Video Games and Guns in Space

Video games have gradually become an integral part of our 21st-century lifestyle (for both young and adults!) and certainly, space games can be considered as one of the most interesting segments of the whole video gaming industry. The reason is quite simple: space games can illustrate the scenarios beyond imagination through the most effective means of integration between reality and science fiction. The endless curiosity of human being for space, inherited from the primordial period, also plays the crucial role in building our immense interest on games that illustrate the universe through the lens of extensive imagination and factual depiction.

Of course, there are numerous space-based video games in the market and each one has its very own distinctive features that provide the gamers with diversified in-game experience. There are quite different types of storylines, character sets, gadgets, gears and weapons. This article’s scope is not enough for analyzing all those segments. So, we’ll stick to the games that use guns in space. In broad sense, guns (projectile weapons and the more advanced, futuristic armaments) used in space can be divided in two broad categories: the conventional ones that we know from our existing reality (i.e. Automatic rifles, Rocket launchers, missile launchers etc.) and the fictional ones which are created straight from our imagination – sometimes with bit of theoretical and practical base (i.e. laser weapons, plasma cannons etc.).

Let’s start with the Eve Online – a MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role – Playing Game) that provide the gamers with the scope of exploring a grand-sized virtual universe with more than 5500 solar systems (Eveonline.com, 2015). This game has a vast collection of guns – including turrets and launchers. Resembling the vastness of this game, each of the weapon segments has multiple variants – i.e. in case of turrets, there are energy turrets, projectile turrets and hybrid turrets. While energy turrets use lasers to destroy enemies, hybrid turrets launch projectiles in incredible speed through advance magnetism techniques. The projectile turrets, however, stick to the classic ‘launching solid projectile’ approach.  The launchers are a bit more conventional than the turrets available in this game as they can launch different types of missiles (i.e. Light Missiles, Cruise Missiles) and torpedoes to destroy the targets. So, it seems that EVE online is offering the energy turrets as the main futuristic weapon (Wiki.eveonline.com, 2015).

Now comes the awe-inspiring space engineering game –“Space Engineers”. Here, you can build space ships and space stations of various sizes and utilization (civil and military). Also, you can pilot ships through the vastness of space for resources and mine asteroids in due process (Space Engineers, 2015).

This game also avails the similar guns like EVE Online – i.e. turrets (Missile Turret, Gatling Turret) and Rocket Launcher. However, there are some different projectile weapons like Gatling gun and Warheads. As Space Engineers primarily focuses on the ‘engineering’ activity, the creation of such weapons is quite exciting because the player has to use different types of blocks (the key building material of this game) to build the guns of his/her choice (Space Engineers Wiki, 2015).

Elite Dangerous is another highly popular space adventure, trading, and combat simulating game. This game’s weaponry also resembles the guns of EVE Online and Space Engineers. Simply put, the players of Elite dangerous can use two different types of guns: Energy Weapons which use charging capacitors to shot energy blasts (Beam Laser, Pulse Laser etc.) and Kinetic Weapons that use classic projectile launching mechanism (Cannon, Railgun, Torpedo Pylon etc.). Also, there are different weapon mounting systems that enhance the effectiveness of these guns (IGN, 2015).

Let’s take a look to one final game: Dust 514, a first-person shooter that’s basically a side-setting of the EVE Online Universe. Created by the same developers of EVE Online (CCP games), this game has some brand new weapons (i.e. Ion Pistol, Flaylock Pistol, Bolt Pistol and Scrambler Rifle etc.). Using both energy and projectile guns, Dust 514 allows its users the largest armory with impressive space guns (IGN, 2015). All the players need is to grab the gears and start fighting!

As we’ve advanced through this article, it becomes clearer that modern space games are basically providing two key armament segments: energy guns and projectile guns. There are numerous variants of these two segments but in the end, their core operations are almost similar. Though the energy weapons seem quite futuristic, they have the backup of theoretical backgrounds and some real-life uses as different tools. For instance, Lasers are widely used in guidance systems and plasma torches are used for cutting metals (McKenna, 2013). The problem is, the existing technology doesn’t allow the creation of weapons from these due to some grand obstacles (i.e. the power required for the creation of a laser gun is immense and simply can’t be generated in such a concentrated manner within a hand-held device). So, we’ll be needing technological breakthroughs for making those energy guns a reality. However, the projectile weapons depicted in the space games are already our reality (in most of the cases) and can be improved by utilizing our dynamically evolving technological advancements.

So, let’s go back to the space games and explore the impressive armories. After all, science fiction is one of the grand roads to science and the guns used in those space games can be the guns that’ll be used in real-life future wars – who knows, right?

Disclaimer: This article was written for Project EduGaming. It’s republished here as the project website is not accessible these days.

Reference

Eveonline.com, (2015). [online] Available at: http://www.eveonline.com/?gclid=CLXdvfPrnsYCFSjMtAoduYsFqw [Accessed 20 Jun. 2015].

IGN, (2015). Weapons – Dust 514 Wiki Guide – IGN. [online] Available at: http://www.ign.com/wikis/dust-514/Weapons [Accessed 20 Jun. 2015].

IGN, (2015). Weapons – Elite: Dangerous Wiki Guide – IGN. [online] Available at: http://www.ign.com/wikis/elite-dangerous/Weapons [Accessed 20 Jun. 2015].

McKenna, P. (2013). Laser-plasma interactions and applications. Switzerland: Springer.

Space Engineers Wiki, (2015). Weapons. [online] Available at: http://spaceengineers.wikia.com/wiki/Category:Weapons [Accessed 20 Jun. 2015].

Space Engineers, (2015). Features. [online] Available at: http://www.spaceengineersgame.com/features.html [Accessed 20 Jun. 2015].

Wiki.eveonline.com, (2015). Weapons guide – EVElopedia. [online] Available at: https://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/Weapons_guide [Accessed 20 Jun. 2015].