In a small café in New York, a teenager leans over their phone, giggling at a TikTok video where someone hilariously fails to complete a level in the Subway Surfers game. Thousands of miles away, in a crowded market in Mumbai, a teenage vendor sneaks in a few moments of mobile gameplay on his phone, inspired by the viral challenge that he saw on social media. And in a sleek boardroom in Seoul, mobile game developers analyze trending hashtags, searching for clues about what the world’s players will want next and how to grasp their attention.
This is the power of social media: a global trend factory, shaping how people play, engage, and think about games (and not only). Platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube have not just popularized games, but they’ve redefined behaviors across the entire industry, dictating how games can be discovered, how they evolve, and how they rise to reach a global audience.
Nowhere is this phenomenon more pronounced than in mobile gaming, where the bite-sized gameplay loop aligns just perfectly with the algorithm-driven, attention-grabbing nature of social media. Add to that the potential for web3 gaming and suddenly social media is not just influencing gaming trends; it’s creating a trend on its own with how both gamers and developers perceive and use social media.
How Social Media Became a Trend Factory
Social media’s influence on gaming is rooted in its power to make trends go viral. Platforms like TikTok, with their uncanny ability to surface content users didn’t even know they wanted, have transformed cultural consumption into a hyper-personalized experience in a matter of a few years, or even months if we take its adoption boom in 2020.
Central to this transformation is the heart of any successful user-facing media - the algorithm. TikTok’s For You Page (FYP), for example, uses sophisticated data analysis to identify what will keep users scrolling and not only adjusts to user’s preferences, but it also sneakily pushes bits of content that may be interesting and are already trending in other communities. To illustrate the example, let’s say that someone lingers on a video of an influencer achieving a high score in Candy Crush, their feed will soon be filled with similar gameplay videos, viral challenges, and memes related to mobile gaming, and other gaming niches as well. What follows is a cascading effect: content begets more content, and a niche interest quickly becomes a global trend, or a global trend pushes to the surface something that up to this point was considered niche.
In this environment, trends spread with a speed and intensity that were unimaginable in pre-social media eras. A game that might have taken months to achieve cult status through word-of-mouth or traditional advertising can now explode literally overnight.
From Obscurity to Phenomenon
The meteoric rise of certain games illustrates just how much social media can influence the gaming world. Take Among Us, a multiplayer game about deception, strategy, and above all, a somewhat casually competitive title for groups of friends. Released in 2018, it lived in obscurity until 2020, when pandemic-induced lockdowns led to its discovery by popular Twitch streamers and TikTok creators.
The game’s chaotic social dynamics, i.e. a perfect blend of humor, betrayal, and drama, made it a natural fit for short-form video platforms. TikTok videos showing players hilariously failing to identify impostors or pulling off clever deceptions racked up millions of views and by the end of the year, Among Us had become a cultural juggernaut, downloaded over 300 million times.
Mobile games, on the other hand, with their easy accessibility and short gaming loops have proven especially potent for hitting viral success. Let’s go back a bit and consider Flappy Bird, a game so simple it could have been made in the 1980s. When videos of players struggling to navigate its punishing mechanics surfaced on YouTube and Vine in 2014, it sparked a worldwide mania, I guess it would be the best description of the events. Players weren’t just playing some mobile game, they were performing, sharing their frustrations and triumphs in a collective virtual experience that took social media by storm.
This performative element is exactly what makes games particularly suited to social media. Gameplay moments that inspire reactions like laughter, awe, or outrage are now easily and instantaneously shared on social media, grabbing attention and quickly translating into viral content.
The Double-Edged Sword of Virality
The same mechanisms that catapult games to fame can also be their undoing. The fleeting nature of social media trends means that viral games often struggle to maintain their momentum, no matter how popular they were even a few days ago.
Take Flappy Bird again. Its rise was as rapid as its fall (or at least fall of popularity). The game’s creator, overwhelmed by the intensity of its viral success, pulled it from app stores just months after it became a sensation. Players quickly moved on, and Flappy Bird became a cautionary tale about the challenges of sustaining attention in the hyper-accelerated social media landscape.
