Elite Dangerous goes Armageddon to deliver on the danger and explosions of space mining

Space miners are in the boring business. That’s the old joke - while shooting holes in asteroids may be profitable, it’s rarely much fun. Designers can only build so many mechanics, and in too many space games mining has been relegated to a simple diversion, with combat getting the majority of the attention. In Eve Online, mining is often perceived as the drudge work that keeps economies running while others engage in player wars and corporate espionage. Yet, historically, mining has been anything but boring. Real-life colliers have braved the risks of suffocation, roof collapses, gas poisoning, and coal dust explosions - the latter of which have, more than once, swallowed entire pits and everyone in them. Even now, mining is an extraordinarily dangerous profession - the kind undertaken by those with no other option. But outside the lore of the Dishonored series, which often tackles social inequality and exploited workers, it’s one that hasn’t been represented in games with any real sense of peril or gravity. It’s testament to the success of Elite Dangerous that, nearly four years after release, developer Frontier has dedicated the time and resources to do mining right. There’s no reason to believe the work would get any less terrifying in space, where the embrace of the vacuum is just one cracked cockpit away.