Looking back and accepting change
2024-12-26
Call Of Duty has been a staple of my life.
I know, dumb to say. But i’ve played the entire catalog of that core group of developers (Zampella’s folks), from the first release (MOH:AA) through to when it broke up (post-Apex). I prided myself for many years on having played every single cod – though i refunded Infinite warfare, and i never played UO. For just over 20 years, cod was my main game.
It’s a strange thing to take pride in, but I was also one of the best in the world. In black ops 2 I was top 200, in 3 and Advanced Warfare I was top 50. Given how leaderboards often have cheaters on top (i would know, i wrote and run leaderboards for the biggest games in the world), it’s pretty likely that at my peak i was the best, arguable only by a dozen at most. I don’t know if i ever played Kim Dotcom (he peaked just before the movement shooter era), but our battle would have been legendary.
And, in one of those rare moments, I got to work with a few of the core group who left Respawn (Mackey and Jason). It wasn’t very closely, but being on calls and writing features for their pitches was something I took pride in. When i was a young teen, i learned how to code by reading scripts for MOHAA, and Mackey’s comments were all over those. In a weird way, their games are how i grew up. I know they don’t see it in those kinds of terms, but I do.
But why is the title so sad?
Whenever i was accused of cheating, I’d usually thank someone for the thought. It’s a rare honor to be so good as to be indistinguishable from someone with an unfair advantage (a bit like that old "magic is just science you don’t understand" line). And for many years, it wasn’t a question of "if" i’d be top of the scoreboard, but if i’d outscore one or both of the teams combined.
But, that hasn’t been the case for the last couple years. Sure, top of the scoreboard most games. But not like it used to be.
I’ve played every cod for 20 years. In 2024 i voluntarily skipped mw3. I also had a son, and bought a house, and my mid-30s are approaching and my abilities just aren’t able to be maintained at the level they once were. To put it bluntly, every man finds out that he peaked years after being on the decline. I’m just accepting that I have commitments, interests, and age that prevents me from being as good as i was in my 20s.
Doesn’t mean I have to "skip" every cod entry, but it does mean i’m being more selective. COD’s had a bit of a "cultural downturn". While it had a comeback with the MW reboot in 2020, it also started to show institutional corruption with a black unskippable "BLM" banner imposed on every game during the height of the rioting, looting, mob violence, and destruction in 2020¶.
But it didn’t stop COD from still being pretty great, Cold War might not have been as well received as MW, but its campaign had as many high points for me, and the trailer featuring Yuri Bezmenov seemed like a cry for help from inside the building. The gameplay was identical to MW, and i thought maybe things were alright. But of course, Vanguard. It was clear that something had rotted the series. It wasn’t long after that that we got Nikki Minaj in COD (footnote, i genuinely mistook her for Cardi B for like a year after this happened, i had to look it up now to confirm).
We went from Clean House, and Graves saying "i don’t make threats, i make guarantees" to… nikki minaj. People meme on Kevin Spacey "this is Advanced Warfare", but he at least played a good villain, and there was a meme out of it in the first place.
Ruining the fun
By being good at the game, I found myself just… ruining other people’s evenings. There was rarely any competition in a lobby, so 5-8 players on the opposing team would just get completely shit on for 10-15min and have their night sour because of me. It wasn’t a special event, it was rarely "close" or a good match, it was just punishment.
It might sound like this is exaggeration; it’s not. I’d be listening to music, or watching a movie on the side, or a podcast, and crushing every single game all night. In my teens I’d often be tinkering on projects in between rounds or lives. Topping the lobby didn’t even require conscious effort.
But to everyone who played against me, they could give their maximum for years and never come close. There was no approach they could take or trick they could learn that would’ve worked. In game design terms, this is a really bad situation, they’re being presented with a challenge that they could never beat. This feels bad, and is something that causes people to stop playing, or stop trying.
