At the very least, CSGO, and similar games and game-modes, nod in this direction

You awaken from the moment, not in a tense combat-zone, but in your front-room, watching some other guys play a videogame. You start yelling, nasty words that IGN's style-guide does not permit. Respawn modes? Yeah, you can play them carefully, but it just doesn’t feel this good, this real, when you’re effectively invincible. How could it? The consequences are so much less.

Of course , we use the word ‘real-death’ or (sometimes 'permadeath' though this often refers to more stringent penalties for failure) with the customary abandon of all videogame-mechanics argot. There’s nothing real about csgo keys it, not even in the sense of ‘pretend-real’. Being dead here lasts only until the new game begins, the long-term consequences being slightly less moolah in your wage-packet to spend on guns, grenades, gear.

It’s a combat simulation, but it can’t simulate actual combat. Such would be a foolish claim. Even so, soldiers say the two things really missing from military games are that they encourage silly tactical behavior, like running around in the open firing off shotguns, and that they fail to encourage the core army ethic of the buddy system. At the very least, CSGO, and similar games and game-modes, nod in this direction.