Even when games remain available, overexposure can lead to some sort of attention fatigue. Viral games often burn brightly but briefly, leaving developers scrambling to sustain engagement after the initial wave subsides. While this may be a sign of times among the society with extremely short attention spans, it is key to understand that social media work as an amplification for both the rise and fall of popularity, no matter the heights a trend has achieved.
Social Media and Gaming Communities
Taking virality aside, social media has reshaped gaming also by fostering vibrant communities, and was doing so since the very beginnings of the Internet. Platforms like Reddit, Instagram, and TikTok aren’t just spaces for discovery; they’re hubs for collaboration, creativity, and shared passion. And while it has been like that for a long time, the accessibility of social media and its cultural penetration made it an inseparable part of today's society, something we cannot say about the early days of the Internet.
In these communities, players can now share fan art, strategy guides, and above all - memes, creating a secondary layer of engagement around their favorite games that often has its own life. Hashtags like #RobloxLife or #ClashRoyaleTips create microcosms where players can connect, compete, and learn from each other, providing the fertile ground for further growth of a given game.
For developers, these communities are truly invaluable. User-generated content acts as free marketing, keeping games in the cultural conversation long after traditional advertising campaigns have ended and often extends the lifespan and popularity of games by orders of magnitude.
Web3 Gaming & Social Media
If social media has been a source of success for many traditional and mobile games, its potential impact on web3 gaming is something that needs to be considered. Web3 gaming, which integrates blockchain technology to enable player ownership of in-game assets, had a rocky debut back in 2021 and left a stain many people remember to this day.
In 2021, titles like Axie Infinity brought web3 gaming into the spotlight with their "play-to-earn" models, which allowed players to earn tokens through gameplay. While initially successful, these games attracted speculative investors more than traditional players for obvious reasons which led to degradation of the in-game economy which in itself was deeply flawed due to inflationary tokenomics. When the price of token nosedived - which was a question of when, not if, the economic model quickly collapsed, leaving players disillusioned and web3 gaming with a tarnished reputation since the fall of many web3 games led to financial losses of many players.
One of social media’s greatest strengths is its ability to expand the total addressable market (TAM) for games. Mobile gaming, already accessible to millions, has used platforms like TikTok to reach casual players who might never have considered themselves "gamers” and now spend more time on quick gaming sessions than they realize. For web3 gaming, this ability to reach new audiences is critical.
Social media offers a chance for web3 gaming to rewrite its story. By emphasizing gameplay and rivalry rather than relying on flawed token-driven economies, newer web3 titles are shifting focus to meaningful competition and skill-based mechanics which are something players look for in the gaming market. Platforms like TikTok can spread the word about these changes by showcasing pure competition and community-driven aspects of blockchain games, helping to demystify and rehabilitate the genre. Also, it is key to see these platforms as a medium that allows developers to bypass misconceptions about blockchain and connect directly with players.
Imagine a TikTok creator posting a series of videos explaining the mechanics of a blockchain-based game, complete with demonstrations of its skill-based gameplay during his or her gaming sessions. Such content could break down barriers, making web3 gaming approachable for traditional gamers while highlighting its potential for creativity and competition.
The Future of Gaming in a Social Media World
As social media continues to evolve, its influence on gaming will deepen since it is one of the most prominent forms of entertainment today. Platforms are already experimenting with interactive features that blur the lines between gaming and content creation. TikTok, for instance, is piloting live multiplayer games that users can play while streaming. These innovations point to a future where social media isn’t just a platform for sharing games, it’s a platform for discovering and playing them.
For mobile and web3 gaming, the main challenge will be to balance short-term virality with long-term engagement. Games that rely solely on fleeting trends risk fading as quickly as they rise, but those that aim at creating meaningful competition through gameplay can thrive in the fast-moving social media ecosystem.
Gaming and social media share a common DNA, both are about connection, interaction, and storytelling. Together, they are shaping a new era of play, where every player is also a creator, every moment is a performance, and every game has the potential to change the world.
Join the Revolution
If you haven’t joined the Elympics Bot yet, here’s your chance to do so.
The Elympics Bot on Telegram represents the next step in our mission to revolutionize gaming through web3 technology. We’re excited to bring these games to our community and can’t wait to see how you’ll master the challenges they present.
Ready to dive in? Sign up now at t.me/elympics_bot and start playing today. Every game you play, every point you score, and every connection you make is a step forward in the future of gaming with Elympics.
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