I wrote that not too long after I woke up and rereading through it I could have explained some stuff a lot better. Your assumptions are more or less correct. The rightoid gamer ticks a lot of those boxes we both mentioned. It is a somewhat varied type of "gamer". Again I don't have a great word for it, it is a taste (if you can even call it that) in games I haven't seen anywhere else where the person isn't playing anything nearly as good as they seem to think they are, or isn't playing anything at all. Walking simulator wasn't a good choice for the descriptor. What I was poorly intending to convey is that they like games that are the pinnacle of uninteresting. What I should have said was working simulator. I know a lot of people here like turn based and top down clicker games, rts, tower defense etc. That stuff is exceptionally boring for me and is basically clicking a spreadsheet with a game skin on it, and then watching a cutscene you can move around a bit. CoD is quite fitting yes. I haven't bought or played one in a long time because it is quite literally the exact same thing every time. There is a free to play fps game called Delta Force that is a mix of battlefield and cod and its good enough for me to scratch that itch when I do get it here and there.

The reactionary gamer is also accurate. The "never playing anything" is another meme I have seen manifest on fedi specifically where some of the most outspoken people about the gaming as a whole has quite literally played nothing made after a certain point. Which sure, there is a lot of complete garbage, but there has also been some really good games. This is also part of the group that either doesn't have time to play anything or isn't compelled to spend much time playing anything anymore.

Also halo 2 was just me being a bit cheeky because it is pointed to as being the holy grail game by people on here, even though it is a fairly standard fps game with a pvp component. I've played all of the halo games a lot, despite what some people on here would assume, and they are just too simple for me. I played almost nothing but pvp games for years. I have virtually no interest in anything pvp at this point and on the pve side of things I need more than just basic shooting at ads. On top of the other stuff mentioned regarding mechanics, I also really want build depth. Ideally both. MMOs are really the main thing that satisfies what I want out of games for my main stuff. Gameplay can carry my interest much more than building can however. If a game has a good enough gameplay loop but a simple sandbox I can still play it. On the flip side if a game has extremely complex systems but the gameplay itself is lame, then I'm not going to bother.