Karma (Call of Duty player)

For the retired Halo player named Ben Jackson, see Karma (Halo player).

Karma
Barlow in 2022
Current team
Team	OpTic Texas
Role	Head coach
Game	Call of Duty
League	Call of Duty League
Personal information
Name	Damon Barlow
Nickname(s)	Three Rings, [1] DB4
Born	(1994-07-17) 17 July 1994 (age 30)
Nationality	Canadian American
Career information
Playing career	2010–2020
Coaching career	2023–present
Team history
As player:
2012–2013	Fariko Impact
2013	Team EnVyUs
2013–2014	compLexity Gaming
2014	Evil Geniuses
2014	FaZe Clan
2014–2015	OpTic Nation
2015–2019	OpTic Gaming
2019–2020	Seattle Surge
As coach:
2023–present	OpTic Texas
Career highlights and awards
As player 3× Call of Duty Championship champion (2013, 2014, 2017) As coach 1× Call of Duty League Championship champion (2024)

Damon Barlow, better known as Karma, is a Canadian-American professional Call of Duty coach and former player. He is currently the head coach for OpTic Texas. He is the first three-time Call of Duty Championship winner, winning back-to-back titles in 2013 & 2014, and also in 2017, with Fariko Impact, compLexity Gaming, and OpTic Gaming respectively. In 2024, he also joined James "Crowder" Crowder as the only two people to win a World Championship as a player and a head coach. He is also a Major League Gaming (MLG) X Games 2015 gold medalist, with OpTic Gaming. ^[2] Karma joined OpTic replacing outgoing captain Matt "Nadeshot" Haag on the team. He is a naturalized American citizen. ^[3] As of May 2020, Karma has won $815,087.25 from tournament winnings, making him the player to have earned the fifth most total prize money playing professional Call of Duty, and making him the player to have earned the fifth most total prize money playing any professional console game.^{[ citation needed ]} He also runs an active YouTube channel. ^[4]

Career

Beginnings

Barlow began playing competitive Call of Duty in 2010. ^[1] He first started playing Call of Duty during Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare . He started showcasing what he was truly capable of with the release of Call of Duty: World at War , however, his skill went largely unnoticed due to the lack of support in the community of the game.^{[ citation needed ]}

His first real chance to shine came with the release of Call of Duty: Black Ops . His first major event was MLG Columbus where he placed a decent 10th with his team yunGunZ. Going into the next event the team showed signs of improvement finishing 6th at MLG Anaheim. However, looking for more than just an average showing, he joined forces with the legendary Rambo under the Xtravagant name. Expecting to replicate the success the IXI name saw in the past, Karma and his teammates went into the rest of the season confident. However, it turned out to be much of the same with another 6th-place finish at MLG Orlando and a 5th-place finish at the season-end MLG National Championship 2011.^{[ citation needed ]}

Breakthrough

Like many players, due to the lack of support, he chose to not compete during Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 . With the release of Call of Duty: Black Ops II , he joined the newly formed team Fariko Impact coming in with great expectations. Following solid performances at the first two events, but not what the team was expecting, the roster got reshuffled. Going into the MLG Winter Championship in Dallas, Impact's roster consisted of Karma, Parasite, Killa, and Mirx. This is where both the team and Karma himself started reaching new levels. They ran through the competition and took the tournament win. This success continued into the next 3 events with the highlight being the Call of Duty Championship where Impact won the grand prize of $400,000. During this streak of wins, Karma became known as the best player in the game. However, the success came to a stop at the MLG Spring Championship where Impact finished 2nd. Hoping they could bring back the success they had previously seen, the team stuck together for another go during Gfinity 1. Unfortunately, it got worse, as the team finished a disappointing 4th. Before the team arrived back in the states, Karma left Impact and joined EnVyUs.^{[ citation needed ]}

