A lot of these messages are shown through character dialogue, like the importance of brotherhood, courage and fighting the good fight.' But Gonterman believes the developers are in it for 'easy money.' Making light of a dreary and serious situation such as war is one thing, but to sell the experience as 'fun' is a different and controversial matter altogether. This is where the space you shoot from is small and your vantage point is large, making you less visible and hard to reach.' However, he adds that 'the stuff I do in the games is pretty common knowledge to a lot of gamers.' Do soldiers believe that games companies portray them fairly? Requesto says, 'I think the developers are trying their best to showcase the military in a good light. Another tactic that I use is cover and concealment. 'One thing I used was something called cutting the pie,' - a tactic that maximizes your distance on turning corners to minimize your exposures to threats - 'I only do that if there are a lot of enemies. It's more of how you can exploit the game's mechanics to be successful than knowing any real tactics about war.' Requesto, however, offers some small advice. 'My real-life combat training doesn't really help. We never did one-man missions, but we would go out in two, four, or eight-man teams, then split off into smaller groups depending on how many people we had and the mission task, but I never did a one-man team for an entire mission, it was too hostile.' While militaristic games may often miss their mark of reality, could a gamer benefit from using any real-world tactics out on the virtual battlefield? Andrada doesn't think so. 'I was in a recon unit and in a sniper section. You take care of your buddy and your buddy is supposed to take care of you.' Gonterman adds. No one would ever go out to conduct any part of an operation by themselves. 'In the military, we have a thing called the buddy system.there is always team accountability and awareness. The concept of lone-wolfing it, however, is not standard procedure. How accurate are these portrayals? According to Requesto, these four-man teams are common and are called 'fire teams'. Often these games will feature four-man teams and even lone-wolf missions. One depiction that these militaristic games often showcase is the use of small squadrons of soldiers. 'In a game, you know what to expect whereas in real life, the situation changes every day and you learn by going out of the wire all the time.' Army Staff Sergeant Brian Gonterman, who served one tour in Afghanistan, said that the enemy AI in games isn't sophisticated enough to behave like humans and that they work based entirely on systematic rules programmed by the developers. The cover and concealment concept is almost nowhere.' U.S.

Requesto adds, 'Often in these games, I would break cover and just shoot, most of the time I just dash forward and start shooting.

I just waste ammo like crazy in videogames.' Also, while games feature a huge variety of guns, Andrada points out that, 'most soldiers don't even get to see those guns let alone use them, because the military only allows a few service rifles to be used.' Due to these fundamental differences, many tactics in these shooters would 'never work in real life,' states Andrada.

'A lot of us learned about the theme of 'one shot, one kill' in order to save ammunition. 'Most of the time, I have a crazy amount of ammunition in these games however, in real life, the magazines only carry up to 30 rounds,' says Requesto. Though these games try to be realistic, most gamers don't realize that lugging around an unrealistic amount of bullets, weapons, and gear is hard work.

Call of duty realistic