NEW DELHI: At 16, Reuben Pereira is a brand ambassador. Haven’t heard of him? Of course, you haven’t — not unless you’re an avid Fifa player. Nah! We’re not suggesting that you play shoulder to shoulder with Ronaldino or Beckham. This is about the world of cyber gaming that has a huge youngster population in its grip and has thrown up heroes like Pereira — it’s the world that Indian gaming companies are trying to crack.

“And what’s a better way than to project yourself as friends of gamers? Especially, considering that gaming’s getting to be the biggest passion with the young crowd after cricket and Bollywood. Also, we want to make then world-class players,” says Alok Kejriwal, CEO, Games2win.

The company’s recently signed up seven gamers — five CounterStrike champs and two for Need for Speed. All of them are winners in the India round of international matches. Indiagames, meanwhile, has signed up Pereira and three others. Says Indiagames CEO Vishal Gondal, “Gaming needs to be treated as a form of sport — now that’s one area that receives hardly any support from any quarter. And that’s why we feel we can work to make a difference.” Other companies are scouting around too, but won’t talk about their plans now. “But it’s certainly the future trend in online gaming,” says Sunil Buch, head, marketing, Reliance World. “It’s a great trend and it’s what we’re going to see quite a bit in future in various areas. Getting the gamer himself to endorse the game is the best way and part of a larger movement of creating usage-generated celebrities. It makes the user more important and a sort of role model,” says an Indiatimes spokesperson. Blogging, that’s been made popular by many of these sites, including Indiatimes, is one more way to get the user involved, the spokesperson added.

For these ‘power gamers’, who’ve been complaining for quite a while about the lack of sponsorships that their sport attracted, are an ‘elated’ bunch. They’re paid a salary or a lumpsum amount annually and get to keep all the cash prizes they win at tournaments. Gaming companies are also trying to work out endorsements for other brands eyeing this segment — the revenue sharing model will benefit all!

“But the biggest relief is that the entire headache of planning my itinerary, arranging the travel, booking hotel rooms and all other details before a tournament, is now my company’s,” says Dhruv Mody, who dropped out of college last year to be a professional gamer and has been signed up by Games2Win. For Mody, it’s indeed a big deal because there are 12-15 tournaments in a year. “It could go up to 20-25 and with things looking up in gaming, it may even get better,” Mody says. Better — that it certainly is — and so at the moment, Warcraft hero Sagar Vaishnav, who has a couple of offers, hasn’t decided which one to take up.

“It’s going beyond that to know their mind — they are what make up our audience and we need to know what that community thinks,” says Mr Kejriwal.