The games that got us through the pandemic
It has been 469 days since covid-19 cut us off from our colleagues. We’ve now logged more than 11,256 hours at home, but we’ve been far from idle. The past year-plus bathed the nation in stress and suffering, a number of us enduring it alone. And as we’ve self-isolated in our homes, separated by walls and miles from colleagues, friends and family, the distance strained the bonds that unite us and the calm that keeps us sane.
As we observed and reported on a year embroiled by racial injustice, marred by an assault on Democracy and the deaths of 593,000 Americans from covid-19, it felt impossible to look away. Lest we be overwhelmed, it was also imperative that, from time to time, we did.
For a number of us, video games provided a refuge, proxy worlds to inhabit while ours was unsuitable for life as we knew it. Instead of grabbing beers at a bar, friends paired up in multiplayer lobbies. They donned headsets and delivered life updates in disembodied voices, along with descriptions of which players looked a little “sus.” Vacations were scrapped and replaced with byte-sized getaways to war-torn battlefields and post-apocalyptic hellscapes that somehow instilled serenity. Some filled their days with simple tasks, reveling in a routine of collecting resources to repay a world-renowned tanuki named Tom Nook.
[The best video games of 2020]
It was no replacement for the real world we’d lost. It was certainly not better than a meal with friends, nor the embrace of a mother or father. But it was what we had. In these moments, living more in the pixels and polygons of avatars than our own flesh and blood, we muddled through. We found some solace, such as it was. And for that, in a year that was utterly and literally unplayable, we are grateful.
Games helped us approximate the world we lost, the time we wanted to spend with friends and family. They helped us reunite with familiar voices and even meet new ones. If only for a few moments, they helped us forget the burning world around us. These are the games that got us through the pandemic.
— Mike Hume
A social network
On March 10, 2020, the day The Washington Post announced it would send its employees home to work remotely, Call of Duty released its new battle royale, “Warzone.” Since then, the war-torn city of Verdansk has come to define a significant portion of my quarantined social life.
The team I play with is spread across the country (and the world), but in the last year I have gotten to know their habits and their schedules when we organize drops on the fly. I even know the voices of their partners chiming in from the background with soft insults about our playtime. They faux-commiserate in a group coined the “Warzone Widows.”
[Project Magma: The untold origin of Verdansk, the Gulag and ‘Call of Duty: Warzone’]
It has all become refreshingly routine in a world we no longer recognize. We can’t gather in person, but we can certainly hop on a server, parachute into Verdansk and try to survive as the last team standing.
Mostly we succeed in making fun of each other. But there’s more substance below the surface. The team, assembled by my friend TM, is made up of infantry veterans. They all served together in the Marines in Afghanistan, and I served in the Army in Iraq. Sometimes a digital war story will lead to a real one.
We have different lives now, but when we maneuver against our foes, tactical lingo fires up long dormant parts of our brains, like an old pinball machine plugged into the wall. We search for a position to mount enfilade fire. We withdraw using the Australian peel. In some cases, we pick up weapons that we once carried ourselves. Blindfold me right now and I could disassemble an M4, like I have hundreds of times before. In the game, thankfully, you never have to clean it.
Maybe we’ll keep talking after we reprioritize our time in a post-vaccine world and drops become less frequent. Drops have already dwindled since March, and for good reason. Ben, the newest member of our team and a guy I’ve never met in person, just had a son. The Warzone Widows finally have something to celebrate.
— Alex Horton, National Security reporter
My three sisters claim I lost this round of “Among Us,” but I’m not so sure. The game splits players into crewmates and impostors and seals them in a spaceship to kill or be killed, and yes, technically, my sister Molly murdered the rest of us and left us as ghosts.
But I like being a ghost. When I’m a ghost, I can complete the pleasantly mind-numbing, in-game tasks with minimal interruptions. When I’m a ghost, I can float through walls, through the hull of the ship and out into the stars with no obstructions. When I’m a ghost, I can laugh as my sisters fling accusations at each other and bask in the brief escape from real-life worries.
Call me sus, but I like being a ghost.
— Kate Yanchulis, High school sports reporter
The wisest pandemic purchase I made without knowing about the pandemic was a PlayStation 4. My friend Chris — who for a long time worked at GameStop and who devoted an entire basement rec room of his old house to his game collection — informed me that you could get the system plus three of its best games for a Best Buy Christmas deal in 2019. I picked up the console along with copies of “The Last of Us,” “God of War” and “Horizon: Zero Dawn,” and then I spent three months flying around covering the presidential campaign.
