Bringing Gender Equality to the Apocalypse
April 12, 2016 8:23 AM Subscribe

Rust, a popular multiplayer survival video game, has just added female character models to their game. In an interesting twist, rather than being able to choose your gender, one is randomly assigned to your Steam account, permanently, when you first join. They did something similar previously with skin colour and body shape. Some players are not happy. (NSFW warning: screenshots contain pixelated CGI nudity, since players are dropped into the game naked and must, among their first objectives, find clothing)

"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," say the developers. "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."

posted by 256 (286 comments total) 68 users marked this as a favorite

Waiting to see if a secondary market springs up for Steam accounts with preferred demographic assignments.
posted by fraxil at 8:25 AM on April 12, 2016 [2 favorites]

i'm so glad they've finally implemented this! back when they announced it i'd just load up reddit threads and laugh laugh and laugh at dudes saying that having to play a woman would break their immersion. awww, poor dudes. that sounds rough.
posted by nadawi at 8:27 AM on April 12, 2016 [95 favorites]

Oh yeah, my understanding is also that this doesn't just apply to new accounts but was also retroactively applied to existing ones. So half the player base will have logged in to discover that they are now women.
posted by 256 at 8:28 AM on April 12, 2016 [4 favorites]

"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."

This line right here just made my whole rotten stupid day worthwhile.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 8:29 AM on April 12, 2016 [131 favorites]

This is just the best ever.
posted by verb at 8:31 AM on April 12, 2016 [1 favorite]

This is like a Christmas that wasn't even on the calendar. I want to [kiss / fist bump / hug / whatever] the developers that made this choice.
posted by komara at 8:36 AM on April 12, 2016 [3 favorites]

You think some players are unhappy now? Imagine if the developers made it so the female characters only got 78% as much loot/XP/points/item drops/whatever the game has as the male characters.
posted by zachlipton at 8:39 AM on April 12, 2016 [158 favorites]

developer Garry Newman (known also for Garry's Mod)

Irony?
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 8:42 AM on April 12, 2016

Another addition to the new fast-growing entertainment genre of MRA Horror, alongside Fury Road, the new Ghostbusters and the new Star Wars film.
posted by acb at 8:42 AM on April 12, 2016 [51 favorites]

"You think some players are unhappy now? Imagine if the developers made it so the female characters only got 78% as much loot/XP/points/item drops/whatever the game has as the male characters."

What would that accomplish?
posted by I-baLL at 8:43 AM on April 12, 2016

What would that accomplish?

Happy Equal Pay Day!
posted by zachlipton at 8:45 AM on April 12, 2016 [23 favorites]

It would probably annoy players if their gender resulted in less payment for the same work.
posted by Braeburn at 8:46 AM on April 12, 2016 [11 favorites]

KiA is trying to turn this into a "consent" issue. lol
posted by nadawi at 8:47 AM on April 12, 2016 [16 favorites]

What would that accomplish?

Realism.
posted by pwally at 8:47 AM on April 12, 2016 [19 favorites]

> What would that accomplish?

Some people don't think of things as real or important unless they themselves experience those things. So there's that.

Some people might appreciate having a different perspective. Some people might not appreciate it, exactly, but hey, new perspectives!

Or maybe I don't understand why or what you're asking, exactly.
posted by rtha at 8:47 AM on April 12, 2016 [26 favorites]

This really, really makes me wish I was a computer gamer. I may still buy it just to support this kind of awesomeness.
posted by smirkette at 8:48 AM on April 12, 2016

Why did the apocalypse make all the people bald? I'm bald in real life. I don't need to deal with that horror in a video game too. I don't care about gender, but gimme some flowing locks.
posted by mattamatic at 8:49 AM on April 12, 2016 [6 favorites]

Also now I'm annoyed I just bought the FFXIV expansion and can't budget enough time to get into this game too.
posted by Braeburn at 8:49 AM on April 12, 2016

I was going to head to Steam to buy the game just on principle, but all the reviews say it's a horrible game to play solo and I don't like clan/guild games. I haven't seen any Steam reviews complaining about the random male/female assignment so far, though.

Still, I'll probably buy it.
posted by tracicle at 8:49 AM on April 12, 2016 [3 favorites]

Some players are not happy

LOL
posted by Artw at 8:50 AM on April 12, 2016 [8 favorites]

Why did the apocalypse make all the people bald? I'm bald in real life. I don't need to deal with that horror in a video game too. I don't care about gender, but gimme some flowing locks.