The path
(updated 2025-08 because this is relevant)
Nakey Jakey recently made a video about becoming serious about CS. In short, the video describes how he went from casually screwing around with friends, to being interested in improving, becoming frustrated that he wasn’t improving, feeling like a failure, blaming the game, then finally realizing that the problem was he was unfocused and emotional. He ends the video on a positive note; he’s become a much better player and improved his MMR because he is a better competitor.
For anyone who hasn’t reached these levels, the journey is not really of skill but of mindset. There’s a really noticeable cliff in most MMR systems; there’s a point where people cap out, where they don’t understand what the game is asking of them to improve. They hyperfocus on nuts and bolts mechanics and tricks, and never realize that what it truly requires is shedding their insecurity and sensitivity, and being able to focus in spite of ups and downs. The people that pass, tend to go high. The people that don’t, hardstuck gold, or plat, or whatever the equivalent is. Worse, some people never feel that compulsion to improve at all, and they cluster around the bottom ranks and quit.
This happened a lot in COD, I may have had good KDR, but you couldn’t be afraid of death in the game. Death still gave you information; you know who was where, and what they were using. With a couple deaths you’d understand their habits and spots, you’d see where they were weak or strong, how much of the game they understood. A couple deaths can be huge advantages. If you died in spawn, you’re going to spawn nearby and now have precise info on where a target is, you can wipe him out easily. If you get angry at dying, you miss this crucial information, and it will keep happening. If you get tilted and start blaming things for your deaths, you’re not just missing information, you’re willingly degrading your own abilities to satisfy your emotions.
By being an immovable obstacle, I wasn’t just ruining people’s nights, I was probably retarding their growth. It sounds dramatic, but how many people ragequit and decided that it wasn’t worth spending time on this game anymore, because of me? Over 20 years, the number isn’t zero. Sure, those people aren’t mentally fit to handle challenges, and they’d quit over something anyway. Dealing with an impossible task is part of the path to becoming a better competitor. But… to everyone else, to the millions in this popular game who just play because it was fun, all I was doing was ruining it.
Is COD even important?
Look, there’s a perception around ultra-popular games like COD, Fortnite, FIFA, or whatever. Multibillion-dollar franchises are rarely anybody’s favorite games, and so they get looked down upon. It never ceases to make me laugh when someone in Delta Force or Tarkov uses "cod player" as an insult. If they played more cod, they probably wouldn’t suck so bad at the game they’re trying to gatekeep. But, bigger picture, these are pillars of the industry. Not just monetarily, but because they’re cultural touchstones. "cod player" or "go back to fortnite" is an insult because hundreds of millions of people have played each of those games. These are the titles that introduce people to the genres, to games, and act as an education on how to play.
Personally, COD represented an anchor, one of the few life strings that led all the way back to when i first started having independent thoughts and interests. These games were what made me, and the start of passions for games and software that define large parts of who i am - it’s not a joke to say games are my purpose, as strange as that might sound to someone.
But, sometimes we have to accept that times change, we change, and we can’t hold on forever. COD may not be exactly what it was, but it’s had rough patches that it came back from before. Even if it does, though, I’m also not exactly what I was. And while it sounds trite to non-parents, I look forward a lot more to introducing my son to games than i do to actually playing new entries myself. Maybe he’ll be better than i ever was.
It’s not a real farewell, I’ll probably buy more entries over the next few decades. I’m interested to see how long it lasts, and where it goes next. But i’m at least releasing myself from the ritual of ruining other player’s holidays starting in mid-november, every year.
¶ If you doubt the accuracy or sincerity of that, I live in the Seattle area, I’ve been asaulted by bloc, I’ve been to cleanups after their "protests", I was at CHAZ/CHOP, I’m not some commentator. I was there, and what BLM did had nothing to do with "racial justice", even if you endorse the ethics of collective punishment. So some staffers blackmailing the game into having that banner was emblematic in a sour way to me.
