(6 June 2025) When East & Partners asked CTOs, CIOs, and CDOs from tier one and two banks across APAC, the Americas, Europe, and the Nordics how much time they spend gaming each week, the results were… surprising and revealing.
We weren’t expecting deep behavioural insights, but the results tell a surprisingly human story.
Globally, only 21.5% of bank CTOs say they game. But those who do, average nearly 10 hours per week, that’s over an hour a day. And while that might sound high, it points to something important: in high-stakes, high-responsibility roles, healthy cognitive downtime matters.
And that downtime, and how it is spent differs significantly by region.
A Global Snapshot of CTOs’ Gaming Habits
- Nordics lead the charge with 12.7 hours/week – and over 1 in 4 CTOs here game
- Europe is close behind, both in participation (27.6%) and time spent (10.3 hours/week)
- Americas fall somewhere in the middle at 7.9 hours/week
- APAC trails, with just 13.3% gaming and an average of 6.1 hours/week
Why It’s Not Just Trivia.
While the sample may seem lighthearted, it hints at something deeper:
- Downtime and digital familiarity vary greatly between markets.
- European and Nordic CTOs may be more engaged with technology and simulation-based thinking – traits increasingly valuable as banks become more digitised and data-driven.
- Gaming, particularly on PC (used by 42.3% of gaming CTOs), reflects analytical skillsets that align closely with forecasting, scenario planning, world building, and decision-making, skills essential for modern banking.
As we and others have noted, technology roles within financial services are evolving fast: digitisation, automation, and the rise of AI demand not just technical knowledge but strategic agility and tech fluency. Could gaming be a small proxy for that fluency?
In a world of non-stop macro volatility, increasing regulation, and digitising treasury workflows, mental agility and decision-making endurance are critical. You can’t perform at your best in that environment without recovery.
Studies from Deloitte and the World Health Organization show that sustained cognitive performance depends on breaks – on time spent outside your domain to reset and recharge. Gaming (particularly the 42.3% of CTOs who prefer PC-based strategy and simulation games) may be a way to do just that:
- Gaming provides a controlled environment to explore complex decision-making
- It’s a modern form of decompression – especially in roles where conventional work-life balance is elusive, and the Nordics and Europeans are renowned for taking their work-life balance very seriously.
- It reflects comfort with digital interfaces and systems, the same skills today’s digital and technology teams need to lead enterprise-wide transformation.
The Takeaway.
Being a Chief Technology Officer at a tier one or two bank is serious business, but CTOs themselves are not monolithic. The next-gen leader is more likely than ever to engage with technology in ways that go beyond spreadsheets and dashboards.
If you’re building products, platforms, policies, or partnerships for the financial services industry – understanding the behaviours behind key stakeholder roles might just give you a competitive edge.
For leaders, it’s worth remembering:
Downtime isn’t laziness, it’s performance maintenance.
And sometimes, in the Nordics and Europe at least, that maintenance looks like 12 hours of gaming.
Methodology:
All insights generated from East & Partners direct interviews with 121 global Chief Technology Officers, Chief Digital Officers, Chief Technology Officers across tier one and two banks, and non-banks in May 2025.