What’s your favourite game to watch on YouTube? Your answer may depend on where in the world you come from.
Watching gaming videos on YouTube has exploded in popularity, so much so that YouTube launched a dedicated vertical and app to the category last year. YouTube Gaming let’s viewers choose by game and browse videos of their favourite channels.
Non-Fiction Gaming even has a Youtube Channel where we play games and interview game developers. YouTube trends often shows off the Top 10 Trending Games each month, this time they’ve released a new analysis based on regions.
In this new report, YouTube Gaming looked at 25 of the countries with the highest gaming video viewership by watch-time to determine the top 25 most popular games in each region.
“To no one’s surprise, there are only two games that appear on the most-popular lists of all 25 countries: Minecraft and Grand Theft Auto V,”
YouTube shared in a blogpost discussing its findings — noting that Minecraft is still the more popular title by far. The list of games that are popular in each country is a little weird at first glance.
Check out the full breakdown in the YouTube-compiled chart right here:
Pokemon GO makes it into nearly every country’s list – though it falls short with Russia’s top 25. Pokemon Go is banned in that country.
Five Nights At Freddy’s seems popular the world over, except for Taiwan and Japan. This could be that Japan and Taiwan like to keep cute children’s mascots as cute, whereas the rest of the world is scared to death by animations. We’ve recommended FNAF if you’re into horror games.
YouTube also looked at games that were popular in one country but not in any others in order to reveal distinct geographic quirks.
One anomaly is the popularity of role-playing games like Puzzles & Dragons in Japan,Tower Of Saviors in Taiwan, and Dofus in France also show the widespread appeal of that format in varying locales.
Oddly, many of these games are quite old — Dofus is originally from 2004, for instance, and Heroes of Newerth, a game beloved uniquely in Thailand (and one we covered a few years ago), was released in 2010. Newerth’s popularity could be due to a continued eSports presence in Thailand that see’s massive competition and attendance.
Unsurprisingly, the football-themed Madden NFL 16 is the most popular game in the U.S., though it does not appear on any other list. We can only assume that the rest of the world isn’t as interested in what America considers to be ‘Football’.
Others might be due to regional quirks or popular mods for games like Farming Simulator in Poland. In any case, YouTube’s poll reflects gaming viewership on YouTube, and not necessarily gameplay — so much of the regional interest may be strictly voyeuristic.
What games do you like watching on Youtube? Do you fall into a stereotypical watcher for your country? Let us know in the comments.
