Maven Road: Gamescom’s top game was Sonic Frontiers

The most-discussed game at the recent Gamescom event last year was Sonic Frontiers, according to an analysis by Maven Road of all social media around the event in Germany.

Maven Road analyzes social media conversations to determine what people are talking about. We asked them to look at the Gamescom and Devcom events from August 22 to August 28. For the first time since 2019, the events took place in person in Cologne, Germany this year. While Gamescom drew more than 265,000 gamers to its expo, about 2,500 game developers showed up for Devcom. I like looking at analysis of these events because it settles the debates about what was the “game of the show.”

And in its analysis, people talked about Sonic Frontiers the most. Maven Road performed a consumer listening analysis to identify conversations drivers across Twitter, news, blogs and forums related to user discussions about the performance of the Devcom and Gamescom events.

It registered more than 685,800 mentions of both Gamescom and Devcom, with 213,700 unique users. About 52.4% of the conversations were in the press, while 47.6% were in user-generated content. Gamescom had 681,700 mentions, while Devcom saw 4,200 mentions from August 8 to September 4.

Gamescom-related conversations peaked on August 23, driven by users and organizations commenting on upcoming games announcements at #gamescom, while others expressed their excitement for the event. On the first day of Gamescom, August 24, mentions slightly dropped (13.4%); however, these mentions accounted for 36.1% of overall conversations within the five-day event.

During this day, conversations were driven by comments about new products and console accessories, as well as threads discussing the event highlights. Additionally, Devcom-related conversations included attendees sharing highlights of their favorite conferences.

Most discussed games

As you can see above, the top game mentioned at the show was Sonic Frontiers from Sega. That game comes out on November 8. The second place winner was Hogwarts Legacy, the new Harry Potter game coming on February 10 from Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment. The third title was a fresh franchise from Neowiz: Lies of P, an action title based on Pinocchio.

Aside from the top ten, other games mentioned included New Tales From the Borderlands; Killer Klowns from Outer Space; Return to Monkey Island; Where Winds Meet; The Expanse: A Telltale Series; and Friends vs Friends.

Conversations were primarily driven by users expressing their hype for the upcoming games or sharing their opinions after playing some of these games’ demos. Sonic Frontiers accounted for more than 41,100 mentions during this measured period.

About 82% of the Gamescom mentions were on Twitter, versus 11% from news, 5% from forums, and 2% from blogs. Positive mentions of Gamescom were at 14%, versus negative at 6%.

The demo of the game was well received, as users voiced their approval of the gameplay, often citing that 95% of the testers “loved it.” Negative posts were mostly due to user comments about an altercation between streamers that occurred at the event.

Devcom-related mentions were mostly due to pictures highlighting the event’s conferences.