Step aside Katy Perry, Taylor Swift has a new enemy. His name is Steve. And he's kinda the face of one of the most popular games, Minecraft.
While Taylor Swift may have been the trendy "it" girl, and Frozen just about every child's obsession, when it comes to YouTube in 2014, Mojang's sandbox megahit Minecraft reigns supreme.
Google recently gathered the results for the top search queries for YouTube in 2014, revealing that Minecraft was the second most-searched item of the year, beaten out by the very broad "music" term. However, it outpaced other hot items of 2014, like "Frozen," "Beyonce," and "Taylor Swift."
YouTube's list of most popular search terms can be found below.
- Music
- Minecraft
- Movies
- Frozen
- Drake
- Beyonce
- PewDiePie
- Happy
- Eminem
- Taylor Swift
Attempting to explain gaming's rise in popularity on the video giant, Google's Pop Culture and Gaming Insights Lead Gautam Ramdurai pointed to a survey Google conducted in 2014.
"A Google Consumer Survey fielded in October 2014 of people who said they watch gaming videos on YouTube revealed that only a portion of this group (37%) considers themselves 'gamers,'" he said. "When asked about their motivations for watching gaming videos, viewers mentioned 'entertainment' and 'humor' as often as they mentioned 'learning new strategies' or 'game tips.'"
While Minecraft may be the crème de la crème, videos focused on video games are gaining increased traction on YouTube. Ramdurai points out that walkthroughs, Let's Plays (when a personality simply just plays a game while talking over it), game news and reviews, instructional videos, and competitive gaming championships are just some of the gaming content you can find on YouTube these days.
In fact, gaming content on YouTube is becoming so prevalent that more than 20 of the top 100 YouTube channels with the most subscribers worldwide are gaming related. That includes PewDiePie who ranked 7th on the list of most searched terms in 2014.
Shake it off, Taylor, the next time you want to build a snowman, it'll probably be blocky.