Once the pandemic hit, I not only began playing again, but I reshuffled my life to make playing easier. I finally switched from a lousy cable provider to a reliable one, and I could suddenly game while talking with my friends in PlayStation Party chat. Chris and Dean were halfway through “Assassins Creed: Odyssey,” so I bought that game and twice a week our party would hack through the game.
I played through “Assassins Creed” with Dean and Chris, then “Marvel’s Avengers,” the cruddiness of which was among the worst non-pandemic related developments of the year.
My habit got so intense that I eventually graduated to notoriously difficult FROM Software games like “Dark Souls,” causing Dean and Chris to hear my frustrated screams and ask, “What does ‘I was one hit away from killing Ornstein’ mean?”
— David Weigel, National politics reporter
Party chats have always been a kind of sanctuary, but they were especially useful during the pandemic. In the early months of staying at home, the “Halo 5” lobby was my accidental and beloved hangout.
A close friend who lives in Orlando with his wife and two kids would text “Halo?” when their little ones were asleep, and we’d sign on to our Xbox Ones. It wasn’t as tedious or forced as a Zoom call. And putting on a headset and staring at floating spaceships seemed more exciting than a phone chat.
We’d play a quick game or two before backing out and just settling into the menu screen to catch up on the real world as soaring orchestral music played in the background. Our wives would drop in and say hello. After venturing through our personal lives, baby antics, the happenings of our younger brothers and bizarre anecdotes about our parents, we’d jump into some 4v4 Slayer mode and do our worst. In this way at least, we found a bit of familiarity in our new normal.
— Hamza Shaban, Business reporter
My friends and I have been gaming all our lives and since 2007 we’ve had a dedicated “game night” on PC during the week. It carries a poker night vibe: beers, snacks, jokes. During the pandemic, we have been playing games ranging from mainstream, like “Apex Legends” or “Rocket League,” to party games like “Jackbox” and “Ultimate Chicken Horse.” It has been a relief and a release, but it has come at a cost.
Online gaming (much like Zoom hangouts) is the unicorn blood of social interaction. It has a half-life for me that sometimes makes you question if it is making the isolation worse than if you were all alone. No new experiences, monotony, the complete lack of visual facial feedback. The isolation has been brutal, but without this regular interaction through gaming, I am scared of what would happen to those relationships.
— TJ Gioconda, Senior product designer, visual storytelling
Family ties
I am not a big gaming person, but I do enjoy sport games. My 10-year-old son Álvaro, is also a huge sports fan, and while in the warmer months he was able to spend a lot of time in the yard playing basketball or soccer or just playing catch with me, the winter curtailed those outdoor opportunities. With indoor sports facilities closed and his basketball league canceled due to covid, it was tough on him.
That’s when the gaming solution came. This winter we got a PlayStation 5 with “NBA 2K21,” “FIFA 21” and “MLB The Show.” It was an investment we’d never made before, but now it was the right time, the right age. Of course it’s not the same as playing sports outside, but we needed something to cheer him up. While we limit his play time, we play at least one game against each other each weekend day (we tend to indulge him with the frequent rematch), and we have also allowed him to play with friends. With wireless controllers, he’s even able to play with his friends in person, one standing outside and looking though the glass of a door or window.
And, to be honest, it has also been so relaxing for me to end the day clearing my head by playing 30 minutes of the My Career mode on “NBA 2K21” or working on my Road to the Show character on “MLB The Show.” The only bad thing is that they traded me to the Marlins and now I’m stuck in a rookie contract in Miami.
— Chiqui Esteban, Graphics Director
Since the pandemic began I haven’t been able to properly hang out with my brother — one of the people I’m closest to on the planet — except for hundreds of times in Verdansk. Before this, neither of us played much “Call of Duty.” Now, about a year later, “Warzone” feels inviting and familiar, like a neighborhood bar: We have favorite guns and landing zones. There’s a clan of cheerful, sharpshooting Canadians we befriended in the game who never seem to log off.
“Warzone” can be hyperviolent and competitive. But, strange as it may sound, I enjoy it most for how quiet it gets in the lulls between gunfights. My brother and I will crouch on a rooftop, peering through our rifle scopes, chatting about TV shows or our families, shooting nothing but the breeze.
— Ben Guarino, Health and Science reporter
When the 2020 pandemic forced kids into distance learning from home, it meant new technological challenges. First came new Chromebooks for school, then a new computer altogether, and toss in some monitors.
We had purchased a Nintendo Switch for Christmas in 2018. My son JJ was 11 and as his social life increased, computer gaming and the like came with it. Now that the kids are a little older, they are quite adept at picking up the nuances quickly. For our younger ones — Siena, 9, and Slade, 7 — with less developed social lives than their older brother, it is great they have had each other. And even made new friends. After turning our home into an Internet café, they have been able to get some virtual friend time, reconnecting with school friends and joining the children of our friends who live across the country for impromptu gaming sessions and Roblox virtual parties.
