The people handwringing about combat games have obviously never played them and their complaints reflect that. War is brutal, violence is terrible, and when you hear that there is some army game where you shoot people, you naturally think thats terrible, and I don't blame them for thinking that from their gut. But its nothing like the experience of being in an army and shooting people and dealing with that of course. You are playing capture the flag or something like that; team deathmatches are kinda like a basketball game racking up as much points as you can in the time period. No one actually dies, they respawn in five seconds and try again. Its basically just a game of electronic dodge ball or tag, or even basketball if you squint. campaign shooting games feel like those carnival shooting games with the flashing lights and point values for different targets, especially games like call of duty where its just march through the campaign and rack up points for different levels.

That's all they really are when you remove the theming and look at the actual mechanics of the game. the mechanics aren't screwed up or morally bankrupt or anything like that, they are the same games we've always played of racking up points or moving an object across a playing field or something like that. It's probably the reason why the fps formula is so successful, it plays almost like the games we already like kinda like basketball (with deathmatch) or football/soccer (with capture the flag or assault style gamemodes moving some object offensively or defending as a team).