Some Countries Really Love Some Odd Games, According To YouTube

It should come as no surprise that, depending on where you are in the world, the population is head-over-heels for very specific games. According to a recent study from YouTube, though, quite a few odd choices are making the biggest noise in very specific regions across the globe.

The folks over at Engadget recently dove into a rather interesting study conducted on YouTube. In short, the folks behind one of the biggest video viewing/streaming providers on the internet wanted to take a gander at what games are popular and where. They had a few results that were anything but surprising, including the fact that games like the latest Grand Theft Auto and the build-it-yourself adventures of Minecraft are basically universally beloved.

But while they expected to see some games perform better depending on region, I doubt they were expecting to see some of the titles that were climbing to the top of the charts.

The easiest pull is that Madden NFL is big in the United States, but nowhere else. Given the fact that the rest of the world plays a different version of football, that's not exactly a head turner.

Moving down into Brazil, though, we find that Lego Marvel's Avengers is apparently a huge game in that region, pulling in the biggest number uploads and viewers in the world of gaming for that region.

Back up the map to Germany, the point-and-click adventure game Deponia is apparently a hot ticket right now, with the folks in Thailand absolutely in love with the battle arena game, Heroes of Newerth.

France is all about Dofus, as it turns out, with the people of Russia appropriately in high demand of a tale from their homeland, S.T.A.L.K.E.R.

The Ukraine is all about Tanki Online, a free-to-play tank battle game. Further East and we find that mobile games rule supreme. A match-three offering, Tower of Saviors, is huge in Taiwan, while Japan's big hit is still Puzzles & Dragons.

Perhaps my favorite result from this study, though, is that the people of Poland are ga-ga for Farming Simulator. And here I was thinking they couldn't do anything else to be even more endearing.

That just goes to show the scale of the world of gaming. Titles that we maybe haven't thought about in years here in the U.S. might be mega-hits elsewhere, while games that we assume are sweeping the map might only be popular in our own neck of the woods.

And really, that's pretty rad. One of my favorite things to do on streaming sites like Twitch is troll around the various offerings until I find someone playing the hell out of a game I've either never heard of or didn't think anyone would be taking the time to stream. We all have our gaming passions, some are just a little more surprising than others.