Study: Countries with the Best Video Game Players

For decades, video games have been one of the most popular hobbies around the world. With millions of players loading into countless games across a variety of devices, gaming has brought people together even while living in completely different parts of the world.

At CGTrader, we see every day how the presence of a community within a hobby can help passion grow. With passion often comes competitiveness, and, in our opinion, video games are one of the most competitive spaces out there these days.

So with this in mind, we set out to learn which countries are home to the best gamers. To do this, we collected video game completion data from thousands of games on HowLongToBeat.com and analyzed user profiles to create a talent index to rank countries based on their residents’ skill level. Read on to learn which countries reign supreme.

Key Takeaways

• Romania, Chile, and Finland are home to the best video game players.
• The Philippines, Greece, and Brazil are home to the worst video game players.
• Chile and Denmark are home to the best female gamers.
• Germany claims first place for 3 of the top 15 most completed video games.
• Third-person and first-person video games are the most popular globally.
• Donkey Kong ranks as the top game in three countries.
• Third-person games rank as the top genre in six countries.

Ranking the World’s Gaming Powerhouses

For most video games with online play, you get matched with people who live in the same country or region as you. If you travel to another part of the world, however, you may notice a difference in the level of play you encounter in a new server.

Perhaps one of the toughest gaming servers to compete in is in Romania, as the country ranks first for the best video game players in the world. When viewing game completion data among users, we found Romanian residents have the highest average with nearly 10 completions per gamer (9.62).

Up next for top gaming powerhouses is Chile with a talent index of 79.66 out of 100. Following closely behind Romania with completions, the average Chile native has finished about 9 games (8.5). One trend we discovered in our analysis is the presence of high skill in low population areas. We see this in our third-place country, Finland, with a population of about 5.6 million, making it one of the smaller countries in this study.

In fourth place is an even smaller country by population (5.3 million), New Zealand, with a talent index of 78.51 out of 100. As part of our ranking, we looked at average completion time among residents in each country and found that New Zealanders’ completion times are about 10% faster than average.

On the other side of the spectrum, it was the Philippines who ranked for the worst gamers overall. Despite having one of the highest percentages of gamers in the country, those who play video games in the Philippines tend to be slower when completing a game. When analyzing average speed, the Philippines ranked as the second slowest, behind Greece, which is up next as the second worst gamers in the world. Although the average gamer in Greece has completed about 7 games, their speed in which they finish games is the slowest overall.

Game by Game: Top Countries by Performance

After learning which countries are home to the best gamers, we wanted to learn more about the games being played and where the top players are for each. To do this, we first calculated which games had the highest count of completions, then ranked the top three countries at each game based on player data.

Up first as the top game worldwide is Castlevania, a gothic-horror action-adventure game. Players of the game are tasked with navigating as a vampire hunter and battling hordes of monsters. Topping the rankings as the best Castlevania players are Germany residents, followed by the United Kingdom in second place and the United States in third place.

Coming in second for top games is Resident Evil, another horror game, but this one has the goal of surviving in environments inhabited by zombies and other mutated creatures. Leading the way as the best players is Australia, followed by the United States and Brazil.

In third place for most completed games is BioShock Infinite, a first-person shooter game which begins with a man traveling to the floating city of Columbia in 1912 to rescue a woman in order to clear his gambling debts. Despite being the first game on our list developed in America, Chile residents rank first as the best at the game. This is followed by Spain and the United States in second and third place, respectively.

Overall, we found that third-person and first-person video games are the most popular globally. When looking at the game each country is best at, we found Donkey Kong to be the most common as it claimed the top spot in three countries including Brazil, Mexico, and Spain. Other popular games include Portal which ranked first in Finland and Turkey. Similarly, Prince of Persia also claimed the top spot in two countries: Russia and Switzerland.

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Methodology

In January 2026, we analyzed gameplay data from HowLongToBeat.com to understand the skills of 59,379 gamers living in 129 different countries. Our analysis included data from 6,904 unique games across 107 gaming genres.

To establish gaming talent, we calculated a Talent Index, which combines each user's speed scores and volume scores. Speed scores are based on how fast players complete given games compared to global averages for that, and volume scores are based on the average number of completions a user's profile records.