Behind the mic: the vocabulary of the Gamers8 CSGO official broadcast

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Earlier this month with the help of our analysts, we studied the Twitch chat for the official broadcast of the Gamers8 2023 CS:GO event and illuminated the trends of this chat for our readers. Statistics are always best enjoyed contextually and with something to compare them to, so now, we’ve analysed the audio of the main broadcasts for our readers.

In our article looking at the Twitch chat trends, it was clear how important memes are to the popularity of certain terms. Jame, the AWPer for Virtus.pro, was the most-mentioned player of the entire event, mentioned almost doubly more than s1mple, NiKo, and ZywOo. Of course, as any CS:GO fan could guess, this is directly a result of the “Jame Time” meme: referring to the time spent by players saving their weapons. 

What is most interesting in comparing the Twitch chat to the audio of the official broadcasts, is that professional casters in esports can obviously dip their toes into meme culture, but have to remain professional and not approach the event as a casual Twitch chatter would. Throughout this text, we will be focusing on how the casters for the broadcast differed from Twitch chat.

Popularity of teams by mentions

In terms of the most-mentioned teams of the event, the broadcasters’ mentions showed some key differences from the Twitch chat. However, one way they did not differ was the most-mentioned team of the entire event. 

G2 Esports remained the most popular team by mentions from the audio of the broadcast, just as they were in our Twitch chat analysis. The broadcasting team for Gamers8 mentioned G2 Esports by name over 960 times. G2 Esports’ match against Team Vitality was one of the most popular matches of the entire event, as fans of G2 watched in horror as they choked against Team Vitality, who orchestrated a masterful comeback.

The most popular match of the entire event by peak concurrent viewers was the Grand Final match between ENCE and Team Vitality, but interestingly, ENCE ranked just barely within the top 5 most-mentioned teams of the event; a severe drop when considering they were the second-most-mentioned team in Twitch chat. In terms of Hours Watched for the entire event, ENCE received 3M hours of viewership through the event and was the third most-watched team for the Gamers8 event. Despite this high viewership and their many matches, ENCE was underrepresented by the broadcasting team and was only mentioned 531 times.

Speaking of teams who competed in the Grand Finals, Team Vitality were the second-most-mentioned team by the casters. Although it may seem like a given for the team that competed for the longest amount of time throughout the event to be one of the most popular teams, this wasn’t true for ENCE and it wasn’t true for Team Vitality in the Twitch chat. In Twitch chat, Vitality was the sixth-most-mentioned team, ranking behind Virtus.pro and NAVI: both of whom did not make it to the semifinals. Vitality was much more suitably represented than ENCE by the broadcasting team for Gamers8.

There are some more examples of teams’ popularity in mentions by casters not seeming to align with their performance throughout the event, two of which are GamerLegion and Virtus.pro; both of these teams finished 5th-8th in the event. Virtus.pro was the fourth-most-mentioned team by the casters, ranking ahead of ENCE and far ahead of teams like NAVI and Cloud9, despite them also finishing 5th-8th. Virtus.pro was mentioned almost 200 times more than NAVI and Cloud9 throughout the event. Virtus.pro is a legendary name in Counter-Strike, so casters may have been more inclined to talk about them, but it would be hard to argue that NAVI and Cloud9 also aren’t famous brands within CS:GO. 

Although Virtus.pro seemed slightly overrepresented by casters, GamerLegion suffered from the exact opposite problem. GamerLegion also finished 5th-8th at Gamers8 and finished second at the most recent CS:GO major, bringing their name into the vocabulary of your average CS:GO fan. Despite these achievements, GamerLegion were mentioned only 131 times, 22% of the mentions that Virtus.pro received. GamerLegion was even mentioned far less than Team Falcons, FURIA, and Fnatic, despite playing an entire match more than all of these teams. GamerLegion was mentioned only 26 times on average per map played, whereas Heroic was mentioned 94 times on average per map played.