*POOF* You now have long flowing back hair.
posted by srboisvert at 8:51 AM on April 12, 2016 [5 favorites]

/wonders what poor woman gamers will fixate on and attempt to implants in a storm of hate, this being pretty much an inevitability these days.
posted by Artw at 8:53 AM on April 12, 2016 [2 favorites]

This is pretty damn great.

There's a client-side workaround so people will not have to see themselves as female. It only affects what they see on their own monitor but.......let there be penis.
posted by the webmistress at 8:54 AM on April 12, 2016

The comments in that Motherboard article are making me laugh so hard. I thought I felt an earth tremor but it must have just been all the petulant boys throwing themselves to the ground in a tantrum. mrburns-excellent.gif
posted by billiebee at 8:54 AM on April 12, 2016 [15 favorites]

I've played a little Rust. Just a little, because it became clear very quickly that this was a game largely populated by griefers and jerks, who did their best to drive away anyone else.

So, I'm all in favor of Rust adding features like this that bother jerks exclusively.
posted by baf at 8:54 AM on April 12, 2016 [19 favorites]

Look, my digital avatar Whitey Grandschlong has been thoughtfully developed over the course of many years and if I can't inhabit his persona in Rust then I'm just not gonna play it at all.
posted by prize bull octorok at 8:54 AM on April 12, 2016 [36 favorites]

Why did the apocalypse make all the people bald? I'm bald in real life. I don't need to deal with that horror in a video game too. I don't care about gender, but gimme some flowing locks.

You've got cause and effect backward. Everyone went bald and immediately all rules of society broke down, leading to worldwide anarchy and murder.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 8:55 AM on April 12, 2016 [18 favorites]

"Some people don't think of things as real or important unless they themselves experience those things. So there's that.

Some people might appreciate having a different perspective. Some people might not appreciate it, exactly, but hey, new perspectives!

Or maybe I don't understand why or what you're asking, exactly."

So punishing people for playing as female characters would provide new perspectives?
posted by I-baLL at 8:55 AM on April 12, 2016

So they are upset they may have to be a woman, but aren't upset that they may have to eat another person? Priorities!
posted by Nanukthedog at 8:55 AM on April 12, 2016 [4 favorites]

Oh, now I'm scrolling way down the Steam reviews and finding the people freaking out about Compulsory Gender Assignment, so I'm tagging them all as "Funny". What else is there to do, since I'm one of the apparent 5% of female Steam users? Pfft.
posted by tracicle at 8:56 AM on April 12, 2016 [19 favorites]

So punishing people for playing as female characters would provide new perspectives?

Pretty sure there's a heap of documentation out there that playing as female characters in MMOs is already essentially punishing a player. This just brings out the intense absurdity of making that particular part of Gaming Culture appear to be anything but targeted harassment.
posted by griphus at 8:57 AM on April 12, 2016 [4 favorites]

> So punishing people for playing as female characters would provide new perspectives?

What? Who's doing the punishing? What is the punishment?
posted by rtha at 8:59 AM on April 12, 2016 [16 favorites]

It makes sense that some guys would be pissed, particularly since they've been playing as a guy and now their character has been forced to become something else.

Doesn't mean it shouldn't have been done though, hee hee.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 9:00 AM on April 12, 2016

Or maybe I don't understand why or what you're asking, exactly.

Just
Asking
Questions
posted by zombieflanders at 9:00 AM on April 12, 2016 [33 favorites]

I was responding to this suggestion:

"You think some players are unhappy now? Imagine if the developers made it so the female characters only got 78% as much loot/XP/points/item drops/whatever the game has as the male characters."

Which would discourage players from playing as women. So if you're a woman and you want to select a female character then you'll be discouraged since the difficulty will be higher. People on here seem to think this would be a good thing for some reason.
posted by I-baLL at 9:02 AM on April 12, 2016

plus I wonder who gamers would blame for their women characters being less effective

a) the patriarchy
b) women

hmmmm. HMMMMMMMM. I wonder
posted by prize bull octorok at 9:03 AM on April 12, 2016 [31 favorites]

People on here seem to think this would be a good thing for some reason.

