My love-hate relationship with office multiplayer games

Matthew and I have been rewatching old episodes of the US Office recently (it is such great comfort TV, lemme tell ya), and the other week we got to the episode in season three where Jim is introduced to the wonderful world of Call Of Duty lunchtimes with his new colleagues in Stamford. Having clearly never played a video game in his life, Jim is very much out of his depth when the lights go down and everyone dons their favourite headset, and he's repeatedly berated by his exasperated co-workers about letting the side down.

I empathise a lot with Jim during these episodes, because I have definitely been 'that person' on the office lunch squad who just isn't as good at Battlefield: Bad Company 2 (and Bad Company 2 Vietnam) as everyone else. Our games never got quite as heated and competitive as the ones in The Office, but their average lifespan would always follow a similar pattern. We'd all get into it and play it for a few weeks, one person would go away and research the meta game in their spare time to dominate the rest of us, and then no one would want to play against that person and we'd move on to something else. We had some good times as well, though, and to this day one of my fondest video game memories is finally winning a game of what we affectionately referred to as 'HOLD THE LINE' in Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance.