Any% — a speedrun category in which the end may be reached by any means. [Stage 10]

B

• Battle royale — an online game in which many players compete until one player or team remains. [Stage 3]
• BIOS — the built-in system firmware some consoles need to start; copyrighted code. [Stage 9]
• Box protector — a clear polyester case sized to protect a game box. [Stage 13]
• Brick game — a cheap handheld LCD game with a grid-of-squares screen. [Stage 16]
• Budget reissue — a later, cheaper release of a popular game under a label such as Platinum or Player's Choice. [Stage 8]

C

• Capacitor, electrolytic — an electronic component holding an electrolyte that dries out or leaks with age. [Stage 13]
• Checksum — a short value calculated from a file, used to verify a copy is exact; also called a hash. [Stage 11]
• CIB — complete in box: game, box and manual. [Stage 7]
• Clone console — unlicensed hardware copying another console's design. [Stage 16]
• Cloud gaming — playing a game running on a distant server, streamed to your screen. [Stage 4]
• Copy protection — technical measures that stop a game being copied or run without authorisation. [Stages 9, 21]
• CRT — cathode-ray-tube television or monitor; never open one. [Stages 9, 13]

D

• Delisting — withdrawal of a digital game from sale. [Stages 11, 14]
• Disc rot — decay of a disc's reflective or bonding layers. [Stage 12]
• Doxxing — publishing someone's personal details to harass them. [Stage 6]
• Drift — slow movement registered by a worn analogue stick when untouched. [Stage 13]
• Dry box — a sealed container with silica gel, used to keep items dry. [Stage 14]
• Dumping — reading a cartridge or disc's data into an exact file copy. [Stage 11]

E

• Emulator — software that imitates another machine's hardware. [Stage 9]
• Esports — organised competitive gaming. [Stages 10, 20]

F

• FPGA — a reconfigurable chip used to reproduce old hardware in circuitry. [Stage 9]
• Free-to-play — free to download, funded by advertising or in-game purchases. [Stage 4]

G

• Gaming disorder — a condition in the WHO's ICD-11 involving impaired control over gaming despite harm. [Stage 5]
• Generation — a conventional grouping of consoles by era. [Stage 2]
• Grey market — genuine goods imported outside official distribution. [Stage 15]
• Griefing — deliberately spoiling a game for others, including one's own team. [Stage 6]

H

• Homebrew — new games made independently for old hardware. [Stage 8]
• Hygrometer — an instrument that measures relative humidity. [Stage 14]

I

• IGT — in-game time, a speedrun timed by the game's own clock. [Stage 10]
• Input lag — delay between pressing a button and seeing the result. [Stage 4]

L

• LAN — a local area network of computers in one place. [Stage 17]
• Licence — the permission to play a digital game under a store's terms, rather than ownership of a copy. [Stage 14]
• Lockout chip — a chip that stops a console running unapproved or other-region cartridges. [Stage 8]
• Loose — a cartridge or disc without its box or manual. [Stage 7]
• Loot box — a paid random reward inside a game. [Stage 5]

M

• MOBA — a team-based online arena game. [Stage 3]
• Mod — a player-made modification of a game. [Stage 17]
• Multi-game cartridge — a cartridge holding several games, often with an inflated count on the label. [Stage 16]

N

• NTSC — the television standard of North America and Japan; also shorthand for games from those regions. [Stage 8]

O

• Online money game — in the Indian law of 2025, a game played by paying money in the hope of winning money or other stakes. [Stage 21]

P

• PAL — the television standard used in Europe, India and elsewhere; also shorthand for games from those regions. [Stage 8]
• Parental controls — settings limiting a child's play time, purchases, chat and content. [Stage 6]
• PET — polyester, a stable clear plastic suitable for box protectors and sleeves. [Stage 13]
• PVC — a plastic that can release damaging compounds; avoid for storage. [Stage 13]

R

• Recapping — replacing ageing capacitors on a circuit board. [Stage 13]
• Region lock — any measure stopping games from one market running on another market's console. [Stage 8]
• Relative humidity — how much moisture the air holds compared with its maximum at that temperature. [Stage 12]
• Reproduction — a newly made copy of a cartridge or box; fraud if sold as original. [Stage 8]
• Retrobrighting — bleaching yellowed plastic with hydrogen peroxide and ultraviolet light; risky. [Stage 13]
• Roguelike — a game of short runs with permanent death and changing layouts. [Stage 3]
• RTA — real-time attack, a speedrun timed on a real clock. [Stage 10]

S

• Save battery — a coin cell keeping a cartridge's save memory alive. [Stage 12]
• Security screw — a screw needing a special bit, used on many cartridges and consoles. [Stages 8, 12]
• Silica gel — a rechargeable desiccant that absorbs moisture. [Stage 14]
• Speedrun — completing a game as fast as possible. [Stage 10]
• Splits — segment times in a speedrun. [Stage 10]
• Suicide battery — a battery holding an arcade board's decryption key; when it dies, so does the board. [Stage 11]

T

• TAS — tool-assisted speedrun, built frame by frame with software. [Stage 10]
• Three-two-one (3-2-1) rule — three copies of data, on two kinds of storage, one off-site. [Stage 14]
• TV game — the everyday Indian name for a plug-in console, usually a Famicom clone. [Stage 16]

V

• Variant — a distinct version of a game, such as a different print run, label or edition. [Stage 8]

Further Reading and Organisations

History of games

• Tristan Donovan, Replay: The History of Video Games (2010).
• Steven L. Kent, The Ultimate History of Video Games (2001).
• David Sheff, Game Over: How Nintendo Conquered the World (1993).
• Blake J. Harris, Console Wars (2014).
• David Kushner, Masters of Doom (2003).
• Nick Montfort and Ian Bogost, Racing the Beam: The Atari Video Computer System (2009).
• Chris Kohler, Power-Up: How Japanese Video Games Gave the World an Extra Life (2004).
• Mark J. P. Wolf, editor, The Video Game Explosion (2008).

How games are made and played

• Jason Schreier, Blood, Sweat, and Pixels (2017) and Press Reset (2021).
• Raph Koster, A Theory of Fun for Game Design (2004).
• Jesse Schell, The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses (2008).
• Tom Bissell, Extra Lives: Why Video Games Matter (2010).

Care of media and objects

• Fred R. Byers, Care and Handling of CDs and DVDs: A Guide for Librarians and Archivists (Council on Library and Information Resources and the US National Institute of Standards and Technology, 2003).
• Canadian Conservation Institute, published guidance on the care of paper, plastics and recorded media.

Museums, archives and preservation bodies

• The Strong National Museum of Play, Rochester, New York, and its International Center for the History of Electronic Games.
• Computerspielemuseum, Berlin.
• National Videogame Museum, Sheffield.
• Video Game History Foundation.
• Internet Archive, software collections.
• MAME, the arcade hardware documentation and emulation project.

Play, safety and competition

• PEGI, the European age-rating system.
• ESRB, the North American age-rating board.
• International Age Rating Coalition.
• World Health Organization, International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11), entry on gaming disorder.
• Games Done Quick, charity speedrun marathons.

India

• Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, for online gaming policy.
• Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports, Department of Sports, for esports.
• National Cyber Crime Reporting Portal, and the helpline 1930.
• National Institute of Mental Health and Neuro Sciences (NIMHANS), Bengaluru.
• Tele MANAS, the national mental health helpline, 14416.
• India Game Developer Conference.

Image Sourcing Sheet