Insights

Canadians flock to Twitter to find out what’s happening in gaming

By
Tuesday, 21 March 2017

The community for console, PC and mobile gaming is massive in Canada with Canadian gamers come to interact, engage and share content from their favourite titles. This translates to a huge amount of Canadian conversation on Twitter, including more than 19 billion impressions for gaming Tweets sent by Canadians in 2016 alone.

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The trend continues in 2017 as gaming news and announcements are amongst the most discussed items on the service. For example. when The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild was announced by Nintendo (@Nintendo) in mid-January, the title drove more than 32,000 Canadian Tweets on announcement day alone.

Our team at Twitter Canada looked at the behaviors of Canadian gamers and the reasons and ways in which they use Twitter. Our research tells us that these are the top three uses of Twitter for Canadian gamers:

  • To stay up to date with news in the gaming industry
  • To check out what fellow gamers are saying about games and consoles
  • To follow gaming-related accounts from around the world

We also learned that Canadians on Twitter are more likely to be gamers than Canadians not on Twitter. Head-to-head, Canadians on Twitter are:

  • 1.4x more likely to have a connected gaming console
  • 1.6x more likely to have a gaming subscription
  • 1.4x more likely to have a played a streamed game
  • 1.5x more likely to have purchase a game add-on

PC gaming is the most popular genre of gaming amongst Canadians. In fact, 62% of Canadian Twitter users leverage their PC or laptop as a gaming device while 59% use their smartphone and 51% use a gaming console. Data published by eMarketer also reveals that gaming is the second most popular Canadian app category for time spent on mobile, trailing on messaging/social apps.

85% of Canadian gamers on Twitter are willing to spend money on games. This compares to 76% of Canadian gamers not on Twitter in the same category. For gamers on Twitter, 38% feel like they’re missing out if they don’t have the latest game.

Watching live game play online is a big part of “fandom” for many Canadian gamers, especially those on Twitter. When compared to those not on the service, Canadian gamers on Twitter are:

  • 1.8x more likely to broadcast a live stream of their game play
  • 1.6x more likely to have watched a live gaming stream
  • 1.5x more likely to have watched an eSports tournament
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Canadians now have an opportunity to watch even more eSports tournament on Twitter thanks to a new live streaming partnership with ESL (@ESL) and DreamHack (@DreamHack). More than 15 events in the ESL One, Intel® Extreme Masters (IEM) and DreamHack circuits will be live streamed in Canada and across the globe on Twitter in 2017.

In terms of individuals, Twitter is also home to many of the top Canadian gaming personalities. These accounts attract followers from across the globe in search of the latest gameplay content, tips, industry insights and humour.

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Here are five Canada Twitter accounts with both Canadian roots and more than 100,000 followers each.

  1. Evan Fong (@VanossGaming)
  2. Jason Tran (@TSMWILDTURTLE)
  3. Typical Gamer (@TypicalGamer)
  4. Nick28T (@Nick28T)
  5. Team Epiphany Jake (@PapaJakeTE)

Check Twitter regularly for the latest news, insights, reactions and content from across the Canadian gaming community.

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