How are used magazines just disappearing any more realistic?
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Because it prevents you from thoughtlessly mashing the reload key without penalty simply to top off a handful of spent bullets in your magazine.
Just disappearing isn't realistic. Some games, like the Arma series, have soldiers put the half-filled magazines back in their inventories for later use, and some mods allow for magazine consolidation.
Open Breach vs. Closed Breach
regarding the following text: "Another thing that is rarely simulated is chambered rounds; usually when a magazine-fed weapon is reloaded without being empty, a round will remain in the chamber from the previous magazine. This will mean after reloading you'll have a full magazine plus an "extra" round in the chamber; generally in a game the chambered round is ignored to allow for a Dramatic Gun Cock which would be pointless in reality since the gun will never have stopped being cocked. "
Closed breach weapons, like most assault rifles and semi-automatic pistols, return to a closed breach position between shots. This means that when first loaded, the shooter cocks the gun and the slide loads a round into the chamber. In this case, when ejecting a magazine (unless empty), there's a bullet in the chamber.
Open breach weapons, like machine guns and sub machine guns, when cocked, the slide remains pulled back. When fired, the slide moves forward, pushing a new round into the chamber and immediately fires it. Ejecting a magazine will not leave a bullet in the chamber. Nor do you need to cock the gun again.
Finally, for closed breach weapons there's a load assist. See "heat" fight scene where val kilmer presses a button on his M4 to load the weapon rather than cock it. Not sure how to put this into the text though.
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With open bolt weapons (I have personal experience with both types; living in Florida is a big boon to firearms knowledge), the user in-game will still sometimes be shown cocking the weapon; it seems as if removing the magazine caused the bolt to slam shut.
As for the "load assist", this is usually called a bolt catch. It's the same principle as the slide stop on a pistol: the bolt goes back and locks onto a little lever. Pushing down on the slide stop or pushing the bolt catch in releases this lever and causes the bolt to snap shut. It's much faster than racking the charging handle again, but for some pistols the user will find it preferable to simply pull the slide back a little and let it snap forward. I know that my thumb doesn't find all slide stops (like on a Glock) large or easy enough to press.
Oh hai TV Tropes
Why does the title say clip? That is completely wrong. They're called magazines, something entirely different.
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And "bullets" are wrong. Magazines (not clips) hold cartridges (not bullets). Bullet is a part of cartidge.
It appears a clever bit of writing was added to the description at some point, justifying the title as ammunition in such games being the equivalent of single bullet clips. Since clips are used largely to reload magazines with, this is also a great pun.
It probably says "bullet" for much the same reason it says "clip". The layman (Political Correctness says I should use layperson... sounds stupid to me) thinks of the thing that goes into a gun as a bullet. Casing, powder, primer, and slug.
I do agree that the title should probably be renamed to "One Cartridge Magazine", with alts for One Bullet Clip and One Bullet Magazine
A good book is all one needs to find enlightenment.
It works with the theme of the trope, so I say we keep the name. However, mentioning that "bullet" and "clip" are the wrong terms might be a good idea.
The note saying that in "Real Life" inserting a magazine on a loaded chamber (in a closed bolt weapon, presumably) is actually not advised and is often deleterious for the weapon or the magazine.
This is completely untrue. All firearms bar (possibly) some unique custom or sports variations, are specifically designed to be reloaded at any stable point in the cycle of manual of arms. If a firearm malfunctions or takes wear from inserting a mag with a closed bolt and round in the chamber, it's 1) a design unfit for use, and 2) somehow mysteriously designed so that the round in the chamber affects the mag, even though they are physically removed from each other.
Yes, there is sometimes an issue that makes inserting and locking magazines on a closed bolt slightly difficult — this is due to the spring pressure upwards (the bottom of the bolt has to push the top round down a little, against the mag spring at its stiffest). It is regarded as a minor flaw of a weapon system: you can and should design the action so that the bolt doesn't rub against the top cartridge on cycling at all, but only "catches" it on the forward stroke.
Simply put, and more generally: with firearms, you should be able to do regular things with the gun and expect it to work, always. If a firearm is not broken or suffered a serious malfunction (e.g. it has no foreign debris or stuck rounds inside), you should be able to rack it, remove and reinsert magazines, engage and disengage safeties and selectors, in any sequence, and expect it to function predictably, indefinitely. This is, in fact, the standard malfunction drill (rack, tap, bang: cycle the bolt, re-seat the mag, pull the trigger).