A former chairman of the National Statistical Commission and a policy think tank have partnered to launch the Skill Games Framework—the first-ever quantitative and scientific method to classify online games based on skill.
Statistician and Professor, Bimal Roy, in collaboration with The Dialogue, on Tuesday made available for public consultation, a framework that provides a data-driven approach to regulating the online real-money gaming sector in India.
The framework, if approved and implemented by the government, could be an essential tool for classification of legality in India's gaming market. Until now, India has had no standardised industry mechanism to differentiate skill-based games from games of chance.
Although court rulings have made qualitative classifications, there has been no consistent scientific approach—until this framework.
The core of the framework consists of three pivotal tests that assess the role of skill in game outcomes:
1. Persistence of Skill: Evaluates whether top players consistently outperform others over time, indicating a reliance on skill.
2. Experience Gap: Measures whether experienced players regularly surpass less-experienced ones, confirming that skill significantly influences performance.
3. Exemplary Skill: Identifies standout performers, further proving that success in the game is driven by skill.
As per Roy and The Dialogue's Kazim Rizvi, the framework has been tested with data from several gaming companies that are a part of industry association All India Gaming Federation.
"In the event that a self-regulatory body is approved by the government a few months down the line, we'll have a robust framework and supporting data, ready for implementation," Rizvi and Roy told NDTV Profit.
This comes even as there has been discourse on classification of online real money games. On Sept. 5, the Allahabad High Court had held that poker (card game) and rummy are absolutely games of skill and not gambling.
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