Staff Picks, May 2025: The Games That Brought Us to Discord

It’s Discord’s Birthday today! Another year older, another year’s worth of games added to the backlog. Don’t worry, Blue Prince, I’ll get to you soon… I already have a nice new pen and notepad set beside me just for the occasion! 

We’ve been around for a while now, and we wanted to take a moment to reflect on how we got to Discord in the first place. This month, we’re inviting a new friend, Christina, along with Emi, Jeremy, and Armando (that’s me) to share what games introduced us to Discord all those years ago. Plus, you’ll get to hear what else we’ve been playing more recently, in case you want to celebrate with a new game recommendation (game sold separately).

You’re new here! Who are ya??

Howdy friends!! (๑'ᵕ'๑)⸝ I’m Christina (but you can also call me xtina or tina), and I’m on Discord’s Product Marketing Team!

Editor’s Note: Does Christina sound familiar? She was one of our first college ambassadors! 

What was one of the first games you played with your friends on Discord?

Picture this: it’s 2020, quarantine era, and you’re a junior in college. All your classes, extracurriculars, social events are online; there’s only so much bread you can make from scratch before it starts getting old. You can’t scroll through social media without seeing memes about space beans, clickbait about 1000 IQ plays, and you start to think…is cyan sus 😔? Exit, pursued by a bear.

All to say, Among Us was the first game I played with my friends on Discord! It was part of the cultural zeitgeist for sure, but it was also one of the easiest games to loop people into for club socials or casual hangouts. At one point, I created a server for my friends across different colleges to play together, and we all became such sweaty try-hards that we’d routinely have multiple full lobbies going. I hold a lot of nostalgia for that time, and I made so many new friends through the experience!

What games are you playing with your friends right now? 

Right now, we’ve really been enjoying R.E.P.O. I’m always down for a co-op horror game, especially with proximity chat. I wouldn’t say that I’m easily scared, but I’m definitely pretty clumsy with the physics of the game. So it’s been entertaining seeing my friends panic while I’m too busy accidentally knocking things over! 

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Otherwise, my friends and I are always going back to VALORANT! I’m a Neon main, but I’ve been playing a lot more Clove recently too. It was the first FPS I’ve ever played, and I think the best thing is that I’ve even grown closer to old childhood friends once we started queuing together regularly. I play almost exclusively in five stacks with some besties, so the sheer entertainment value in shenanigans always outweighs any L’s we take! That being said, don’t look at my tilted rage queue red carpet...it really is about the friends we make along the way! Even if you’re hardstuck silver 🥲

What was one of the first games you played with your friends on Discord?

I hopped on Discord years ago, so it’s hard to definitively say what my first game on Discord was. I do, however, have a lot of fond memories of chasing Chicken Dinners playing PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds (PUBG) in 2017! I’d just moved back from Japan, and I remember my friends and I using Discord to chat. My friends were still in Japan and I had to coordinate across time zones, but once we were online, we’d play for hours. Our weekend game nights (or more accurately, my nights and their mornings) continued throughout the years, and we still make an effort to hang out on Discord at least every other weekend. 

What games are you playing with your friends right now? 

A good chunk of my friends are going back to Baldur’s Gate 3! If you haven’t played since release, there are some big additions, like modding support and new subclasses. Some friends are starting new saves, and some friends are jumping back in where they left off. Either way, you’ll probably get to enjoy new bits of story that you’ve been missing. I like to play cozy games in the morning before work, and this is probably going to be my “coffee time” game for now.

My friends and I have also returned to Verdansk in Call of Duty: Warzone. I really like the map, the changes, and the ebb and flow of pace. I can joke around with friends, loot, emote, meme, and then work on positioning for when the chaos ensues. And with Ranked Play releasing, I’ll probably be playing more. It feels like I’ve been sent back in time, in the best way.

What was one of the first games you played with your friends on Discord?

I used to game strictly on console. That all changed back in 2018 when a group of my friends convinced me to install League of Legends on my MacBook and this app called Discord. I joined their server, which we all still regularly hang out in on the weekends, and watched them stream their norms game. I now rarely ever game on console and I used to be a Brand support OTP (IYKYK) but I now play some Nasus and Illaoi top lane. 

What games are you playing with your friends right now? 

Nowadays, we’re still playing a lot of League of Legends. The beautiful thing about this friend group is that we all like a lot of different games. So a group of us have our World of Warcraft Classic sessions where we spam Alterac Valley and Warsong Gulch, and another group is dropping hot in the recently reintroduced Verdansk Warzone map. And every single time someone calls out a big play in their game and they’re not streaming, the rest of the group says “FIRE UP THE STREAM!!”

What was one of the first games you played with your friends on Discord?

I remember when Apex Legends shadow dropped in 2019 and all of my friends back home started playing it. I was away at college at the time and my jealousy from afar was palpable since I felt like I didn’t have the free time between midterms. Once school ended, my friends invited me to their Discord server and we played Apex nearly every weekend. We had quite the squad at the time, and my mains for that first year or so were Bloodhound and Wraith. Good times. 

What games are you playing with your friends right now? 

There are a few games I’m playing with different friend groups right now. At home, my partner and I are playing Split Fiction. It’s really fun and while some people yearn for the mines, I yearn for more excellent couch co-op adventure games. After we finish Split Fiction, we’re gonna get our notebooks out and try to tackle all that Blue Prince has to offer.

I’ve got another friend group where we play Rainbow Six Siege on Discord a few times a week. I’ve known about Siege for a long time, but never picked it up until a few months ago. It’s tense, tactical, and quick which is exactly what I was looking for right now.

I’m technically not playing it with friends right now, but later this month, another friend group and I are excited for the Splitgate 2 open beta. A shooter where I get to think with portals? Hell yeah.

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From competitive shooters to cozy adventures, seems like the roads that led us to Discord all involved having a good time playing games with friends. W.

What game first brought you and your friends to Discord? And was it a PC, console or mobile game? Be sure to let us know over on our XxxxxxxtttTwitter account. 

Also, make sure to keep up with our socials this week for some Birthday celebrations!

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