Esports Charts has analyzed the Twitch chat of the Gamers8 2023 CS:GO main broadcast. It turned out that Team Vitality, the champion of the event, didn't even make it into the Top 5 most discussed teams on Twitch. Russian player Jame from Virtus.pro became the most mentioned player, all thanks to a popular meme with him. Additionally, viewers of Gamers8 engaged in a lot of conversation during the broadcast and even came up with a viral joke about one of the main sponsors.
Popularity of teams and players
The most mentioned team during Gamers8 2023 CS:GO was G2 Esports, its name was written over 9.8K times in the chat of the official English-language broadcast. This is almost as many as the two teams following it (ENCE and Virtus.pro) combined.
The popularity of G2 is explained by the high meme potential of the team and its players, who viewers enjoy teasing. G2 Esports itself has provided plenty of reasons for this. For example, in the semifinal match against Team Vitality, it was just one step away from victory on the decisive map but lost several crucial rounds in a row: ultimately, Team Vitality took the game to overtime and eliminated G2 Esports from the tournament. Undoubtedly, it was one of the most dramatic matches of the tournament. Interestingly, Team Vitality only ranked sixth in terms of mentions in the chat among all participants, even though they ultimately became the tournament champions.
If we look at the number of mentions in dynamics, we can note that the peak of discussion for G2 Esports was reached during the match against Team Vitality. ENCE, on the other hand, received the most attention on the final day of the tournament when the team made it to the Grand Final and even took the lead in the decisive series.
Natus Vincere, Heroic, Cloud9, FaZe Clan, 9INE, and FURIA Esports are also included in the Top 10 most mentioned teams of the event. It is worth noting that apart from the usual team names, viewers often use their distorted variations or even memes. For example, Clown9, ez4ence, and so on. These kinds of names sometimes enjoy even greater popularity than the classic ones. They are often used in copypastas that spam chats.
It can be said that the overall number of mentions of a team in the chat is hardly connected to its ranking in the tournament. Its media presence, the presence of specific local memes, funny nicknames, etc., plays a much larger role. If a team has a distinct individuality, it always grabs the attention of viewers, whereas a high result is not always a topic of discussion in a chat.
The most mentioned player during the tournament was Jame, Virtus.pro's sniper — his nickname in the official broadcast chat was mentioned over 5.1K times. This is almost twice as many as his closest competitor (s1mple). Jame's popularity is directly related to the "Jame Time" meme, which has become a household name and is used not only in VP matches. The meme signifies cautious gameplay when it is necessary to save weapons in a lost round. It is Jame's distinctive playing style that has led to the emergance of this meme.
S1mple, NiKo, and Hooxi, who have accumulated approximately the same number of mentions in the chat. Just like with the team names, viewers often misspell the players' nicknames depending on the context. For example, when counting mentions of s1mple, we also took into account variations like s0mple – how fans refer to the Ukrainian sniper during unsuccessful moments in the game. A similar situation occurs with the nickname ZywOo, as viewers refer to him as 'Zywho' when he makes misplays.
All players from the G2 Esports roster made it into the Top 10 most mentioned players of the tournament, once again highlighting the popularity of the team.
Chat mood
Viewers not only discuss teams or players, but also share their emotions from what they see on the stream. Most often, viewers use special emotes for this. During the Gamers8 broadcast, the DinoDance — the first free animated emote on Twitch — gained particular popularity among fans. It doesn't have a specific meaning, so DinoDance was spammed for any reason. In total, we counted over 46.2K of these emotes.
With a significant gap from the leader, the emotes KEKW, LUL, and Pog follow. These are classic emotes on esports broadcasts, typically used to express pleasant surprise, joy, or laughter. They can be classified as emotes with a generally positive connotation, and they are most often sent when something funny or impressive happens on the screen.
ResidentSleeper, NotLikeThis, and WutFace are also included in the Top 10 most popular emotes. They, in turn, have predominantly negative connotations: ResidentSleeper is posted when viewers are bored, while NotLikeThis and WutFace simultaneously express surprise and disappointment.
There is also a telephone receiver among the popular emotes of Gamers8 broadcasts. This is a rather situational emote that can be used in a variety of contexts. For example, when a team starts losing badly, viewers suggest that they "call the airport and plan their return home." The same logic applies to "making a call for a comeback" or "calling a specific player to finally start playing properly."
