Twitter has seen a large spike in tweets about gaming and esports in 2020, especially when compared to last year. In 2019, Twitter stated that over 1.2 billion tweets were about gaming, while in 2020, over a billion tweets have been made already.
Around the world, Animal Crossing has been the most often tweeted game, and this should come as no surprise following the release of New Horizons earlier in the year. That game benefits greatly from the use of social media as players are eager to show off their personalized island designs, but also to share codes for custom designed clothing, decorations, and of course, a high sale price for turnips.
Curiously, most of the list remains the same from 2019, which can be seen by clicking here. While there are some new entries on the list, Animal Crossing is the one that came in and dominated the scene completely, which is also impressive because it did not even launch until the end of March.
Esports teams were also tweeted about often, with FaZe Clan, MiBR, and G2 Esports taking the top three spots. There is also an area of overlap to consider between games and esports, since a tweet about FaZe Clan could reasonably be expected to also feature Fortnite or Apex Legends, for example.
The spike in gaming related tweets can likely be attributed to several factors. Obviously, the ongoing global pandemic fundamentally shifted a majority of the population to isolate as stay-at-home orders helped flatten the curve of COVID-19. In that time, the gaming industry as a whole has seen spikes in revenue as people turn to games for entertainment, and by extension are more likely to share their experiences on social media.
Esports has also seen a shift during the pandemic, which was already a constantly growing force, towards a more mainstream audience. Since traditional sports are unsafe to play, ESPN and BBC Sports both broadcast esports events on their channels featuring NBA 2K1, Rocket League, and more. This generated quite a bit of buzz and was often seen in social media leading up to each broadcast.
Finally, the buzz around the next generation of Sony and Microsoft consoles has also grown steadily throughout the year, with a holiday 2020 still planned for release. There has been a steady bombardment of posts about new hardware, games, features, and this is likely to continue for the rest of the year.
It will be interesting to see if the volume of tweets remains the same, grows, or shrinks in 2021 once things return to some manner of normal. Now the pandemic has shifted how people spend their leisure time and this has allowed for more game time. Whether or not that will continue in the future remains to be seen.
Source: Twitter, mobilesyrup.com
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