People love to point and laugh when they think others deserve something.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 9:03 AM on April 12, 2016 [3 favorites]

That statement from the devs is amazing. *wild applause*
posted by Theta States at 9:04 AM on April 12, 2016

Why did the apocalypse make all the people bald?

Maybe it's secretly Riverworld.
posted by nom de poop at 9:05 AM on April 12, 2016 [8 favorites]

I think the 78% thing was mostly a joke pointing out that if people are this upset about the experience of having a female avatar, maybe they could give some thought to the experience of actually being a woman. I don't think anyone was honestly suggesting that making female characters earn less resources was actually a good idea for the game. It seems like a derail at this point.
posted by 256 at 9:05 AM on April 12, 2016 [50 favorites]

So if you're a woman and you want to select a female character...

You can't select your character's gender. It is assigned to you by the game. That's the whole premise here.
posted by griphus at 9:05 AM on April 12, 2016 [35 favorites]

Jokes! In my metafilter? What's the world coming. Don't you realise that naked pixels are srs bsns?
posted by Braeburn at 9:07 AM on April 12, 2016 [4 favorites]

Helloooo John Rawls! Gaming through the veil of ignorance. Elegant.
posted by clew at 9:08 AM on April 12, 2016 [12 favorites]

oh yeah, i would totally not suggest playing this game unless you know what you're getting into. it's best for most of us to just laugh from the sidelines. i applaud the developer but the player base is filled with dumpster fires.
posted by nadawi at 9:09 AM on April 12, 2016 [6 favorites]

I-baLL : The point is for this one game, players don't have a choice if they play as male or female. Thus the 78% less pay / increased difficulty wouldn't be something that would discourage some from choosing it.

However, for other games, it would seem to me that making the female gender collect only 78% the money/experience would bring about the more skillful players. Heck, Dark Souls has so many challenge runs around low-level builds for the skillful. It could be the thing that only the lamers take the "easy" male characters.
posted by nobeagle at 9:10 AM on April 12, 2016 [10 favorites]

It's brilliant that the devs designed the game so that complaining about it makes it inconsistent with GamerGate et. al's past complaints.

Speaking of which here's the best summary of GamerGate's motivations I've seen yet:

gg assumes that all game devs share their values thus a trans npc is "pandering" to third parties, but huge boobies are not

from @Eevee
posted by mccarty.tim at 9:10 AM on April 12, 2016 [16 favorites]

I genuinely hope more developers of MMOs that become populated by assholes start poking at them in-game like this.

"It's Tuesday, so you know what that means: anyone who kills a player within 5 minutes of that player spawning has their character model replaced with a giant butt."
posted by griphus at 9:11 AM on April 12, 2016 [19 favorites]

It should be noted that this isn't just a lot of guys whining about being assigned female. It seems a number of female players are also sad/mad because they've been waiting for a female model for a while (some current players, some people waiting for the female models to start playing), and now that they are there, they were assigned male.
posted by BecauseIHadFiveDollars at 9:11 AM on April 12, 2016 [19 favorites]

I think the 78% thing was mostly a joke pointing out that if people are this upset about the experience of having a female avatar, maybe they could give some thought to the experience of actually being a woman.

I'm willing to bet that the players assigned to female characters will receive enough harassment - because there's nobody worth picking on more than a man who's been forced into a female role! - to get at least some flavour of a woman's experience.
posted by clawsoon at 9:13 AM on April 12, 2016

if people playing the game - no matter their gender - are upset about the automatic assigning of traits, they aren't very well versed on what this game is about.
posted by nadawi at 9:15 AM on April 12, 2016 [3 favorites]

So, you can't select anything about your character? Gender, skin colour, hair, weight, height, etc.? Huh, that's neat. Do these characteristics have much effect on actual gameplay?
posted by GhostintheMachine at 9:16 AM on April 12, 2016

Given what I know about Rust's player base of The Governor-levels of post-apocalyptic jerks, this seems like a pretty clever way to try to forestall all. the. fucking. grief. that would occur if they added gender selection.