Screen time is something we do worry about, but they have done a pretty good job with their studies and we try to compartmentalize some of our days to make sure they have some balance.
I have never been a gamer, but I had a phase of playing here and there as a kid and through young adulthood, but otherwise I mostly just played games with the kids on our previous gaming systems. But since we purchased the Switch, have played “Fortnite” consistently. I have an old friend who also plays, so he and I will team up with a small group of other players we know through the game. There’s kind of a familiarity and camaraderie when we are playing together. It’s a nice feeling when there has been so little socializing.
— John Romero, Multiplatform editor
I’ve been an avid Nintendo fan for as long as I can remember. I would have never thought that through the years, the company would still be so relevant today. Being able to connect over the Internet with my brother Q, who lives halfway across the world, was a godsend. Although he spent the early part of the pandemic with me in the Philippines, he had to return to the U.S. after a five-month lockdown. Playing new updates in the latest Pokémon game or trying out the latest DLC fighter in Smash Bros. was a great deal of fun. We even got into Mah-jongg through the game compilation “Clubhouse Games,” a game that originated on the DS that he and I, as well as a couple neighborhood kids would spend countless hours on.
It took years to convince Q to try “Monster Hunter,” a game that recently saw a major Hollywood adaptation. He finally preordered not only the game but the deluxe edition because of how much hype the franchise had generated in recent years. Having logged countless hours on the franchise, since the first game on a Nintendo platform, “Monster Hunter Tri” has evolved in a way that should bring in more aspiring hunters.
It was fortunate that Q and I played the same games, which ended up allowing us to keep in contact despite the distance and time difference. I didn’t make any new lasting friendships through games but continue to connect with family and friends, thanks to the Nintendo Switch. A few family members even bought one to cope with the pandemic. For some it was their first dedicated gaming console. I found bonding through the franchises with familiar faces to be a catharsis I needed last year.
— Bori Manglapus (Son of Ria Manglapus, Bureau manager, Prince George’s County)
A great escape
I played all the typical party games during the past year of social distancing. In the beginning, it was “Quiplash” on Zoom happy hours. By the fall, my friends and I played “Among Us.” But, for me, “The Last of Us Part II” encapsulates gaming through the pandemic.
There was a certain point in the middle of it all when I was truly alone. It was late June, the time of year in Washington when the heat sticks around long after the sun goes down. My roommate moved out a few months early to live with his parents in Queens. I had an empty two-bedroom apartment in Cleveland Park and no plans. No plans, that is, except playing the copy of “The Last of Us II” I preordered on Amazon long before I knew anything about antibodies and contact tracing.
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Every night, I’d sit down with a melting pint of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream and fall into this post-apocalyptic zombie world. The only sounds came from the AC unit in the window and the sickening crack when the swing of a bat connected with a skull on screen.
In those moments, I’d think: “Sure, it’s bad outside but it’s not this bad.”
The thought was comforting.
— Teddy Amenabar, Audience editor
The game that kept my husband and I sane during quarantine was “Fallout 76” on the Xbox. My husband picked-up a copy following the release of the Wastelanders expansion last April and then over the summer, he convinced me to try the game on Xbox Game Pass. I was hooked.
Something about carving out my own personal homestead in the wilds of post-apocalyptic West Virginia provided the perfect amount of escapism. I’ve spent countless hours crafting the perfect base camp only to uproot when I found a cooler location. The new C.A.M.P. slots feature has only exacerbated this problem, as now I am constantly on the hunt for two places to call home in the wasteland.
I’m currently camping outside the Nuka-Cola factory and enjoy hosting people for a party in my enclosed pool before having a BBQ at the brahmin grill. The open world is beautiful and expansive and the “76” community is one of the friendliest and most welcoming of which I have ever been a part. I also find the soundtrack relaxing. The atmospheric blend of instrumental country and bluegrass helps me lose myself in Appalachia and forget about everything going on in real life. Despite having finished all the main quests and most of the side quests, I still play almost daily.
— Lauren Zack, Executive assistant, Human Resources
While other people have been writing novels and learning to play the piano, I’ve spent the pandemic getting reacquainted with my dormant mediocrity at chess. Physical chess sets have been going for several bitcoin each in the wake of “Queen’s Gambit” mania, so I’ve turned to the next-best thing, “Clubhouse Games: 51 Worldwide Classics” for the Nintendo Switch.
