First announced last year, indie survival game Rust has finally starting introducing female player models to the game. And, in true Rust style, is doing so randomly.
Just like it did with race and…dick size, players are being assigned their gender based on their SteamID, which means there’s no way around it. Some of you will remain male. Others are destined to forever walk the land as a lady.
Given the factors involved, the move — like the game’s last player changes — haven’t exactly been met with universal acclaim. While many understand the motives behind the implementation (or just don’t give a shit), others aren’t happy at being “forced” to play as a character not of their choosing, or seeing a character they had been using suddenly change.
And before you think those complaining are just a bunch of whiny dudes, remember: the decision is binding and random for everyone, so women are ending up as dudes as well.
The decision to assign gender, rather than let players choose, is a direct response to what Newman feels is a bloat and prevalence of character creation in other games. As for why character traits are being mandated via SteamID, instead of something like a one-off choice, he explains:
We understand this is a sore subject for a lot of people. We understand that you may now be a gender that you don’t identify with in real-life. We understand this causes you distress and makes you not want to play the game anymore. Technically nothing has changed, since half the population was already living with those feelings. The only difference is that whether you feel like this is now decided by your SteamID instead of your real life gender.
In a world where plenty of games are being designed by committee, and community feedback is taken as gospel, I kinda like this “screw you, I made this” attitude.
Those who absolutely must make a change, though, can do so with this client-side fix; it won’t affect how other players see you, but it will let you choose what you see on your screen.
Comments
35 responses to “50% Of Rust Characters Are Now Women, Whether Players Want It Or Not”
Considering half the time I choose to play a female character anyway this wouldn’t really bother me at all. Not that I play Rust anyway…
What about body fat?
So just like real life then.
Good point. You don’t get to choose your gender, race or penis size when you’re born either. Those people who don’t like what this developer has done are always free to play something else.
havent played rust in awhile now but fairly sure he stated thats what his logic has been. You dont get to chose in real life so why not have the same in a game.
While I am not personally phased ( I dont play Rust any more and normally run female alts in games), I can see why some would be. This feature was not initially on the road map during the start of their early access. Some people like to feel connected to their character and others just have odd sensibilities.
It seems like they should offer refunds to those that are truly “offended” somehow.
My favourite part of real life is how every 6-12 months my gender/race/size changes at random.
Cattle Decapitation – Forced gender reassigmment
i dont play rust, but im not a real fan of this as as i will always play as a female character if given the option even though i am a straight white male in reality.
Would be better if it randomized every time you spawn, so you get a different experience each time.
I can just see the player suicide rates skyrocketing if that were the case.
I don’t think that would be a huge issue, because then if you found one you liked you’d be even more attached and death would mean something.
Thing is, the want to eventually remove name tags from the game. If that were implemented, nobody would know who is who.
I don’t really care about the gender I’m playing as, but I do care about the social justice bullshit being pushed by the dev’s.
It would have taken them more effort to code it to be unique to each steam id than randomising it on spawn, or just adding a couple of buttons to say what gender or race you want to be.
Saying “I don’t give a single shit if you have problems with your gender identity” is pretty much the opposite of the current vein of social justice bullshit to which I think you’re referring. Aren’t they more about how much everyone needs to care about everyone else’s problems with gender identity?
As a programmer, my guess would be that coding it to be determined by steam id would actually be incredibly simple – probably simpler than randomising it each spawn and definitely easier than adding buttons. But of course I can’t possibly know for certain and neither can you because we’re not looking at their code.
On first run it gets randomised, then has to store that data against that user id. Almost no different to random on first run.
And the SJW stuff is exactly as you described, its the devs pushing their morality on its playerbase. I don’t think there would be anywhere near the problem about ‘I’m playing as a chick’ if it wasn’t for the devs telling its userbase to fuck off and think of the women.
Uhhh I’m pretty sure that’s not how it works. It’s not storing a random result against a Steam ID – It’s using the ID as a SEED to get the same “random” number everytime, so there’s nothing to store.
They’re not telling their userbase “to fuck off and think of the women”. They didn’t implement this because of any social justice issues. All they did was add in a female model. Not because people were telling them too, not because they actually thought that it would make people feel more represented. None of that. They added it because it makes sense.
They already had support for picking character traits based on the steam ID, which was being used to assign skin colour among other things:
http://www.kotaku.com.au/2015/03/rust-chooses-players-race-for-them-things-get-messy/
As far as the argument about this being more difficult than randomising on spawn, the code could be quite similar.
For “randomise on spawn”, you could pull numbers from a random number generator and pick traits based on the results. To fix them based on Steam ID, just use a separate RNG for character creation and seed it using the user’s ID: you’ll get the same traits each time.
I saw no support for the changes in that thread either James.
Meh, they already have my money, I’ll still play it. But afaic, they can leave the snarky moral high ground out of it next time.
My point was that the support code for this kind of character generation has already been written. Integrating gender as an extra trait would have been similar work with either random or fixed traits.
Also, there is one area where the fixed traits might make the game implementation easier. With the system they’ve picked, the game client knows how to display each player based solely on the player’s ID. If they changed the traits on each spawn, or let users customise them, then the network code would need to transmit that data to everyone else.
I’m not fan of those who would rather push an agenda than make a good game, but I think you’re picking the wrong fight here.
That is to say, I don’t think this is a case of “social justice bullshit being pushed by the dev’s”.
This seems to me more like an interesting experiment. I don’t see it as making a point of “you don’t get to choose what you’re born as” or any sort of SJ thing. I don’t even think it’s a case of “all the women had to play as male characters, now some men will have to deal with the same thing”. It’s just a case of making the game more diverse.
What else is interesting is to see how people are able or are unable to cope with playing as someone that doesn’t look like them.
I wouldn’t even say it was done for diversity. I think it was done because it makes sense that a huge island wouldn’t be solely inhabited by guys.
Well yeah. I dunno. Yes.
By diversity I just mean, it’s nice to look at a rainbow than just one colour, like orange.
Orange is a shit color, fight me.
I don’t have any problems with a system that forces you to play a certain race/gender that you don’t want to (you’re playing that character, not yourself), in this case though it seems stupid that they tell people to accept the random character they have been given (as if real-life), then suddenly change half of them…
A better way would be to only bring these changes in on new created characters or (as Napalm237 suggested) assign a new character with each re-spawn.
Is this game mainly played in first or third person? If I remember correctly its mainly played in first person so what would it actually matter lol.
Literally the only time you see your character is when you’re in your inventory.
Yeah see I don’t really see why people get pissy, if anything I would rather watch a naked woman run around a virtual world than some dude with his dong out
Their reasoning is stupid, why not give players the choice to choose which gender they want? It’s not like there aren’t a lot of other games that allow someone to pick their gender.
It’s because that would take away from the whole purpose. They don’t want character customization. It’s set in stone after it’s been decided by the computer. They want to take control away from the player in that aspect. It emphasizes the lack of power and control that your character has in the game. Your character is very weak in comparison to other things in the world.
Ah ok.
For me I originally wouldn’t have cared until recently. … in games where you could character create I used to just make a generic cool looking character. In fallout 4. I spent some time. The guy is almost a mirror image of me. And it was kinda cool seeing me in all the cut scenes rather than a generic one. Now if all of a sudden it got changed without my control I would feel quite disappointed with the whole thing and I have grown some attachment to digital me.
Thing is, with Rust, you never were able to create your character. It’s always been out of the players control. There are no cut scenes for your character to be in. Literally the only time you see your character is when you’re looking in your inventory.
In that case who cares.
Exactly, it doesn’t matter.