Finland has the “most skilled” gamers in the world according to research

Every country is great at something. The Chinese have military marching parades so impressive that you’d think twice about comparing their president to a certain Disney honey-loving icon, the Americans are currently number one in the world for Coronavirus infections (USA! USA! USA!) and nobody can beat us when it comes to government corruption. RSA! RSA! RSA!

What about video gaming though? Our local esports scene has quite a few talented players, such as the Southern Barbarians kicking ass on the Battlefield scene. According to a new report from data-focused mobile gaming publisher Kwalee (Thanks, LadBible) that researched the top-ranking achievements from more than 16,000 games to find the “most-skilled” players out there…we don’t even crack the top ten. Or top twenty. Heck we are literally not even on the map of this test and I’d just like to register a complaint right now.

Kwalee’s methodology for the test involved data from speedrun.com, where 42,000 recorded achievements on everything from game completion speed to overall high scores were tallied up. After all the numbers had been crunched, countries were ranked on how many achievements they’d scored and then divided up by population for fair scoring. Scoff. Scoff to the max.

Anyway, the one country that you should run away from when you recognise them in a lobby? None other, than Finland. You should definitely not play them in Mortal Kombat, lest they deliver a Finnish hymn to your face. HAW! Here’s the full top ten according to the research:

1. Finland
2. Canada
3. Sweden
4. New Zealand
5. Australia
6. USA
7. Netherlands
8. Scotland
9. Ireland
10. France

We’re never going to hear the end of this from the Fins, are we? According to Kwalee’s research into gaming genres, Scotland has the best driving game players on the planet, Norway is the best at sports games, Japan rules the fighting game roost and (surprise!) the United States of America is number one at first-person shooter games. That’ll do nothing to dispel stereotypes about those nations.

A flawed test that needs a lot more data to be more accurate? Possibly! But the whole thing does make for some interesting reading overall. Such as Israel having the best WWE 2K players, Latvia dominating at Grand Theft Auto and the Netherlands being unmatched in…Goat Simulator. What a strane world we live in.

Last Updated: April 23, 2020