How Nigerian youths build friendships through a shooting game

In January, I visited a cousin and saw something surprising. There was a power cut in the house, but her younger brother, my cousin too, was having a great time. "Check those guys, clear them, shoot on sight," he kept telling his online teammates. I then asked his sister, "Who is he talking to?"

His sister explained that he was playing 'Call of Duty Mobile' on his phone. "He completely forgets we are here when he starts playing that game," she said.

This was not my first time hearing about 'Call of Duty Mobile,' but I had never realized how popular this game was among young Nigerians.

Call of Duty Mobile (CoDM) is a shooting game played on smartphones. It is free to download, free to play, and very competitive. Players form teams with strangers from all over the world, enter a virtual battlefield, and fight to be the last team standing.

Communication and Community

Communication is key during the game. Trust is essential. Under that pressure, something interesting happens: players create a digital community under 'gunfire'.

According to Google Play Store, the game has over 100 million downloads and a rating of 4.2. Nigeria ranks 11th in downloads, with India, Brazil, and Mexico at the top.

Adesogan Greatman, a final-year mathematics student at the Federal University of Lokoja, plays at least six hours a day, 21 hours a week, depending on his schedule. He started playing in 2021, two years after the game launched on mobile.

"I mainly play Battle Royale," he said, explaining, "Which is a mode where players compete on a large map, collect weapons and equipment, survive, and try to be the last player or team standing." A typical gaming session includes choosing a landing spot, gathering supplies, fighting opponents, and improving ranks and skills.

Gamers’ Experiences

While Mr Greatman talks about the game mechanics, Yusuf Jonga, a lawyer, shares what happens after gaming. Mr Jonga, who plays as Soul_Brotha, began playing when the game came out in 2019. He prefers the multiplayer experience for its short and intense matches. "Racing heart, sweaty palms and hoping to get the next kill or hope not to be killed," he said.

He spends about five to six hours a day and 35 hours a week on the game. Like Mr Jonga, Leo Tarbunde, a medical doctor, also enjoys the multiplayer mode. He plays online with his teammates for a “long time.” When asked how many hours he plays a week, he paused, sighed, and said, “about 21 hours give or take.”

Part of what keeps players hooked is the excitement of a firefight and the game’s design that pulls you back in. Joseph Igoanua, who used to play as CJEX but now goes by “Bandit,” started in 2022 and explained how the ranking system works. Players move from Rookie to Veteran, Elite, Pro, Master, Grand Master, and finally Legendary.

Friendships Built

According to “Bandit,” no player stays at the top for long. At the beginning of a new season, the game resets every player’s profile two ranks below. So if a player finishes at Legendary, they start at Master in the new season. This setup makes players want to come back online and reach Legendary again. Mr Igoanua plays less now because of work but still logs in most seasons to chase that badge before it resets.

Beyond ranks and ratings, something else happens inside CoDM. Strangers become friends. Mr Greatman shared he has made real friends through the game, including people from different countries who invited him to join their clans. Mr Jonga confirmed he also made friends, including both men and women in the game.

"Yes, I have [friends], both male and female," Mr Jonga said when asked if he had friends who started as strangers in the game. For Mr Igoanua, making friends is a regular occurrence. He laughed when asked about his CoDM friendship experience, saying, "For sure, almost every time." He makes new friends almost every season he plays.

Moving Beyond the Game

Not everyone shares this experience. Mr Tarbunde, who plays as KillaBrotha, gave a straightforward answer. "Honestly? Not really," he said. "I know most of my friends from real life. I don’t always have my microphone on so I’m not that social." He sees the game more as a competition than a social space. In his words, "just a cog in the machine to win the game."

For those who make friends in the game, the relationship rarely stays inside it. Mr Jonga said his in-game friendships moved to WhatsApp. "Communication was mostly in-game but later became WhatsApp chats," he said. He used to be part of a WhatsApp group for gaming schedules, where members notified each other when they were about to go online.

Mr Greatman has a similar setup, a small community where players share game-related content. But he was careful to say that this community is not a deep friendship. "Most of our communication was through gaming," he said.

Still, Mr Igoanua’s network is bigger. "A lot of WhatsApp groups and Telegram communities exist," he said. “Even on Twitter, or Facebook, or Instagram, name the app, there’s probably a CoDM group.” Mr Tarbunde does not belong to any of them. He feels he doesn’t need a wider community to enjoy the game.

What is a Friend?

The word “friend” means different things to different people. When Mr Greatman was asked if the people he met through the game were close friends, he answered no. Not because the friendships were fake, but because he lost his game account and with it, contact with most of them. "Because I lost contact with them, I wouldn’t call them close friends today." The friends he considers important were people he already knew before playing.

Mr Jonga’s gaming friends are reachable. Some are just a WhatsApp message away, but he is cautious. He has never met any of them in person. He said, "Not that close." When asked if he would call them close friends, he simply said, "Just friends, I wouldn’t say close."

Mr Igoanua feels the same way. Most people he met in real life were friends before he discovered they also played CoDM. He has not met anyone from the game in person, but he could if he wanted to. He has not needed a gaming friend to help him personally, but he has seen it happen to others. CoDM has a public chat where players sometimes ask for money or data, and in his words, "some people actually turn up for them."

After Losing an Account

For Mr Greatman, the game gave him friends across borders, only to take them away when his account disappeared. For Mr Jonga, it gave him people to chat with who became WhatsApp contacts, but not close enough to rely on. For Mr Igoanua, it provided a Twitter and Telegram community, where some strangers occasionally help others in a public chat. Mr Tarbunde found nothing significant in the game; he said his real friends were already friends before he started playing.

Whether Call of Duty Mobile creates “best friends” from strangers depends on who you ask and how they define friendship. The game reliably brings people together night after night under pressure, forcing them to communicate to survive. What comes after that is up to the players.