Subnautica (Video Game) Drama
The people on r/subnautica are crashing out because the developers of the game have taken a stance on not allowing players to mindlessly kill fish for the fun of it. I don’t treat video games as real life, but I’m proud of the developers for not bending over backwards for the community and sticking true to one of the core principles of the game.
In case anyone isn’t aware, subnautica is a game where you crash land in the ocean on an alien planet and have to survive until you figure out a way to escape. Yes you can eat fish to survive but you cannot kill fish to defend yourself from predators. They have added other means to defend yourself like using a flare to distract the aggressive fish. Thoughts?
A quote from an article
Gallegos cited early feedback to Subnatica 2, in which players from one region in particular were extremely insistent that the developers introduce weapons. "I won't mention which country this was, but they were, like, overwhelmingly 'we want to manufacture weapons', and I was like, man, I feel like people got a very different vibe out of the original Subnautica than being a weapons manufacturing video game! But you know, it's very important to us to listen to the fans, but there are certain things that as a studio, we feel very, I guess, grounded on, and we don't want to deviate too far from the original intent."
He added towards the end of our call that "to me, it's not about the fact that there has to be zero implications of violence, just that we don't want them to go out with the express intent that I'm gonna go kill these things in the environment. In the same way that a diver might see a shark and be like, I'm gonna bop the shark in the nose, to make it turn away, but I still respect that the shark wanted to live."