The voice chats in online multiplayer games are notoriously toxic with swearing and insults being incredibly commonplace. A new study examined what gaming communities, consoles and streamers have the most offensive language.
To perform the study, a team at Buzz Bingo sampled 100 Twitch and YouTube Gaming streams, analyzing over 25 hours of content and calculating the average number of curse words spoken. The researchers found that players of Ubisoft's Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Siege had the highest mean score; swearing occurred on average 146 times per every 15 minutes, which is "a whopping 584 swear words per hour or 1 expletive every 7 seconds."
FIFA 21 came in second with an average of 138 curse words per every 15 minutes, Call of Duty: Warzone in third with a mean of 121 expletives and Halo: The Master Chief Collection in fourth with an average of 109 swears. Grand Theft Auto V and Counter Strike tied for fifth with mean scores of 107 expletives. League of Legends, despite its reputation of having one of the most toxic online communities, had less than half the average number of swears than Rainbow Six Siege, scoring a mean of 69. Other games that made the top 15 list include Apex Legends, Fornite, Dark Souls 3 and Resident Evil Village.
The researchers also explored consoles and popular streamers. Comparing PC, Xbox and PlayStation consoles, they found PC gamers tend to curse the most. However, all types average a rate of over 300 swears per hour, which roughly "translates to one expletive every 10 seconds!" In terms of individual streamers, the researchers focused on those "with a large online following" and "discovered who just cannot stop cussing." Félix Lengyel -- better known as xQc -- cursed the most out of the study's sample (a full list of the sampled streamers was not provided in Buzz Bingo's write-up of the research). He averaged 77 expletives per every 15 minutes, which comes out to be 308 swears per hour or one curse word approximately every 12 seconds, earning him the title of "most 'sweary streamer.'"
The researchers also determined which streamer in their sample swears the least, and surprisingly, it was PewDiePie (i.e., Felix Arvid Ulf Kjellberg). The leader of the Bro Army's mean rate of expletives was 12 for every 15 minutes, making him the "cleanest gaming streamer."
Buzz Bingo's analysis of swearing in online multiplayer games joins a recent wave of mainstream video game research that also includes an exploration of diversity in video games and an examination of the overlap between avatar selection and gamers' genders.
Rainbow Six Siege is available to play on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S. Fans can follow xQc and PewDiePie and watch their live streams on YouTube and Twitch.
Source: Buzz Bingo