Well, it seems that Twitter is deigning to share some of their internal figures with the public. Specifically: in regards to video game topics, and what was the most trending. Especially in regards to a certain Dark Souls-like video game FromSoftware recently released. In case you hadn’t caught on, I’m talking about Elden Ring here.

The Twitter Gaming Files?

Video games are apparently the biggest thing on social media in 2022, as well as it should be.

Twitter’s global head of creator and gaming content partnerships, Rishi Chadha, has just posted a series of Tweets that show off Twitter’s own internal figures related to gaming. To be clear though: none of the figures show any exact numbers. However, they do show general amount of activity, and what they were about. Those 2 alone still give us some very interesting bits of data to look at. Check them out below:

Q1 2022 Gaming Tweet Volume

Q1 Gaming Tweet Volume Twitter image.
Who knew Elden Ring would be so popular?

As you can see in the graph above, there were 4 Tweet spikes in Q1 2022, each on a different topic. While it seems that Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard caused a pretty serious spike, it actually paled compared to Sony’s acquisition of Bungie. It seems that people just found Sony’s ownership of Bungie (and by extension the Destiny series of games) than Microsoft now owning Call of Duty, World of Warcraft, and all the other games Activision Blizzard owns.

However, both of their spikes pale in comparison to the spike generated by the launch of Elden Ring on February 25, 2022. In fact, Elden Ring’s spike goes up so high that you can’t even see the tip of it. That’s how highly (pun intended) people thought of FromSoftware’s latest Souls-like video game. Fortnite’s latest season doesn’t even come close and is barely an afterthought compared to Elden Ring.

Most Tweeted About Games Globally

Most Tweeted About Games Globally Twitter image.
I see it again. Is this déjà vu?

Twitter also gives us a list of the top 10 games that were the most Tweeted in Q1 2022. Not unexpectedly, Genshin Impact occupies first place on this list. This freemium, anime-style version of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild by miHoYo isn’t a complete commercial success without reason. Seriously, it earned $3 billion USD in its first year. You can argue about many things in the game (including the pay-to-win mechanics), but the one thing you can’t argue about is its commercial success.

Second place on this list is Wordle, with Ensemble Stars! coming in third place. However, if you look downwards at seventh place, you might see a familiar name there. Yes, Elden Ring is the seventh most Tweeted game in the world right now. The game barely launched over a month ago as of this writing, and it already occupies seventh place on the list of the most Tweeted games? Clearly, FromSoftware did something right there.

Elden Ring: The Social Media Phenomenon?

"Elden Ring" key art.
You have to admit: the game’s key art looks fantastic. In so many definitions of the word.

It’s pretty obvious from the Twitter data that Elden Ring is now one of the most, if not the most, popular games in recent times. Which is rather amazing considering that it, again, only launched just recently. 41 days ago as of this writing, to be precise. The game actually sold 12 million copies within its first 3 weeks of release and received perfect scores from multiple game review sites. This is in spite of the rather extreme difficulty of the game, mind you. It’s not a Souls-like game without reason, after all.

Looks like another awesome game that I’ll probably not want to actually play.

All in all, it looks like Elden Ring is set to be the gaming industry’s biggest success story in 2022. That is, assuming another game doesn’t upstage it later on this year. Although that doesn’t seem like for quite some time yet.

Source: Twitter