Twitter Gaming has unveiled its year in review for 2018, covering the most popular gaming and esports related Twitter activity over the past 12 months – with some intriguing results.
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2018 saw Twitter itself take a more active role in pushing and promoting gaming content and coverage, particularly with esports.
The platform broadcasted event livestreams, introduced team and event ‘hashflags’, and gave the coveted ‘blue tick’ of verification to thousands of esports players, coaches and industry figures.
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In a blog post on January 22, head of Twitter Gaming content and partnerships, Rishi Chadha, states that 1 billion gaming related tweets were sent globally in 2018, and presented top 10 lists of the most popular games, esports teams and athletes.
Shockingly, Epic Games’ Fortnite was not the most-Tweeted about game, as it was beaten out by Japanese free-to-play mobile RPG “Fate/Grand Order”.
Most-Tweeted about Games in 2018
- Fate/Grand Order (@fgoproject)
- Fortnite (@FortniteGame)
- Monster Strike (@MStrikeOfficial)
- Splatoon (@SplatoonJP)
- PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds (@PUBG)
- Granblue Fantasy (@granbluefantasy)
- Ensemble Stars (@ensemble_stars)
- Super Smash Brothers (@NintendoAmerica)
- Overwatch (@PlayOverwatch)
- Final Fantasy (@FinalFantasy)
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Next up is the most-Tweeted about esports athletes and there is another surprise here.
Twitter appears to have completely omitted Fortnite players, such as Turner ‘Tfue‘ Tenney and Tyler ‘Ninja‘ Blevins from this list, perhaps consigning them to a ‘streamers’ category rather than esports.
Instead, the list is dominated by Call of Duty players (5), including two OpTic players (Scump and Crimsix) and two FaZe Clan players (Attach and ZooMaa).
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Fighting games have two players in the top 10 (Hungrybox and Leffen), while Counter-Strike, League of Legends and Overwatch have one each (FalleN, Doublelift and xQc, respectively).
Most-Tweeted about esports athletes 2018
- Seth Abner (@OpTic_Scumper)
- Félix Lengyel (@xQc)
- Juan DeBiedma (@LiquidHbox)
- Yiliang Peng (@TLDoublelift)
- Ian Porter (@OpTic_Crimsix)
- Gabriel Toledo (@FalleNCS)
- James Clayton Eubanks (@Clayster)
- William Peter Hjelte (@TSM_Leffen)
- Dillon Price (@Attach)
- Thomas Paparratto (@ZooMaa)
For esports organizations, a similar story is borne out at the top, with FaZe Clan and OpTic Gaming taking the top spots, with another North American organization, Cloud9, rounding out the top three.
Three Overwatch league franchises also make it in, OpTic’s Houston Outlaws, Team Envy’s Dallas Fuel and Cloud9’s London Spitfire.
Most mentioned esports franchises 2018
- FaZe Clan (@fazeclan)
- OpTic Gaming (@opticgaming)
- Cloud9 (@cloud9)
- FNATIC (@FNATIC)
- TSM (@tsm)
- Houston Outlaws (@outlaws)
- Dallas Fuel (@dallasfuel)
- G2 Esport (@g2esports)
- London Spitfire (@spitfire)
- Team Liquid (@teamliquid)
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The final list compiles the most-Tweeted about gaming and esports events, with E3 expectedly topping the list.
Four esports events make it on the top 10, beating out popular conventions like Gamescom, BlizzCon and TwitchCon.
Most talked about gaming events 2018
- E3
- Tokyo Game Show 2018
- The Game Awards 2018
- 2018 League of Legends World Championship
- Overwatch League Inaugural Season Championship
- ELEAGUE Major: Boston 2018
- FACEIT Major: London 2018
- Gamescom 2018
- BlizzCon 2018
- TwitchCon 2018
The omission of Fortnite players from the list of esports athletes will surprise some, considering Fortnite has held competitive tournaments with tens of millions in prize money, many of which Twitter itself promoted and supported.
It’s also of note that despite Japan being the region that tweeted about gaming the most in 2018, that their presence in terms of esports was non-existent on Twitter, likely due to the country’s reluctancy to embrace competitive gaming as other Asian countries have.
