Linux Gaming

I don't know if the "general public," which as a concept sort of conceives society as a monolithic entity, when it very much is not, should necessarily condemn or not condemn any specific artistic theme in a piece of media, but I do think that the art a society produces reflects the ethos of large segments of that society and, to some extent, reinforces that ethos. To borrow from your example, I don't think someone is going to play Call of Duty and become a knife wielding maniac, but I do think they might play a video game where, for example, a bunch of terrorists have taken over a hospital in some unnamed middle-Eastern nation where American forces are engaged in a "peacekeeping operation" and the only way to get through a particular part of the game is to call in an airstrike on the hospital. A younger person playing the game might see this and then later on hear about military strikes against civilian targets (like hospitals) on the news and think "well, maybe there were bad guys in that hospital, like in my game." In other words, it has the potential to shift what a person perceives as a legitimate target of state violence. And I know that specific example itself is overly simplistic, but the point is that there are multiple avenues by which political ideologies and their component beliefs are reinforced and reproduced, and the media you consume is one of them.

I understand my own criticism of video games is unpopular with large segments of the internet. Especially places like Lemmy or Reddit where people reduce criticisms of the content of games to strawmen comparisons to delinquent parents and politicians trying to legislate video games into oblivion because they think they cause school shootings. But I think it's a valid and worthwhile contribution to most discussions of the medium.