Disclosure: I don’t play CoD anymore (I also think the series is overrated) and would like to see Activision/Blizzard burn.
You are, unfortunately, partially misperceiving and/or mischaracterizing the game and genre. Most are not murder simulators. Some certainly are (ex. Hitman and the skippable single player bits of one of the CoD games is) but those are the minority - the plots are generally revolving around military conflicts (whether military conflicts are by definition murder or not is another thing altogether though I would personally say that they are in the same ethical place) and the multiplayer is basically technological sports. Since the early-2000s at least, they have been propaganda supporting imperialism and normalizing military conflict, though GenZ seems to have wised up on that.
For the “real world guns” thing, they aren’t anymore with limited exceptions where a firearms company explicitly partners with them.
Additionally, the correlation between individuals playing violent video games and taking part on violence just does not exist in any research that has been conducted. Violent video games, in fact, allow people to work out aggression and frustration in healthy, non-destructive ways. Your anger is pointed in the wrong direction. If you want to target something that will have an actual impact, dedicate some energy to pushing fixes for wealth inequality and poverty. Yes, that’s harder to pin down but most things worth doing aren’t easy.
Disclosure: I don’t play CoD anymore (I also think the series is overrated) and would like to see Activision/Blizzard burn.
You are, unfortunately, partially misperceiving and/or mischaracterizing the game and genre. Most are not murder simulators. Some certainly are (ex. Hitman and the skippable single player bits of one of the CoD games is) but those are the minority - the plots are generally revolving around military conflicts (whether military conflicts are by definition murder or not is another thing altogether though I would personally say that they are in the same ethical place) and the multiplayer is basically technological sports. Since the early-2000s at least, they have been propaganda supporting imperialism and normalizing military conflict, though GenZ seems to have wised up on that.
For the “real world guns” thing, they aren’t anymore with limited exceptions where a firearms company explicitly partners with them.
Additionally, the correlation between individuals playing violent video games and taking part on violence just does not exist in any research that has been conducted. Violent video games, in fact, allow people to work out aggression and frustration in healthy, non-destructive ways. Your anger is pointed in the wrong direction. If you want to target something that will have an actual impact, dedicate some energy to pushing fixes for wealth inequality and poverty. Yes, that’s harder to pin down but most things worth doing aren’t easy.