>>722998617
I don't interpret it that way. I do think the idea is to make the player feel bad, but the purpose isn't simply to shame the player themselves for playing a video game, but rather to make them understand the moral gravity of war through a direct, interactive experience that only a video game can provide.
In other words, it's to re-sensitize you to killing and help you understand that your own government, and its own military, which is supposed to be fighting on your behalf, murdered civilians and laughed about it. The message is on a higher level than the game itself and the player, the game is just a vehicle to deliver that message.
If the message were simply "killing is bad even if its a video game" you get a shallow game like undertale for example.
Spec Ops is more about the war on terror, the message transcends the video game. The player is a participant in the tragedy, not because they pulled the trigger in the game, but because they stood by in real life while someone else pulled the trigger on their behalf. The player participated in a real-life society that committed those crimes against real people, most likely sleepwalked through it or didn't give a shit, and the game is supposed to wake you up and show you what's been happening.
The fact that other shooters were directly funded by the US military around that time only makes the message more apt. In that sense it can also be seen as a repudiation of propaganda, and anti-propaganda game in a propaganda-flooded genre.
TL;DR playing the game isn't the thing you're meant to be ashamed of, rather the game uses shame as a tool to draw your attention to the shameful things that are really happening around you.
