For about ten years, players from around the world have been gathering on the web to challenge each other or to watch their favorite streamers live on Twitch, Facebook, or YouTube. Between multiplayer challenges and live streams, the realm of video games is revolutionizing the language of the new generations.
Since the beginning of the pandemic and with the various lockdowns the world has experienced, the gaming universe, and Twitch in particular, have seen a dramatic increase in views and new subscribers, up by 78.5% compared to 2019, reaching 24.8 million users in 2020. This is why Babbel, the world’s leading language learning application, created the infographic “Streaming Generation: Do you speak ‘gaming’?”, presenting the growing rise of video games in recent years and the use of new expressions and terms that have become commonplace.
The Gaming Stats: Hard to Believe!
In 7 years, the number of streaming enthusiasts has quadrupled: while YouTube Gaming has seen the hours of content watched double (6.19 billion) and Facebook Gaming triple (3.1 billion), Twitch is undoubtedly the most used online platform, with 140 million subscribers and more than 5,436 million hours watched in 2020.
The gaming world has developed a very specific coded language, which is now commonly used among the young generation: there are international terms like AFK (Away From Keyboard) and GG (Good Game), as well as French expressions such as Amha (à mon humble avis, in my humble opinion) and MJ (Maître du jeu, Game Master). Lastly, French, used by 4% of Twitch users, is the 6th language, while English (57%) and Spanish (9.5%) are the most used languages.
