Worth noting is that "kill the other team" is a blanket term that encompasses many different levels of violence. Yes, in some games you do actually kill people, but there are so many variations - in platformers you often just jump on their cartoon heads, in strategy games it's more about conquest, like playing Risk.
Looking through my own gaming library, there are a lot of completely non-violent games where you could class it as "mortal combat" - for example in Osmos you play a single-celled organism (sort of) trying to survive by absorbing those smaller than you and avoiding those bigger than you.
There are many games out there less violent than Call of Duty that kids could play to bond or make friends, but they get overlooked because they get lumped into a category, and then the media parade the most extreme examples from that category in front of us.
Looking through my own gaming library, there are a lot of completely non-violent games where you could class it as "mortal combat" - for example in Osmos you play a single-celled organism (sort of) trying to survive by absorbing those smaller than you and avoiding those bigger than you.
There are many games out there less violent than Call of Duty that kids could play to bond or make friends, but they get overlooked because they get lumped into a category, and then the media parade the most extreme examples from that category in front of us.