Listen. It’s lockdown. We’re all real tired of it. I don’t know what else to tell you, I mean, I’m tired, anyway. But, lockdown also means we’re all, as a species, playing more video games. I mean, what else are we supposed to do stuck inside? Better ourselves? Learn a new skill? Yeah, okay, sure.
Anyway.
Compare The Market, purveyors of both good deals and good meerkats, has put together what they call a ‘global gamer index’, which shows which games have skyrocketed in popularity since lockdown, and a breakdown of the most popular game on a country by country basis. So, it’s pretty fascinating.
Firstly, they used Google Trends to look at search interest score over a period since the start of lockdown until early June. Of course, this excludes games released during that period, given they’d have an unfair advantage and screw up the data. Secondly, Google Keyword Planner was used to find the number of average monthly searches for March and April.
So with that in mind, what does the data look like?
First up, there’s the games that have had the biggest increase in popularity since lockdown began.
iRacing, the biggest racing simulator on the market, has seen the biggest increase with an uptake of 242% increase. That’s 60,000 new subscriptions in the last two months, which is the most it’s had in a year. Terraria takes second place with a 173% player base increase. That’s pretty darn impressive for a nine year old game, though this is largely in part due to it receiving its final update recently. Finishing up with third place is the controversial NBA 2K20, with an 86% increase in players.
Although despite those huge increases in numbers, that still doesn’t reflect what the worlds favourite games look like. Which is why I have this incredibly helpful map!
So, in short? Roblox is clearly King, with a whopping 95 countries having it top their list. Even Fortnite at second place only comes in with 35 countries, and Minecraft with 23. That’s an absolutely massive disparity and, really, and indicator that what makes a popular game isn’t always going to be how many guys you can shoot in the face. But sometimes it kind of is.
Except Germany, who’s the one country out there in the entire world who is just absolutely vibing to Animal Crossing: New Horizons, which is perfectly valid.
Goto.game Selected as RazerANZ’s Public Relations Agency of Choice
Sydney, 24 April, 2024: goto.game is thrilled to announce its selection as the Public Relations agency for RazerANZ following an extensive competitive pitch process. As
