Gaming, streaming and media

Gaming, streaming and media is the software of what people play, watch, read and hear, and of the advertising that pays for much of it. This Domain of the product-companies collection holds the companies that make games and run play for money, stream video and keep channels on air, publish news, science and stories, run social and dating apps, and buy and sell the ads that appear between all of them. Most of it is consumer software at enormous scale, where millions of people join the same match, stream or auction at once. India builds a great deal of it for audiences abroad, from games and casino systems to news services and journals, and it is also home to apps made for Indian audiences, in cricket streaming, audio stories and social media in Indian languages.

YouTube, the ad businesses of Google and Meta, Meta's social apps and Amazon's Prime Video are told separately. (More on them in Google, Meta and Amazon, in the big-tech collection.) The engineering centres that media and publishing groups run for themselves in India, each a GCC (global capability centre), are told separately too. (More on them in Parent Industry 9, Inside the media, entertainment and publishing groups, in the GCC collection.)

The Domain's four Industry Verticals move from play to the screen to the word, and then to the ad that pays for all three, in Gaming, Streaming and broadcast, News, publishing and social media, and Adtech. Every company named in this Domain has posted software engineering jobs in India.

Gaming

Gaming is the software of play. Its companies make console, PC and mobile games, run the services around the player, build casino and lottery systems, run sports betting and games of skill, and book a film or a sports court, like Electronic Arts, Zynga, Light & Wonder, Entain India and BookMyShow, and more is on the Gaming page.

Streaming and broadcast

Streaming and broadcast is the software of watching and listening. Its companies run the streaming services and TV platforms, the technology that carries video to the screen, the studios that make the picture and the sound, and the broadcaster's control room, like JioHotstar, Roku, Amagi, Dolby Laboratories and Evertz, and more is on the Streaming and broadcast page.

News, publishing and social media

News, publishing and social media is the software of words and the people who share them. Its companies sell news and information, publish online and in journals of science, build newsroom software, tell stories in sound and run social, dating and matrimony apps, like Thomson Reuters, Elsevier, Pocket FM, ShareChat and Shaadi.com, and more is on the News, publishing and social media page.

Adtech

Adtech is the software that buys and sells online ads in auctions that last a fraction of a second. Its companies help advertisers buy space, help publishers sell it and check whether the ad worked, like PubMatic, Media.net, InMobi Advertising, Affle and DoubleVerify, and more is on the Adtech page.

Where the verticals meet

Live sport runs through three of the four verticals. A cricket match streamed on JioHotstar must not freeze when millions of people join in the last over, and the streaming-technology companies clip every six within seconds and mark the moments where an ad can run. The same live data sets the odds for a bet on the next ball at sportsbooks abroad, like those Entain India builds for. And the ad between overs is sold by auction, as television ads join the programmatic market that PubMatic and the other supply-side platforms already run for websites and apps. Companies cross these lines. JioStar is both a streaming service and a broadcaster, Crunchyroll and DAZN build their own streaming technology, and Kuku FM is both an audio app and a video streaming app.

Advertising ties the Domain together, and AI is changing what it pays for. Free games, free streams and free news sites live on ads, so a publisher's income and an ad platform's income rise and fall together. Search engines now answer many questions with an AI summary, and fewer readers reach the publisher's page, so digital publishers and supply-side platforms are both looking for new income, from subscriptions to deals that license their content to the companies that build AI models. News agencies sell their archives to the same buyers, and Zzazz is building software to price a single article.

For an engineer, the Domain asks for different skills in each Industry Vertical, with one thread running through them. Gaming hires game developers with engines like Unity and Unreal. Streaming hires data, Go and cloud engineers, and C/C++ engineers for video itself. News and publishing hire GenAI and ML engineers for research assistants, and Java and .NET engineers for publishing platforms. Adtech hires data, Go and ML engineers for its auctions. The thread is AI that makes the content itself, the levels of a game, the dub that moves an actor's lips, the narrator's voice in an audio series, and the ad that the platform writes for the advertiser.

That is Domain VIII, Gaming, streaming and media, from the game on the phone and the match on the screen to the story in the earphones and the ad that pays for them.