Yesterday’s topic: Markiplier and Game Grumps Channel Word Profiles
We ended off yesterday’s post about the Markiplier and Game Grumps comparison with a few open ends and some floating hypotheses.
We made comparisons between Markiplier’s channel and the Game Grump’s channel as wholes though the structures are fairly different from one another. Markiplier’s episodes are a mixed bag of solo-plays, compilations, cooperative multiplayer playthroughs and competitive multiplayer playthroughs. The Game Grumps videos have a different case depending on which brand you’re viewing (Game Grumps, Steam Train, etc…) and also are mixed between single player, co-op multiplayer and competitive multiplayer. This shifts the balance of words used a bit because the context for vocabulary will be different.
This analysis was supposed to be about a person’s/people’s Word Profile which is affected by the setting and context in which words are uttered. Because the contexts aren’t fixed between our comparisons from yesterday, the best we are able to presume are great generalities of a person’s Word Profile.
With respect to yesterday (Figure 1), these were things like the Game Grumps proclivity towards words like “Fucker” and “Bullshit” and Markiplier’s proclivity to “Douche” and “Bastard” (see above), or the higher frequency of laughter among Markiplier videos are both very distinct characteristics about the two channels.
We also left open the possibility that use of terms like “I” vs “you” could be defining characteristic between co-op let’s plays vs solo let’s plays, notably the higher frequency of “I”:”you” in Markiplier’s videos vs the Game Grumps.
“Yes-and” improve training was definitely something to look out for, but also “yeah”s from acknowledgement during conversations were a trend that we noticed in the last post, though no real reason to explain this.
So to make this a more fair comparison, we’re going to put some more limitations to our focus. For the Game Grumps channel, we’re only analyzing episodes by Game Grumps and not Game Grumps Vs, Steam Train or any other subsidiary. For Markiplier, we’re going to only focus on Drunk Minecraft episodes since they are always multiplayer and typically non-competitive.
You and me make three is a pretty good insult to one of us.
There seems to be a consistently high use of the “I”:”you” (first-second ratio) in Markplier still (Figure 2). Almost double. So the original hypothesis of higher “I”:”you” to prove solo vs coop isn’t a good metric at all. I verified that this is just a constant in a Markiplier episode by picking a series that’s predominantly not co-op, Amnesia.
The almost double “I”:”you” ratio is found in both series, Drunk Minecraft and Amnesia (Figure 3). The Amnesia episodes you can say have false positives because Mark is also reading the in-game script and that is something to verify in the future.
But the “I”:”you” ratio difference could also be a metric of commenting style in their playthroughs. Mark + gang will tend to describe everything happening to them with each other or make general commentary about how they are feeling at particular points within the game. The Grumps have a more storytelling style about them, one that doesn’t require the use of “I” as often because they aren’t always talking about themselves though they are definitely a part of the story.
Hypothesis: “I”:”you” ratio predicting solo vs coop Let’s Plays (False)
Hypothesis: “I”:”you” ratio predicting commenting style (Plausible)
Yeah, like, you know… whatever.
The Sentiment between the Grumps and Markiplier resemble each other a bit more now that we’re only looking at co-op playthroughs. “Yeah, like when” is something you should be accustomed to on a Game Grumps playthrough, and looky here some of those words are actually pretty pronounced in usage. Drunk Minecraft’s Profile is actually fairly similar now. It’s only when you get past the first 4 words is when more distinguishing words between the two factions are useful for divisiveness.
For Drunk Minecraft, however, the frequency of “yeah” and “like” are a bit lower than the Game Grumps, which might be evidence towards the type of commenting styles that the two channels engage in.
Funny enough, comparing The Game Grumps channel (Figure 5) vs The Game Grumps proper (Figure 4), you actually don’t see “like” in the channel graph, meaning that “yeah, like when” and other phrases like this aren’t a part of the Game Grumps channel as a whole. Someone hasn’t been taking there improve training seriously, yet.
Hypothesis: “yeah”, “like” frequency increase in multiplayer Let’s Players vs solo (+1)
Hypothesis: “yeah”, “like” frequency increase due to improve training (Plausible)
Hypothesis: “yeah”, “like” frequency increase due to commentary style (Plausible)
Cleaning up your act
Similar to when we compared the channels, the same favorite terms keep popping up between the two channels (Figure 6). “Fucker” and “Bullshit” for the Grumps and Markiplier’s “Douche” all retain similar ranking in their usage. The only real word that’s missing from this list is Markiplier’s use of the word “Bastard”
Mark does pick the word back in the Amnesia playthroughs (seen above) making it a great candidate for word to signal Mark in a Solo Let’s Play vs his other Co-op Let’s Plays (Figure 7).
“Liar” also seems to be a word that Mark is attached to and one that the Grumps don’t typically use at all (Figure 6), but not really much in his Amnesia playthroughs (Figure 7). Maybe this can be used to find his Co-op Let’s Plays as well.
Here are the use of negative Sentimenal words for those interested (Figure 8). The only thing worth noting is that the Grumps like to use harsher language than Markiplier (signified by the darker shade of red). Nothing new, just a +1 for aggressive language to the Grumps.
And the laughter is still significantly higher for Drunk Minecraft episodes, but they are drunk. They’d laugh at a lot of stuff when drunk and the general goofiness of Mark’s group will definitely get a giggle-fest started.
Probably enough of a comparison for now. Will revisit this in the future if there are more questions/hypotheses that I want to test.
Other YouTube Words Posts
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