Board Thread:Wiki Development/@comment-27582015-20160110023649/@comment-31640232-20170331191720

I don't really mind there not being any "guns" in subnautica, but I just think the dev's reason for there being no guns is flimsy at best. They said this on reddit:

  "Dev Flayra; I haven't read all the comments here, but I'll chime in here, as I'm the main reason we don't have violent/weapons in the game.

Subnautica was being birthed right around the time of the Sandy Hook shooting. This was a particularly nasty shooting, although many people don't realize America has school shootings every day. Every. Single. Day.

(5/8/16 UPDATE: I meant to say "mass" shootings, not "school" shootings:

  http://www.gunviolencearchive.org/reports/mass-shooting andhttp://www.gunviolencearchive.org/reports/mass-shootings/2015)

Yet, for reasons I cannot understand, our people and the corporations that influence our country want to continue making it easy for people to get, carry and use pistols, semi-automatic and fully-automatic weapons.

I've never believed that video game violence creates more real-world violence. But I couldn't just sit by and "add more guns" to the world either.

So Subnautica is one vote towards a world with less guns. A reminder that there is another way forward. One where we use non-violent and more creative solutions to solve our problems. One where we are not at the top of the food chain."

Now, I'll sit here and debunk what this dev said about it being "easy" to get guns. As a gun lover, I can tell you right now, it's not. Even in North Carolina, a state that has relatively lax gun laws, to get a gun, rifle or pistol, you have to get a permit even to buy it. You go to the local sheriff's office, provide picture ID, pay a fee and fill out some paper work, then they will perform a comprehensive background check to make sure you don't have any criminal past, which can take any where from a couple weeks to a couple months. Then if that all checks out, they will give you a call when your permit is ready. Now, keep in mind that this permit is only for you to purchase the gun, in the case of a pistol you still need a conceal and carry permit which is even more difficult to obtain if you don't want to open carry and instead conceal carry. Keep in mind that in places like california and michigan, the gun laws are so strict, almost draconian, that its almost impossible to get any form of firearm as you have to jump through so many hoops that it is easier to just go and buy one in a back alley from a gang member. Which most people won't do because that IS illegal and they don't want to be anywhere near gangs. As far as automatic weapons go, they are pretty much illegal for civilians to own except for very specific circumstances.

Now, I would like you all to consider this, in states where all these mass shootings take place, well, these are usually the states with very strict gun laws. In these states, the only people really owning guns in the first place are ciminals and not good, honest, law abiding citizens. In the case of the Sandy Hook shooting, which while a very tragic event, had less to do with guns and gun violence, and more to do with mental illness and shear parental negligence.

That being said, I completely respect the devs descision to not include lethal weapons in the game even if I don't agree with the reason that they gave. Personally I believe they would have had much less problems if, instead of blaming gun violence and using the tragic Sandy Hook Shooting as an excuse to push an anti gun agenda, they had instead only said something like this:

example:"We don't want guns or lethal weapons in our game because it seems as though that's all modern games have become. We want our game to be something new and fresh where instead of just shooting the bad guys like in most survival games, you have to think through problems and survive in a dangerous place without taking the easy road and simply annihilating everything in their path. This game is aimed to be a survival/horror game, and we feel that it would lose much of that horror aspect if lethal weapons were included in the game. Lethal weapons would remove much of that heart stopping, terrifying danger that we want our game to invoke as that is what makes the game so challenging and fun."

I would have accepted that as a reason just fine and been in total and complete agreement.

 Honestly though, if we ignore all that other stuff, the only "gun" that would be of any use anyways would probably be a harpoon gun anyways. Most conventional lethal weapons wouldn't be effective in the water. Laser guns would be less than useless considering your IN THE WATER... The same would go for most projectile weapons, the water would cause too much friction for them to really be useful. I do think that they should incorperate a more damaging weapons than the stasis gun though, maybe something that uses sound, like a sonic weapon that you actually build with the Habitat Builder and can only be built in a base or the cyclops. It could be used to ward off the larger predators such as the Reaper Leviathan and the Sea Dragon and is only extremely painful instead of lethal.

 What do others here think?