For instance, the Civ games are basically Whig History: The Game, presenting liberal capitalism as the ideal end point for all societies. It even includes uncivilized “barbarian tribes” whose sole purpose is to be exterminated so you can take their land for the glory of capitalism.
I can’t remember if it’s ARMA 1 or 2 but you play through half the campaign and only near the end if you do enough optional quests you find out the US was accidentally supporting the fascist right-wing coup all along. Big ole whoopsie-doodle.
ARMA 2 almost reads like a deconstruction of post-9/11 war fever to me. It starts off with everybody on an aircraft carrier hooting and hollering about going to war to kill the baddies, and then the whole game is spent shooting at smudges in the far distance while both yourself and all of your friends can die instantly at any moment. Then the game ends and the whole war has basically accomplished nothing except making you feel terrible.
CoD realized that in order to do war propaganda well you have to be incredibly unrealistic.
To be fair I think 90+% of the playerbase has never played the single player, and a good half almost never play with the content the game comes with.
The single player is almost unplayable because the game is so unforgivingly lethal. I tried many times but getting tapped by AI I never saw, while realistic, is also very frustrating.
People who say this trying a milsim for the first time have no idea how to identify terrain features, base of fire, enfilade/defieldade, or even where the line is.
It takes some time to learn, but if you try play a milsim without knowing it it’s like trying to play chess without knowing the rules and without anyone showing you. You make an illegal move and instantly forfeit the game doing so, having no idea what you did or how to even understand what happened.
Like for instance, if at any point your silhouette is backed dropped by the sky, you fucked up majorly and are probably going to die within the next few minutes. And yet not knowing about that kind of stuff, you wouldn’t realize you were killed by something you did several minutes ago.
If you understand the basics of infantry combat the ai is insanely easy to outmaneuver and destroy. That’s why everyone plays multiplayer.
If you wanna enjoy games like that, I recommend having someone teach you the basics and reading field manuals to fill in the details. It’s kinda hard to learn just from a book because it’s all about how to apply simple concepts to real situations, which is the thing books are horrible for.