History Of COD Part 2! Black Ops 1 - History Of COD On Youtube!
In this video the host recaps the Call of Duty YouTube scene during the Black Ops 1 era (2010‑2011). The key narrative is that the introduction of direct monetization on YouTube sparked a surge of new creators and intensified competition, which in turn generated a wave of drama and community events. The video covers several hallmark moments: the infamous Wings of Redemption vs. iProSyndicate 1v1, the rise of Zombies content led by Syndicate, exploitative giveaway practices by Whiteboy and xJaws, the shift to flashy thumbnails and off‑topic commentary, the large‑scale Commentator March Madness tournament and its later showdown, early appearances of now‑famous creators such as PewDiePie and FPSRussia, the decline of established players like Sandy Ravage, niche content like Bryceye’s rap and XboxAhoy’s in‑depth weapon guides, and the eventual wrap‑up with Marko J winning the commentator showdown. Throughout, the host emphasizes that drama defined the period, noting channel terminations and creator departures (e.g., Hutch leaving Machinima). The video ends with a call for a future part covering Modern Warfare 3.
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Hey, hey, hey, what is up guys? My name is—
head-to-head tournament plays. Know me, my name is Gold Glove.
Um, my channel just recently got terminated.
I, I think it's time for me to move on.
I broke my controller.
You broke your controller?
Welcome back to the next installment of the history of Call of Duty on YouTube. Now if you missed the first part where I talked about everything up to Modern Warfare 2, be sure to check that out, I'll throw up an annotation. And in this video we're gonna be covering everything that went on during the Black Ops 1 era. With Black Ops 1 came the ability to monetize Call of Duty videos on your channel. No longer do you have to give Machinima a video, have them upload it, and then pay you. You can just put it on your own channel and you can make money off of it. This made so many people upload actively and brought so many new YouTubers into the game. Because, I mean, money is a huge motivating factor. So there we go, all the boring stuff out of the way. Let's jump right into this. I gotta say this, Black Ops 1 had tons of drama, and a majority of this video is going to be covering drama. So sorry about that, it may not seem too historical, it may seem more like a DramaAlert video, but that's just what happened in Black Ops 1. And we're gonna start it off with Wings vs. Syndicate and their 1v1. This 1v1 was sparked because Wings of Redemption was talking trash to Syndicate. Wings said he could beat him in a 1v1 on COD 4, and Wings of Redemption even got host and still lost to iProSyndicate.
Shit!
Yeah, we've all been there, man.
During Black Ops 1 is when the founder of the Call of Duty commentator BlameTruth started uploading Pokémon and veered away from Call of Duty, and therefore kind of caused his success to go downhill.
What's up guys? I am pretty pissed off at Nintendo because I've been trying to have matches and record them for like the past 2 days and it keeps DCing me.
Now YouTube back then was a lot different than it is today. YouTube's homepage back then was based off of favorites. If your video got a lot of favorites, it would end up on the homepage, and if it was on the homepage, you'd get like 100,000 subscribers. So many people checked the homepage, it's unrealistic. So people started to abuse this. People in particular like Whiteboy and xShaz They do giveaways. They give away an Xbox 360 and a PlayStation 3, and all you had to do, all you had to do to enter was favorite the video, and the video would end up on the homepage. They'd make thousands of dollars off the video and then give away like a $200-$300 Xbox and PS3. And we don't even know if they actually ended up giving it away. For all we know, they could have kept it themselves, and they were just abusing the system. And that's where Whiteboy and xJaws got a lot of their fame during the time. Something else I noticed is during Black Ops 1 is when a lot of people started using flashy thumbnails Before, people didn't even put thumbnails up. Uh, it was just a picture of the Call of Duty, a random moment in the game. And, uh, during Black Ops 1 is when people started doing really off-topic random commentaries. Yeah, this is when just thumbnails just changed completely. Now, it wouldn't be Black Ops 1 if I didn't mention Zombies. And in particular, when I think of Zombies in Black Ops 1, Syndicate comes to mind. He really sparked the interest in Zombies on YouTube, and by uploading this one video where he got to 100+ rounds and the video got over 10 million views, he really started to make zombies explode on YouTube. Another thing is Hutch decided to leave his full-time job at Machinima, which is kinda, you know, weird when you think about it. Why would you ever leave a job where all you have to do is make videos about video games and put it on a YouTube channel? But he decided to leave, and not only did he leave that, but for the next half a year he didn't upload to his personal channel, and a lot of people started to feel, you know, kinda worried and scared about what happened to him.
Hello, welcome to Respawn from whore alley California. I'm Mr. Stark and I'm Hutch, and behind the camera is Hollywood. And tell you guys what's going on. So as of the time you guys are watching this video, which will probably be Wednesday, yep, right, I will be in Sonoma County, no longer in Los Angeles, and no longer working for Machinima.
Now this wouldn't be the history of Black Ops 1 if if I did not mention Commentator Madness. This is a series that WoodyScammerTag threw together where he had the top 64 commentators at the time compete in 1v1 commentator battles. Now this, it wasn't like over the gameplay, like they weren't playing 1v1s in Call of Duty. It was 1v1s based on the gameplay, based on their commentating skills. It was just everything in the video being taken into account, and you would vote and, you know, the winner would go to the next round. And it was just a contest between the top 64 commentators at the time.
You don't know about Call of Duty commentator March Madness?
No, is that like the basketball tournament?