Speaking about the dynamics of emotes, one can see a sharp spike in the general chart for "ResidentSleeper" on the last day of the game because of the prolonged start of the match caused by technical issues, which simply bored the viewers during the stream. The peaks of the "KEKW" and "Pog" emotes at the end of the fourth day show how the viewers reacted to the elimination of G2 Esports in the semifinals when the team was just one step away from victory over Team Vitality. The previous day, there was an increase in popularity of the "KEKW" and "LUL" emotes, which coincided with the final match of the day between Natus Vincere and Team Vitality.
Overall, it can be noted that the number of positive emotes outweighs the emotes with a negative tone. In other words, the viewers are more willing to react to any positive or amusing events happening on the screen. Negative emotions occur much less frequently. This is also related to the fact that at the top professional level, players rarely show poor performance or genuinely disappointing gameplay.
Gaming slang and interesting facts
Typically, the chat during esports broadcasts consists of a standard set of descriptive words or slang expressions. For example: nt (nice try), win, bot, vac, save, awp, throw, etc. However, during the tournament in Saudi Arabia, we found several atypical popular phrases.
Discussion of sponsors
In the Gamers8 chat, the combination of words "Sulaiman + Habib" was mentioned over 3K times, even more frequently than the names of tournament participants like Magisk or Aleskib. The reason for this is that one of the sponsors of the CS:GO tournament was the clinic of Dr. Sulaiman Al Habib. The presence of such an unusual sponsor for esports tournaments immediately became a meme within the community. Viewers in the chat literally asked Dr. Sulaiman Al Habib to "bring the pills" to their favorite team so that they would finally start winning. In another situation, fans jokingly suggested that players who made major mistakes in matches or missed their targets should seek help from a doctor. In this same context, there were also numerous mentions of the word "ambulance," which is not typically found in the chat of an esports tournament. Speaking of other tournament sponsors, viewers also frequently mentioned the fast food restaurant chain KFC.
Politics topic
During the Gamers8 broadcast, viewers also did not ignore politics. The countries Israel & Palestine were mentioned by them in the chat more than 370 times — that's quite a lot, especially considering the fact that they hardly wrote about other countries at all. Obviously, fans used them in the context of jokes during Team Vitality & ENCE matches, in which players from Israel are playing. For reference, there were no players from Palestine at the tournament.
Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince
Another unusual mention in the chat was the name of Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud, the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia. They wrote about him more than 200 times, obviously in the context of the tournament taking place in Riyadh. The words "oil" and "Saudi Arabia" also showed abnormal popularity, they were frequently written in the chat, noting the location of the tournament.
Player nicknames
Tournament viewers often wrote in the chat about the participants, using their nicknames. For example, the Russian player m0nesy, playing for G2 Esports, was referred to as "600K". This is because m0nesy admitted in one of the interviews that G2 paid Natus Vincere that amount to buy out his contract. Since then, the player is often jokingly called 600K, either to praise his good game or blame him for mistakes made. A similar situation occurs with apEX, the captain of Team Vitality. He often finds himself in bizarre situations during the game, which is why fans have long given him the nickname botpEX. This nickname is especially used when the French player makes mistakes during a match. Similar derogatory nicknames are not only applied to players but also to teams. For example, the collective Fnatic was referred to as botnatic by viewers due to their unsuccessful performance.
Discussion of other games
During the Gamers8 2023 stream, there was active discussion about CSGO and CS2 in the chat — both games received approximately the same number of mentions (although CS2 was slightly ahead). Interestingly, apart from Valve's shooter, viewers of the stream also discussed Valorant, the main competitor of Counter-Strike in the genre. These games are often compared to each other, so this coexistence is not surprising.
Positive and negative reactions of viewers
Using chat analysis, we have gathered data on the positive and negative reactions of the viewers. Without going into detail, during the broadcast, words with a positive undertone, such as nice, good, god, win, like, etc., were much more common. At the same time, there were also words with a negative undertone, such as bot, bad, lose, shit, ban, choking, throwing, etc.
In addition to the CS:GO tournament, the Gamers8 festival also hosted competitions for Dota 2, Rocket League, StarCraft II, Rainbow Six Siege, and other esports disciplines. You can find the viewer statistics for these events here.
