Every year, Twitter coalesces all the data and identifiable gaming discussion of the year and puts it in everyone’s favorite form: data.
In 2021, it’s no galloping shock that a lot of social media conversation focused heavily multiplayer and live-service games. Not only do consistent patches and updates keep discussion of the game alive, but there’s a lot to constantly share, talk about, and speculate. According to Twitter, here’s the top ten games discussed on the social media platform last year.
- Genshin Impact (@GenshinImpact)
- Apex Legends (@PlayApex)
- Ensemble Stars! (@ensemble_stars)
- Final Fantasy (@FinalFantasy)
- Fate/Grand Order (@fgoproject)
- Animal Crossing: New Horizons (@animalcrossing)
- Knives Out (@game_knives_out)
- Minecraft (@minecraft)
- Project Sekai (@pj_sekai)
- Fortnite (@fortnitegame)
One of the notable observations here is that this is a fairly international list. Some games are big worldwide, some are only available in select countries or had very recent western releases, some have concentrations of where they’re most popular despite being available most places. The wisdom of updates driving conversation also isn’t always true, as Animal Crossing: New Horizons went most of the year without anything resembling major content additions but still landed right in the middle of the list.
But Genshin Impact is both a surprising and unsurprising number one. While it’s odd to say this about the most talked about game of the year, Genshin is very quietly extremely popular, and likely commands one of the most enthusiastic audiences out there. There are entire Patreon accounts that gets literal thousands of dollars a month for mining and posting leaks from upcoming updates, there are subreddits filled with characters who have not been officially announced yet.
All this for a game where someone once destroyed a PS4 at a Chinese gaming event to protest how similar it looks to Breath of the Wild.