Call of Duty commentator March Madness coming your way. The funny thing is, just about every person who is currently famous off of Call of Duty, competed in Commentator March Madness back in Black Ops 1. I mean, even people like Speedy and Deluxe4 and all the trollers of today, even a bunch of the people in FaZe and OpTic, they competed in this, and most of them aren't even commentators anymore, so it's just really weird listening to them do normal commentaries. Hey guys, Drifter here. This is a video that I made for the March Madness gameplay commentary.
Are you one of the many affected by ladders each and every game? Are you struggling to climb them? Maybe intimidated, daunted by the height of the ladder, thinking, "What if I fall off?" Basic stats of ladders in this game, you gotta understand them. They have a base health of 1,000 points and a max damage of 20. Their fire delay is 1 second. Now look up in the top right corner.
Now what we're gonna do here is just run around, tapping people in the booties. I'mma just give a little background on myself. Now basically I came up with this whole character from watching SNL.
So I'm not gonna bore you to death, I'm just gonna skip straight to the point. There's 64 YouTubers, obviously one-on-one, and then there's 32 in round 2, and then there's 16, then there's 8, then 4, and then it came down to 2 final people: The Sideshow and Fuzzy Otterballs. And I'll just let you see the video where they announce the winner. And yeah.
What's up guys, my name is Anthony and I don't have an intro and I'm bringing you the very final breakdown of the very final matchup in this March Madness tournament that has been going on for the past 4 months featuring TheSideShow and Fuzzy Otterballs. Alright, so TheSideShow came out as energetic as ever and he had some Modern Warfare 2 gameplay where he had about 3 triple kills with the RPG. Now I don't know how somebody couldn't be smiling while watching this guy. His commentary was as random and happy-go-lucky as ever. But either way, Fuzzy's video fell short of TheSideshow, and TheSideshow will take the championship trophy, hypothetically, of this March Madness tournament.
So that's pretty much Commentator March Madness in a nutshell. I didn't mean to spend too much time on it, but it was a pretty big deal back then, and there you go. Now, another thing that was going on during this time is PewDiePie was actually uploading Black Ops. Yes, PewDiePie used to be a Call of Duty YouTuber, and at this time PewDiePie hit 100 subscribers during Black Ops 1. Which is just hilarious because he has like over 30 million now.
People, 100 subscribers is probably an insignificant number, but to me it means a lot, so I just want to thank you guys so much.
It's weird enough just thinking about how PewDiePie used to be a Call of Duty commentator, but FPSRussia used to also upload Call of Duty videos on his channel before he started doing videos where he shot real guns. This is a really old video I found of him doing a dual comm with someone else. Got a few machinima posts and got a nice little channel of my own. A little bit more about some personal channels is during Black Ops 1, Sandy Ravage didn't really upload that much. Sandy Ravage was known as one of the best Modern Warfare 2 players, and then he kind of just stopped. He, um, he didn't really stop, but he wasn't uploading Black Ops 1 that much. He didn't really enjoy the game, and he did a little bit of the older Call of Duties. And then also during this time, someone called Bryceye uploaded a Call of Duty rap video, and this is when Bryceye's channel started to take take off.
Map bout to set off an explosive charge. I'll play a couple games, score a couple of credits, and customize my character. The options seem to be endless. Unlock achievements and titles, camos and killstreaks. My icon is a horse with pistols on his feet. Called my boss right away and told him I quit. I'm making big money winning all these wager matches.
Now during Black Ops 1, people were spitting videos out left and right, uploading 1 to 2 videos every day. But someone called XboxAhoy was uploading one video a week, and he was doing these insanely in-depth gun breakdown videos, and I personally actually watched them when I played Black Ops 1, and they were just really in-depth and really good, and here's a little peek of it.
Hello, this is XboxAhoy, and this is the 22nd episode of my Black Ops weapon guide. In this episode, we're covering the 4th SMG, the AK-74u. It's a fully automatic weapon unlocked at level 17. Although compact in size, it fires the same cartridge as the full-sized rifle, albeit from a much shorter barrel. This means the muzzle velocity is lower than it might be on a larger weapon, and paired with the smaller sight radius, inhibits potential accuracy at longer range.
Commentator Showdown was when they took the top YouTubers, put them all in a free-for-all match, and just saw who would win.
Game Dunzo and FilmOn.com, and they put up some prize money, so the top 3 places got $1,500, $1,000, and $500, which is kind of neat. You know, it makes sure that everyone puts their tryhard pants on. People— so I wanted to talk about this, you know, in terms of, you know, does it really show who the best player is? And, uh, you know, not exactly. You know, it's not perfect. Like, one thing is for sure, every time I cooked a nade, I died. Just when there's 12 people, or I guess 11 other people shooting at you, you can't cook nades. That's one thing I learned. Um, So, does this really show who the best player is? And not exactly, but kind of, is my answer on that.
So, Marko J won the commentator showdown, and that pretty much wraps up everything that went on during Black Ops 1. Like I said, majority of this video was drama, but that's what happened during this time. Many YouTubers were already established, there wasn't too many new people popping up, so this was just, you know, people continuing their channels and the drama that went on during that time. If you enjoyed the video, leave a like and tell me if you want a part 3 over Modern Warfare 3. That's pretty much all. Hopefully you enjoyed.
No exception to the rule, do what you do to get by. Cause that clock keeps ticking like a metronome and my thoughts keep telling me to get me home, but my balls keep telling me to let me go. Oh, just let me go. That clock keeps ticking like a metronome and my thoughts keep telling me to get me home, but my balls keep telling me to let me go.
