Editor’s note: What activities and practices have gotten us through the pandemic? What have we learned about ourselves during this dismal time? Baltimore Watchdog reporters wrote personal essays and interviewed people on this topic. Here’s what they found.
By Kayla Hunt
When COVID-19 hit last March, Yosbanis Andrade went into Walmart with one mission: stock up on groceries. He doesn’t remember how he ended up in the electronics department, but he does remember standing in the aisle and staring at the plexiglass cabinet filled with video games. One game in particular caught his attention: Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. His friends had been talking about the game a lot lately, so he decided it was only right for him to buy it.
Nearly a year later, Andrade is hooked. He plays Call of Duty about four or five days a week, depending on his schedule. He has an iMessage group chat with his friends, solely dedicated to Call of Duty, and has a set up in his basement specifically for playing.
When Andrade comes home from an eight-hour shift as a customer service manager at the grocery store chain Harris Teeter, his phone chimes with numerous notifications. The Call of Duty group chat is going off. Andrade walks into the furnished basement that reflects his version of a man cave: a ping pong table, hoverboard, variety of board games such as Monopoly, Sorry, Heads Up!, the classic Uno, and a miniature basketball hoop.
The center of the basement is where the action happens A chair sits atop a grey striped rug, facing directly in front of the television. Andrade dims the overhead lights and turns on his PlayStation. A subtle blue light comes from the console, as well as the controller and headset as he unplugs them from the charger.
Andrade sinks into the chair, turn the microphone on his headset on, and says with a wide grin on his face: “Let’s get it started, boys!”
He plays Call of Duty with old friends from high school, former co-workers from his previous job, and occasionally plays with his cousins as well.
“I think I enjoy playing the game because it has become a stress reliever for me,” he said. “When I play I kind of just get lost in the moment. I can’t tell you how many times I have found myself playing until around 3 in the morning unintentionally.”
Before quarantine started, Andrade would hang out with his friends on his days off from work doing activities such as going to the field to play soccer or going to Dave and Buster’s to play pool.
Andrade said because he is unable to hang out with his friends, playing Call of Duty during his downtime has become his social outlet this past year. This game has allowed him to bond with his friends and also develop new, unforeseen friendships.
“I have met so many people on Call of Duty that I never thought I would connect with,” he said. “And when playing with them I feel as though we have actually hung out in real life. One of the guys I talk to is and play with a lot lives in Florida and another guy lives in Missouri. It’s crazy.”
Andrade remembers playing the game one night when his friends were not logged on yet, so he decided to run a quick game with random players. He never thought that he would form a new friendship. Andrade’s gamer tag is A1exthejoker101, and one of the random players he played with had a similar gamer tag: Paisathejoker. They bonded instantly over that. He became friends with Andre, a 23-year-old Florida man who works at Disneyworld.
Although playing video games has given him an outlet for social interaction, Andrade said there are downsides. He sometimes gets pounding headaches from staring at the screen for so long. Playing video games puts a strain on his eyes. Whenever he begins to feel disoriented, he takes a break from playing that ranges from a couple of days to a week.
Despite the downsides that are associated with playing video games, Andrade appreciates this outlet. During these unprecedented times, friendship is of utmost importance to him, and this is his chance to connect.
By Corday Gaskins
Growing up, I always loved playing video games. Every day after school and football practice I used to come home and play Call of Duty on PlayStation 3. My friends and I would play online for hours. As I grew older, gaming became a less central part of my life. I started to take football more seriously so I devoted all my time to the sport.
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, I was given some free time, which enabled me to dive back into my old gaming hobby. The pandemic changed my weekly schedule. All the time I spent at the gym was free because it was closed during the lockdown.
At the end of March, I was bored and decided to pick up the controller again. I started gaming again with my friends on the PlayStation 4. We started a video game basketball league on NBA 2k20. The basketball game became a part of my daily routine.
I love sports and especially basketball. I couldn’t play sports or watch it during the spring because of COVID-19. The NBA was on pause. And my local basketball courts were closed as well. Baltimore County took rims off the basketball courts to reduce large gatherings. Gaming was the only way I could still be involved with sports at the time.
Gaming helped me manage the stress and uncertainty of the pandemic. Gaming has been the new outlet that gives me a small break from reality. Being able to receive human interaction through gaming has been refreshing. I get to talk to friends that I haven’t seen in years through PlayStation. The Sony PlayStation app has implemented a new feature on their cell phone app. The new feature allowed me to voice chat with my gamer friends from my cell phone.
Video games weren’t the only type of games that I played. My family started playing board games as well. Board games were an essential part of my upbringing. Growing up, we connected through playing board games. We started to play board games like Monopoly, Candy Land and Clue.