Team EnVyUs

Expectations skyrocketed immediately for the team with people expecting them to be capable of knocking compLexity off of their historic run. Unfortunately, this never happened as EnVyUs never achieved even a top 3 finish in the Black Ops 2 season. Going into the release of Call of Duty: Ghosts , EnVyUs still had high expectations of winning championships. At the first event of the season at MLG Fall Championship, the team once again came up well short of what was expected, finishing 6th. This was the last straw for Karma as he decided to make another team change. He left Envy and joined compLexity.^{[ citation needed ]}

compLexity

The roster change by compLexity following a tournament win at the MLG Fall Championship was met with much criticism; however, Karma quickly proved why he is still considered one of the best in the game as the team won their first two events together at UMG Philadelphia and Call of Duty Championship 2014. Following the win at the biggest championship of the year, Karma along with the rest of the team cemented themselves as the clear favorites going into every event. At the next major LAN event at UGC Niagara, the team finally looked beatable falling to an amateur team, XGN, in the first round of the Championship Bracket. However, the Losers Bracket didn't scare them, as they went 21–2 in map count on Sunday to go all the way through the Losers bracket and win the tournament. Following the tournament, Karma and his teammates announced that they were joining Evil Geniuses.^{[ citation needed ]}

Evil Geniuses

Following the switch over to Evil Geniuses, the team hoped to continue the same success. Unfortunately, they came up short at their very first event which was the MLG X Games Invitational. They took home a disappointing bronze medal. Despite the loss, the team was able to bounce back and win the International Playoff at the MLG Championship Anaheim losing only a combined 5 maps the entire event. Karma and the rest of the team hoped this would be a sign of more success for them. However, at Gfinity 3 the team lost to Team Kaliber in their group stage ensuring they can only have the second seed. They were placed in the Championship Bracket against FaZe who they would end up losing to, 3–0. The team had their worst placing to date finishing in the 5th-8th category. The next event was UMG Dallas but EG would not be attending due to Karma's wife giving birth and him wanting to stay at home with her. After Dallas, Karma announced that he was no longer happy with EG and would be leaving. After some speculation, it was announced that he was loaned to FaZe Clan for the remainder of the season but would remain on contract with Evil Geniuses.^{[ citation needed ]} He later left Evil Geniuses after he complained on Twitter of being criticized for missing the Electronic Sports League Gamescom tournament for the birth of his daughter. ^[5]

Optic Gaming

Damon "Karma" Barlow, joined Optic gaming in 2014, with the roster of, Seth "Scump" Abner, Matthew "Formal" Piper, and Ian "Crimsix" Porter, they became the most dominant team throughout the jetpack era (Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare, Call of Duty: Black Ops 3, and Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare.) With the Optic Gaming roster, he won his third world championship. He has cemented himself as one of the greatest Call of Duty players of all time.

Seattle Surge

On June 3, 2020, Seattle Surge announced that Damon "Karma" Barlow had retired from competitive Call of Duty. ^[6] Karma explained that he no longer enjoyed the game, specifically Modern Warfare, and thought his team could do better without him as he was "pretty bad." ^[7]

References

1. Rand, Emily (June 4, 2020). "Karma retires from professional Call of Duty". ESPN. Retrieved May 7, 2021.
2. Duwe, Scott. "Karma, OpTic Gaming's Newest Powerhouse".
3. "Enable on loan to OpTic, subbing for Karma at ESWC" Archived 2016-03-05 at the Wayback Machine . 15 April 2015.
4. "OpTic Karma - YouTube Channel Stats :: Let's Play Index". letsplayindex.com. 31 January 2010. Retrieved 2017-08-07.
5. "Evil Geniuses loses Karma over missing time due to birth of his child".
6. "Seattle Surge on Twitter: "Damon "Karma" Barlow has chosen to retire from competitive play. Congratulations to without question the greatest of all time."".
7. "Karma on Twitter: "I think this was something I needed to a do a while ago. Game wasn't really catered to me. Didn't enjoy running around with an mp5 and just had 0 desire to get on and play the game. I was pretty bad tbh and I think they could do better without me."".