Nothing can replace the feel of a knight in your hand, but developers NDcube have mastered the virtual gamefeel of all 51 classics, from mah-jongg to mancala, with a handsome presentation, helpful tutorials and a satisfying thud as you take move pieces on the board. You can play online or in person, or against a computer whose difficulty levels range from Normal to, ha, Impossible. But it’s time for me for admit something I should have realized when reading “Chess for Dummies” as a middle-schooler seemed to actually make my play worse: In the game of kings, some people will forever be jesters. Checkers, anyone?
— Ryan Vogt, Multiplatform editor for Opinions
Hideo Kojima’s 2019 dystopian nightmare became eerily relevant in March 2020, when I started playing it. With its weighty campaign and film-length cutscenes, “Death Stranding” is a thick game no matter how you play.
Near the end, your character, Sam Porter Bridges, has no choice but to walk back over much of the game’s map in a painfully slow slog, backtracking over your hours of progress. Sam, an essential worker reconnecting Americans with packages and video calls, gruffly complains the entire time. I might not have finished it at all before the pandemic, but with my newfound time, I dove in and did everything Sam can do in the game. That began a year-long obsession with 100% completing single-player games, especially ones with systematic, clearly defined goals (unlike life).
[We are living in Hideo Kojima’s dystopian nightmare. Can he save us?]
“Death Stranding’s” mechanical complexity, grim landscape and haunting music were surprisingly comforting as the hours ticked by. Now it feels like a distant dream, appropriate for a game that was famously opaque before and after its release. As I saw the world spring forward and backward over and over fighting the pandemic, I felt like Sam, treading the same roads, cursing under my breath.
2020 was a send-off for the PlayStation 4 for me and a transition to the PlayStation 5. If we hadn’t been cooped up, I likely wouldn’t have upgraded (and I feel for everyone struggling with finding one).
According to the annual PlayStation wrap-up stats, I had 1,524 total hours of gameplay in 2020. Of those, 115 were in “Death Stranding,” and 222 were in “Fortnite.” I used to be confused by claims that “Fortnite” was the future of social media. Then I went all-in on the Metaverse.
“Fortnite” became the default social space for me and a group of friends. We played the game, of course, and got surprisingly good at it. But more importantly, it gave us a social outlet and a virtually embodied sense of presence with one another. This game, unlike “Death Stranding,” epitomized my need for comforting, predictable social outlets. I think I need to drop Catty Corner now.
— Mike King, Multiplatform editor for Emerging News Products
At the start of the pandemic, I was in the middle of playing “The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild” on the Nintendo Switch. I found myself not really pursuing the main story or side quests so much as just wandering around the game’s land of Hyrule. I finally realized it was because it felt like being outdoors in a way that was refreshing while I was cooped up in my apartment.
In addition to letting me feel a sense of travel, gaming gave me the chance to reconnect with friends. My college roommates and I used to have a weekly gaming night for years that had fallen by the wayside amid busy schedules. We restarted it, playing “Fortnite” at first because we could play together from multiple platforms and eventually moving on to other games. Outside of our partners, it’s the most social interaction we’ve had, and it has been a huge help to our mental health.
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My girlfriend and I also started regularly playing “Stardew Valley” with her sister and brother-in-law, which has been a nice because I expected to be able to hang out and get to know them this past year and that obviously didn’t pan out. Farming, fishing and mining together have helped us bond.
— Brian Cleveland, Senior editor, Multiplatform Desk
I started the pandemic with a new group of long-distance friends who cycled through game after game to kill time. Not long into lockdown, one asked us to try “Overcooked 2,” a manic multiplayer cooking game.
It felt like the last thing I needed: The game plays like “Diner Dash” at a team-building retreat, barely less stressful than going to the actual grocery store. The plot is nonsense. You follow bizarre edicts from an onion king. In one level, I played an octopus chef chopping salads in a hot-air balloon as it also catches fire.
After a few rounds though I laughed like I hadn’t in a long time, and felt a kind of flow working with other people that, like parsley, you don’t notice until it’s missing. We were all alone together, simulating chaos on our silly little couches, trapped in the panini.
— Steven Johnson, Newsletter editor
I finally got to make a dent on my backlog of games, with some dating as far back as the original “BioShock.” I subscribe to GamePass on Xbox, so it was easy to dig up some classics I’d long meant to play. After the “BioShock” trilogy and replaying the “Mass Effect” trilogy, I returned to finish “The Outer Worlds” and its DLC.
I have more recently gravitated toward computer role-playing games (CRPGs) and I’m currently playing through “Pillars of Eternity 1 & 2” and finding that the CRPG genre, one of the first to transport me to another world when I was playing as a kid on my cousin’s computer, can still do just that.
— Eddie Alvarez, Designer