Popularity of players by mentions

Even when looking at the most popular players of the event, G2 Esports reigned supreme. The two cousins NiKo and huNter- were the two most-mentioned players from the official broadcast. G2 Esports’ popularity extends even further, as they were the only team to have more than 2 of their roster rank within the top 10 most-mentioned players of the event. All 5 players of the G2 roster ranked within the top 10 here.

S1mple remains hugely popular within CS:GO, not just in Twitch chat but also with the event’s casters themselves. Despite NAVI’s exit during the quarterfinals, s1mple was the third-most-mentioned player by the official broadcast for the event. S1mple was the only NAVI player to rank so highly, proof of his personal popularity. 

FlameZ and ZywOo were the two Team Vitality representatives within this ranking. FlameZ was surprisingly mentioned more often than ZywOo, who is highly regarded within the professional scene as one of the best players in the world, earning  the title of “Best Player of the Year” from HLTV in 2019 and 2020. Besides G2, Team Vitality was the only other team to have more than one of their players ranked within the top 10 by most mentions.

The power of the meme was too powerful for the casters to even ignore; Jame was one of the most-mentioned players by them during the entire event. Of course, Jame’s personal performance at the event was a key factor in his mentions, and AWPers are generally mentioned more due to the probability of them receiving the opening kill of a round, but his mentions were surely boosted by the “Jame Time” memes. 

With Jame also ranking highly, Virtus.pro was another team represented in these metrics, accompanied by Heroic and Cloud9, who also had one player present in this chart. Once again, ENCE remains underrepresented in the official broadcast audio. ENCE was the only team that finished in the top four of the event not to have a single player mentioned enough to rank within the top 10, and GamerLegion was the only other team within the top 8 to experience the same fate. 

HooXi and dycha were the only two players to be among the top 10 most popular players in the Gamers8 Twitch chat who were not present in the broadcast audio rankings. CadiaN and HObbit were the two fresh faces on this list that weren’t present in the Twitch chat rankings.

Top words of the Gamers8 event

We also analysed an entire transcript of the Gamers8 official broadcast, looking for keywords and the most-mentioned words for the event. Throughout the almost 55 hours of broadcasting the Gamers8 official channel was live, these were some of the most-used words. 

The AWP was the most-mentioned weapon of the event by far. Likely due to the opening pick and clutch potential of the weapon, casters kept note of when a player was utilising the big green gun. The Deagle was also popular but paled in comparison to the AWP. Of all utilities, smoke was the most popular and mentioned over 722 times, far more popular than the flash (243 mentions) and the molotov (148 times).

Cologne, known fondly as the Cathedral of Counter-Strike, was one of the only other third-party events to be mentioned during the Gamers8 broadcast. IEM Cologne 2023 wrapped up just earlier in the month when Gamers8 was taking place, so the event was likely fresh on the talent’s minds. Cologne was mentioned far more than “HONOR”, the most-mentioned sponsor of the event.

HONOR, a Chinese smartphone brand, was mentioned over 70 times, much more than any other sponsor of the Gamers8 event. LG Electronics and Hilton were two of the other sponsors at the event to receive a namedrop live on-air, but LG was mentioned only 14 times, and Hilton 7 times. Interestingly, besides LG Electronics and HONOR, no other main partner for the event was detected in our analysis. 

Something for the Counter-Strike fans, Mirage was the most-mentioned map of the entire event. Mirage is a hugely popular and iconic Counter-Strike map, to the point where it may overtake Dust 2 in recognisability. It was mentioned roughly 50 times more than both Nuke and Vertigo and over a hundred times more than Inferno. Breaking away from old-school Counter-Strike tradition, the broadcasting team at Gamers8 much preferred the word “kill” over “frag”. “Frag” was only mentioned 251 times throughout the event, and it’s likely a large chunk of these mentions are coming from the term “frag grenade”. 

Finally, to top off our top words for the event, “subscribe” was mentioned over 284 times throughout the main Twitch broadcast. Casters had Prime on their mind as they mentioned the word subscribe to their large Twitch audience. 

If you’re curious about how Twitch chat reacted to the Gamers8 CS:GO event, our analysis of the chat trends and most popular teams and players is already ready for you, and to be found here.