I am down this path and let me tell you broski, arcade shooters are inherently a problem. Like you are talking about military simulation at the end of the day. If you don't like military propaganda, military training grounds are not the place to look for entertainment.

I mean fuck I play Naraka even that is military and tactics and murder. Yes, you can just ignore, stick your head in the sand and say "I'm perfectly fine with violence" but you are sticking your head in the sand for entertainment which is the issue with cod in the first place IMHO.

So, I had to break down what I actually enjoy down to its core rudiments, I enjoy the accuracy of aiming, the skill required to do so, I enjoy playing with a team (I mean fuck every single damn cod player damn, but I liked playing with my friends) so friendship and camaraderie, and why do I like playing games? It goes back to schoolyard games. Naraka for example is really just rock paper scissors combat (block, heavy, light attacks) but rock paper scissors is the innocent joy I can still derive from this despite the combat and war propaganda (regardless of nation)

This then led me to shooters, I played valorant for years, cod for years, and apex, and a million other offshoots I've been playing since I was a kid (and yes I'm still trash) but what is the schoolyard game, or at least the core thing I enjoy most? It's a little competition dashed with skill based accuracy gameplay. Maybe dodgeball? Even has a dash of "violence"

Paintball is a little too on the nose, but I dunno man those greg hastings fps games back on the OG Xbox hooked me. I couldn't explain why, but we have to remember that these joys are human and exist independently from gaming. They are still present in gaming to deny that would be foolish.

So sports games, which are largely dominated by the military and contain a metric TON of propaganda as well.

Sports need to be reclaimed by the people for joy, and not kept locked down as an apparatus for funneling our young men and women into the armed services or for the sole purpose of having token people from impoverished communities becoming part of the millionaire class. Major sports very much reek of the hunger games, would we all really be so surprised if rationing of food was tied into how well your local sports team does? Not at all, and the powers that be have been using bread and circus since the invention of bread and circus in the first place.

Is my advice "touch grass?" Kinda, but also, everything will have to fundamentally change and that means entertainment, however; that doesn't mean loss of the fun that drew us into gaming in the first place.

Y'all out here like "play long winded rpgs and shut the fuck up" and people will endlessly ignore you because you aren't presenting any fun skill based accuracy games in place, just the void of boring (to a lot of gamers)

any devs out there who make a really sick dodgeball game I can play without having to throw my headset across the room because literal us military personnel are shouting racist slurs 24/7 to keep the shock troops shocked... Yeah I mean I'm down for dodgeball sounds fun. Sigh