Fear is absolutely a basic concern in DayZ. Not fear of bodily harm, but fear of loss of time. Time is the only real-world variable that carries over into DayZ, so the fear of having to start over combines with the fear of 'losing a game.' These two factors obviously aren't life & death, but are very real to most game players. Saying "its just a game" is a a tautology: it means nothing. If "its just a game" why are you playing? Why do you try to avoid zombies? Why do any one thing over any other thing?
We have goals in all games, in DayZ a large goal is simply to stay alive. Fear of having that goal taken away is just as 'real' (given our pretty safe bodily existence) as fear of actual bodily harm. It isn't quite as serious, if you compare it to life/death but then, we are rarely if ever in life/death circumstances in our comfortable first world.
I've been thinking about this stuff a lot. DayZ captures a lot of fear pretty well, a lot of our responses to fear, but I still think its missing one thing: pain. On-going suffering. The closest we get is the long timer waiting periods where we literally can't do anything while bleeding out. In reality, in really dire circumstances, people fear pain even more than death if the pain is great enough. Obviously I'm not really arguing for a pain inducer peripheral be added to the standard gamer's rig, but you touched on it before: loss of control. I would guess that's the most "painful" thing that could happen, in an on-going sense, in a game like this. Being held captive, unable to make decisions etc.
We want to avoid these things really badly, so we set aside our other concerns such as ethics in order to preserve our pain and suffering-free state. When the choice is between causing someone else pain and (potentially) suffering it ourselves, we have no qualms about taking the shot.
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