Twitter reports 36% increase in gaming tweets in first half of 2022

Roughly 1.5 billion tweets about gaming were made on Twitter in the first half of 2022. That’s ‘billion’ with a ‘b’. It’s like if every single person in China tweeted once about video games, and then a hundred million of them needed a second tweet to finish a thought.

By the numbers it’s a 36% increase in tweets about gaming over last year. The huge jump in tweets was driven by big game releases like Elden Ring. Esports events like Call of Duty League, Valorant Champions Tour and Professional Gamers League Counter-Strike: Global Offensive also pushed the numbers.

E3 imploding and all of the different events like the Xbox Showcase, Playstation’s State of Play and Summer Game Fest also contributed to the sheer amount of tweets this year. More events spread out means more conversations happening for longer.

Genshin Impact, the number one tweeted about video game in 2021, is still at the top halfway through 2022. To absolutely nobody’s surprise, Wordle took the number two spot.

Though after Wordle’s sale to the New York Times the tweets about it died off pretty quick. We’ll see how it does by the end of 2022.

The top 10 tweeted about video games in 2022 so far

Twitter’s blog post breaks down a number of categories for a deeper dive in the data, but we’re here to talk about games. Specifically we’re here to talk about the top 10 games of 2022, according to tweets made about them.

The list is similar to the end of 2021, with a few notable changes. Wordle, Elden Ring, Valorant and The Legend of Zelda all freshly charted this time around. 

Elden Ring and Wordle both took the industry by storm. Wordle in particular inspired daily posts from basically everyone, if only to show off how quickly a daily puzzle was solved. Valorant is steadily climbing in popularity as an esport and generating lots of chatter thanks to streamers like Shroud. Zelda’s the odd duck out; there isn’t a high profile release or anything, but lots of leaks, speculation and delays surround the Breath of the Wild sequel.

Twitter’s got a breakdown for a bunch of different categories, too. Japan loves tweeting about video games. Brazil’s esports athlete FalleN is the most talked about esports player. Loud Esports, also from Brazil, is the most talked about team.

Those are just a few examples. The Twitter blog has more. It’s definitely worth a look, if only to see what’s most popular halfway through 2022.