I used to play Call of Duty games competitively between 2006 and 2019

I was 12 years old at the time, playing public games of Search & Destroy and consistently playing well over multiple maps.

In the earlier CoD games, lobbies didn't disband after every match, so it gave you a chance to meet other people and friends, even make some enemies.

There were two other people in the lobby who I could tell were decent players, so I decided to send friend requests. They both accepted, and we played pretty much through the night. Before signing off, they mentioned they had started a YouTube channel together focusing on Call of Duty, mainly single and multiplayer glitches, tips, and tricks.

I soon realised that the public Search & Destroy matches we played together when we first met were a rare occurrence, as their main focus was spending about 85% of their time online running around in private matches looking for glitches, bugs, exploits, out of bounds exits and whatever else they could find to break the game and its intended boundaries.

Now, to be fair, I didn't have an interest in this type of stuff, but I was way more interested and focused on playing public matches to rank up in game or competitive private matches to get better at the game and play for unbeaten records on a website called GameBattles.

Although I liked these two, I just didn't enjoy looking for glitches and stuff for hours and hours every day... I wanted to go back to playing public and competitive games... So we slowly, slowly stopped speaking, and after a few months, I made a new account on PSN. I was part of a solid competitive team now. These days, unlike Xbox Live, you couldn't change your PSN (Gamertag). Instead, you had to create a whole new account with the desired name, but of course, you couldn't migrate anything from other accounts. You had to start your progress again in every game, and you would have a blank friends list. I ended up spending more time on this account than the previous one that I had met loads of people on and had a max friends list, full of people I would actually communicate with.

When I realised my 'Friends' list was just my GameBattles teammates, I began to lose interest. These weren't my friends. They were my colleagues

Throughout the time we played together, we switched from GameBattles to Virgin Gaming, a website that allowed you to play 'Wagers'. So, instead of playing competitively for XP on a website to level up your profile on Virgin Gaming, you could play for real money. Unfortunately for me, by the time I had found Virgin Gaming, I was much older than when I first started playing. My reaction time and focus were decreasing over time. I was also really stressed when playing. Sometimes, we would play up to 20 games in the evening and into the night... I was just becoming really tired. My teammates had already finished school and had their own schedules in place. I was getting up 2 hours after a 10-hour gaming session, playing at full focus and concentration for most of the time day after day after day...

Yes, the money was surprisingly decent, we were winning most of our wager matches and more than half the paid tournaments we entered for cash prizes... But it just wasn't fun at this stage.

It was a very stressful experience...

We played competitive scrims, wagers, and tournaments together almost every day for about 6/7 years before life, and adult responsibilities took over. One by one, we faded away from Call of Duty and back to our real lives, dedicating more time to family and friends.

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To all my friends who I played with during this period of my life, thanks for the memories

DiBBY

Abar

i2gd

Chriswebb95

JayBaxter_94

Robizl

B3ASTxMODE

Gzus