Across the Atlantic – game communication on NA vs EU servers

I travel overseas quite often, and my trustworthy gaming laptop allows me to keep playing no matter where I travel. Since my go-to games are online multiplayer games, I get to experience playing games that require communication to win on servers across the Atlantic. I’ve noticed several differences on how people from North America and Europe utilize communication options. The differences are great enough to impact my win rates on multiple games, which makes an interesting topic for some non-scientific research.

Anyone who plays multiplayer games online knows how big of a role communication plays in winning. Games like Counter-Strike 2 and Overwatch 2 have built in text and voice chats, as well as communication wheels that can be used to make calls to your teammates. The options are the same on all servers, but from personal experience I’ve found that Europeans feel more inclined to use the communication wheel and text chats, whereas North Americans use voice chats more often.

In addition to text chats being used more in EU, their usage seems to be complaint heavy. When someone isn’t having a good game, they’ll often be subject to some pretty heavy-handed criticism. From personal experience, the criticism usually doesn’t help, but actually does the opposite. Sometimes players will take it too personally and resort to throwing, which means that the player deliberately tries to lose. When the game is over, the criticism doesn’t end there; both NA and EU players love to partake in post-match arguments in the text chat.

 

One obvious difference is the variety of languages used in text chats. With English being the most common language in North America, it is easy to understand everything that is typed, thus resulting in less miscommunication in the chat. Perhaps this is the reason why NA text chat seems to be used in a more strategizing manner than EU; the players can expect everyone to understand what they are typing in the chat. I would argue that most Northeastern Europeans know how common it is to see Russian in the game chat, and how equally common it is that players don’t switch to English so everyone could understand the insights they’re trying to provide. It can be frustrating when you don’t know the language being used, since you could be missing out on important game plans.

A lot of games have implemented communication wheels in them to make non-verbal communication easier, which is a great tool in regions where several languages are spoken. I am personally a fan of these due to their ease of use: in short, the player presses a button to open a menu of different communication options to make calls (i.e. planned strategies or actions, such as pinging enemy locations or initiating countdowns) instead of using the voice or text chats. Since the wheel’s language is based on the player’s game client, the calls are automatically translated to the preferred language of the player. This provides an incredibly flexible tool for communication, but how is it used in different servers?

The communication wheels are pretty easy to misuse, if the game doesn’t implement communication limits. In Overwatch 2 for example, the player can spam voice lines through the wheel freely while in the spawn room before the game starts. These voice lines can be loud (and annoying), but the developers understood this and implemented a limit when the game is in play; the options become restricted for a few seconds, if they’ve been used repeatedly in a short amount of time. In my experience it seems as though this spamming only really happens on European servers, but the wheel is mostly used in its intended way to make calls. North American players seem more controlled in how they use the wheel, which is sort of a con in my eyes – it feels like I’m the only person using the communication wheels when I play in NA. This could be due to the language aspect: players are aware that English is broadly spoken, thus resulting in the voice and text chats being more common.

Voice chat has been the most evenly used communication tool in my experience. While the wide arrangement of languages spoken in Europe results in hearing more than just English, a lot of players still use it in my games. However, it seems to be a common phenomenon that no one responds to my calls when I make them in English. Whether this is the result of bad luck and only playing with people who don’t speak English or something else, it has been quite a problem on European servers for me. On the contrary, I’ve been able to have a way better win rate on North American servers, since most players here speak fluent English. Not only am I winning more, but I’ve also been enjoying games on these servers more; people seem more inclined to have casual conversations in voice chat, along with strategizing and calling out enemy locations.

In conclusion, the communication tools provided by games make winning easier, as long as they’re used properly. There are some pretty big differences on how they are used in different servers, which has been interesting to notice during my travels. While I like how much Europeans use the communication wheel to win, it has been refreshing to talk in voice chat with North American gamers. I’ve learned to appreciate how different ways to communicate are implemented in online multiplayer games, since this allows all types of players to make calls. I encourage everyone to try to figure out their preferred way to communicate – it can really help to win games!

 

Photo credits

Cover image from Unsplash, retrieved on 8.1.2025. https://unsplash.com/photos/person-using-computer-playing-fps-game-EHLd2utEf68

Image of the Overwatch communication wheel, found on the Overwatch Fandom website on 8.1.2025, https://overwatch.fandom.com/wiki/Communication_wheel.

Screenshot from the League of Legends client, taken by Andrew O’Neal on 8.1.2025.

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