19 More Game of Thrones Data Visualizations
By: Jeffrey Lancaster
Tags: Data Visualization, Data, HBO, Game of Thrones, D3js

Wordcount

After having a play with extracting data from streaming shows for a different series, I became curious about what else could be done using closed caption (.srt) data. At the time, some text scripts for Game of Thrones could be found online (at sites like genius.com and Springfield! Springfield!) and you could download .srt files (at sites like subscene.com), but there were gaps in each. Text scripts were missing entire episodes (and on review were often flawed) and .srt files don’t include the name of the person who is saying whatever is being said.

So I made a new dataset. This dataset:

is in JSON so it’s easier to work with (as opposed to plaintext .srt files)

includes speaker names

includes language spoken and a translation for any non-English lines (more on that below)

includes lines how they would be spoken as prose instead of broken up by screen capacity (how they are in closed captions)

doesn’t include sounds (e.g. chains clanking ) like in hearing impaired subtitles (HI)

) like in hearing impaired subtitles (HI) will (in the future) include timestamps

So a basic entry looks like this:

...

}, {

"text": "I've never seen Wildlings do a thing like this. I've never seen a thing like this, not ever in my life.",

"name": "Will"

}, {

...

I rewatched the series again to cross-check the text and speakers, and used this new dataset (not currently shared online) to ask some new questions.

How many words does each character speak?

Is it any surprise that Tyrion says about 9,000 more words than any other character in the show? And that Cersei is quite wordy as well?

We can also take the same data sliced by season, so here’s the wordcount for Season 1; Tyrion’s a talker, that’s for sure, but did you realize Ned says only about 400 fewer words?

Language

Along with just counting the words, the dataset also includes the words spoken in the original language and a translation. Sites like wiki.dothraki.org and other online forums were essential to including accurate words and translations (I do not speak High Valyrian or Dothraki, or any of the other languages of the show).

Here’s an example of what this looks like in the dataset:

}, {

"lang": "Dothraki",

"text": "Me zisosh, zhey jalan atthirari anni.",

"translation": "A scratch, moon of my life.",

"name": "Khal Drogo"

}, {

What’s the language breakdown of what each character says?

Perhaps not surprisingly, there are only a few multi-lingual characters, including Daenerys (who speaks the Common Tongue, Dothraki, and High Valyrian and even says some words in Astapori Valyrian) and Missandei (who speaks the Common Tongue, Dothraki, and various dialects of Valyrian, including High, Astapori, and Meereenese). But you might also remember Tyrion misspeaking High Valyrian (17 words) or Melisandre introducing herself to Daenerys in High Valyrian (130 words). My favorite insight from this breakdown might be the three words spoken by Wun Wun in Old Tongue (it’s toward the bottom).

If you view this one on its own, it may take a second to load since it’s crunching the data on the fly.

What’s the language breakdown per episode?

In addition to looking at what each character says, we can also look at the language distribution per episode. Here you can see how languages map to particular periods in the show: there’s more Dothraki throughout Season 1, more Valyrian (and variants) around Seasons 3 and 4, and a mix early in Season 6.

By Gender

I also realized that I had made a few pre-processed files to make it easier to build the narrative chart; I could use files like characters-gender.json to see how male or how female Game of Thrones is.

What’s the gender balance of each season?

The visualization below charts how male-dominated and how female-dominated scenes are throughout the show. It will come as no surprise that time spent on screen throughout each season is skewed heavily toward more men (or all men) in scenes.

What’s the gender balance of each episode?

Same conclusion here: more time is spent with more men on-screen than women. But it’s interesting to see the trend of increasingly female time on-screen through the end Season 5.

And for good measure, here’s that same data as percentages of each episode to account for longer/shorter episodes.

What’s the gender balance of words spoken?

Unlike time spent onscreen, usually there’s only one person speaking at a time throughout Game of Thrones, so how does the number of words spoken by men compare to the number spoken by women?

Based on these counts, the total number of words per season is on a steady decline; maybe that’s due to more time spent in action scenes (and a shorter Season 7)? Still, the number of words spoken by women per season has increased slightly while the number spoken by men has decreased dramatically.

Let’s look at that same data by episode.

Although no episode is close to parity, some are certainly more askew than others.

And for completeness, let’s look at that same data as percentages. There’s a general trend toward parity in the number of words spoken, but still only maybe 60/40 in favor of male speakers.

By House

Another pre-processed file I realized I hadn’t quite leveraged yet was characters-groups.json (generalized from characters-houses.json ). Although some groups have more members than others, we can still look at when each group has been shown on-screen, how long each has been shown over the course of the show, and how many words each group has collectively spoken.

When are group members on screen?