Being able to reconnect with my mother and sisters through board games was a great feeling. Spending time with family is really important to me. I am a family-oriented person. I come from a big family. I have three brothers and two sisters. Spending time with them brought up a lot of good memories growing up. It gave me a sense of comfort during this time of uncertainty.
Another thing that aided me through the pandemic was teaching my 10-year-old nephew how to play chess. Being able to teach my nephew a game that was a part of my upbringing was an amazing experience. I first learned how to play chess when I was 7 years old in my uncle’s barbershop. Since my uncle passed away it’s been a tradition in my family to teach men in the family how to play chess. It felt good to pass the tradition along.
By Denzel Dickens
Since the start of the pandemic, I have learned quite a few things about myself. One thing I have learned is that I enjoy being alone just as much as being around a group of people. The pandemic helped me realized what I really like to do: play video games. While I was bored and stuck inside my house, I started watching a lot of YouTube videos, especially gaming content.
Then new gaming consoles were released in November: the Xbox Series X|S and the Playstation 5. I was lucky enough to get both consoles. They are nearly impossible to get your hands on. I started a Facebook gaming group called “No Sleep Gaming,” and there are 141 members in the group in just two months. This level of engagement on my page inspired me to start my own gaming podcast called “No Sleep Gaming.” I have my own gaming YouTube channel called “Charm City Games.” I came up with the name because I’m from Baltimore and the nickname for Baltimore is Charm City. I’m doing videos about games, so I added games at the end of Charm City to make it “Charm City Games.” I have received a lot of positive feedback on my name from people I come across in the gaming community.
The channel that inspired me the most was “Weapon Wheel Podcast” hosted by Broken Gamez HDR. I have a few friends I came across on Facebook and Twitter and formed my own podcast. We are very new, so we don’t have many followers just yet, but we are definitely growing each week. I also created a Twitch channel so I could stream my game play live to my gaming group. The plan is to have as many people as possible on multiple platforms to follow me on my gaming journey.
I had to learn how to operate streaming software, so I downloaded OBS and Streamlabs OBS. Both are the same software, but one is easier to use and has a better user interface for beginners to understand. Gaming is a hobby I always did as a kid, but I never saw myself becoming a gaming streamer buying mic, capture cards and running streaming software on my laptop. Gaming online has become a way for me to keep in touch and engaged with friends and family online in a way I never thought I would before. To me, gaming on Xbox and Playstation is like my social media because it’s where I’m at the most right now with COVID-19 keeping everyone in the house.
If it weren’t for this pandemic, I most likely would not have become a game streamer or even started hosting a podcast, which is the part I love the most. The podcast happens once a week with at least two people just talking about games for several hours. I noticed that I even connect with people from totally different backgrounds simply because we share the same love for gaming. Game streaming and podcasting are hobbies I plan to continue post-pandemic.
By Sharif Hodges
I never realized how important gaming was to me until I was trapped inside during a pandemic. Almost every day for months, I found myself enthralled with the same gaming routine without ever getting bored. I turn my Xbox on and immediately go to play Madden NFL 21. Although the game is terrible and filled with unrealistic nonsense, playing 2v2 team play with my best friend, Jonathan, is where I found so much of my enjoyment in the last several months.
We join a game, where I run offense and he calls defensive plays, and we do our best to win as many games as we can. We inch closer to the Super Bowl with every win we get, almost to a point where we can taste sure victory. In order to make the playoffs we have to win seven games without losing any more than three or our season gets completely reset. I come out offensively and look at the coverage before every play. I look at the TV screen and around the field in an attempt to decipher whether it’s man or zone defense, and come out in the best play to help us score a touchdown.
After a while, these endless games of football are improving my decision making, as well as forcing me to think outside of the box. Some nights we somehow play the same team three or four times in a row (always joking about leaving) since it gets significantly harder to run plays because they’ve seen almost everything we have to offer offensively.
I find myself smiling some nights because it seems as if we just can’t lose. We win six, seven, eight, nine games straight and head to the Super Bowl; each of the games varying in difficulty.
One of these nights comes into my mind often. We had our crazy winning streak and find ourselves one game away from winning it all. I came out and did nothing but make mistakes. Interception here, fumble there, incompletions and more. We mustered a comeback to no avail and sat there in disbelief as a season where we went undefeated went down the drain because of a few early mistakes. It was 4 or 5 a.m. and we played all night, for nothing. I mean, of course we still collected coins and other rewards to improve our team, but we lost where it mattered most.
Nights like those made me appreciate gaming. Even though I was pissed off beyond belief, I understood my mistakes, adapted my playing style and got better. These nights gave me a chance to bond with a friend when we were both far too busy to do so beforehand, as well as teach me lessons I can apply to real life. They’ve given me a rush, and a reminder of trying my best with whatever I do will always be beneficial to me. I can come out of COVID-19 with these thoughts lingering on my mind as I try to be a better version of myself every day.