Is there any way to use your Steam ID to find out what you'd look like in Rust?
posted by robocop is bleeding at 9:16 AM on April 12, 2016 [1 favorite]

I wouldn't want to play this game. Designing characters is a lot of fun and I tend to get picky about it. I do play female avatars often though so I would be more likely to get screwed over by being assigned male here. I do appreciate the innovation though, cool stuff.
posted by Drinky Die at 9:17 AM on April 12, 2016 [1 favorite]

your character model changes literally nothing except for how other players react to you. you can't even see it most of the time because rust is a first player game. which makes the freaking out all that more hilarious.
posted by nadawi at 9:20 AM on April 12, 2016 [27 favorites]

/wonders what poor woman gamers will fixate on and attempt to implants in a storm of hate, this being pretty much an inevitability these days.

what does this even mean
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 9:22 AM on April 12, 2016 [4 favorites]

I think it was an attempt to communicate, "I wonder which woman Gamergate will pick as a target to fixate on over this."
posted by Drinky Die at 9:24 AM on April 12, 2016 [11 favorites]

Like when fans of Fire Emblem found that they couldn't manipulate the breast size of adolescent characters in the NatAm version of the latest chapter, so they picked a random PR manager at Nintendo, and attempted to get her fired.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 9:27 AM on April 12, 2016 [16 favorites]

That... is much better than the interpretation I had in my mind. Phew.
posted by pwnguin at 9:27 AM on April 12, 2016 [5 favorites]

"I hereby honestly suggest it."

And I don't understand why you would want to punish people for playing as female characters.
posted by I-baLL at 9:29 AM on April 12, 2016

I think you mean "succeeded in getting her fired," TWS.
posted by The Bellman at 9:29 AM on April 12, 2016 [19 favorites]

It's a damn shame this isn't open source, so that I could covertly sneak into the git repository overnight and add a filter to the dialog process that causes all communication from a male to female player to be prepended with "Actually..."

#include <mansplain.h>
posted by Mayor West at 9:30 AM on April 12, 2016 [22 favorites]

And I don't understand why you would want to punish people for playing as female characters.

Because maybe just maybe the knuckle-dragging Neanderthals might draw a real-world lesson from how the world actually treats women. It's not punishment.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 9:33 AM on April 12, 2016 [26 favorites]

And I don't understand why you would want to punish people for playing as female characters.

Inorite? It's almost like you could extend this sentiment to society and culture in general!
posted by zombieflanders at 9:36 AM on April 12, 2016 [30 favorites]

Like when fans of Fire Emblem found that they couldn't manipulate the breast size of adolescent characters in the NatAm version of the latest chapter, so they picked a random PR manager at Nintendo, and attempted to get her fired.

And then actaully got her fired, and after that have persisted in harassing her and her family... It never stops.
posted by zachlipton at 9:37 AM on April 12, 2016 [9 favorites]

Few comments deleted; everyone take it down a notch and try to engage in good faith rather than with sarcastic one-liners.
posted by Eyebrows McGee (staff) at 9:44 AM on April 12, 2016 [3 favorites]

Okay, that may have been a bit harsh. I apologize for that. I'll write out what I mean: Imagine you're a woman who wanted to play as a female character and you finally get it randomly assigned to you. Now you find out that, oh, wait, the game is harder for you now because you're a female character. Note that it's "some players" that are complaining not "most". Making female characters have a more difficult time in games would be punishing players for picking female characters. Why do this?

"Inorite? It's almost like you could extend this sentiment to society and culture in general!"

So instead of addressing it in society and culture you'd rather just make female characters' lives harder in games? So women, who would probably choose to play as female characters, would have a harder time in games? What would that accomplish?
posted by I-baLL at 9:46 AM on April 12, 2016 [2 favorites]

Because maybe just maybe the knuckle-dragging Neanderthals might draw a real-world lesson from how the world actually treats women. It's not punishment.

Look, I get where this feeling is coming from, but this is misplaced and is not appropriate.

It's one thing to change a trivial aesthetic component. (Sorry, that's all it is, in strict game terms — larger social context not withstanding.)

Arbitrarily assigning a gender and then adding penalties due to this arbitrary assignment, after users have purchased the game is going too far. I get the point that people are trying to make; I understand pay disparity is a thing, but reducing the actual playability of a game is an abuse of your customers.

Also, how exactly would it feel to be a woman, who maybe doesn't want to play a female character, and now you're stuck with a cruel reminder of things YOU PROBABLY ALREADY DAMN WELL KNOW ABOUT AND EXPERIENCE?

As I said, I get where the notion is coming from. I think, at best, it is a terrible idea in any execution. Pull that on a free-to-play game, and there's less room to complain; I still think it's not a good idea.
posted by Dark Messiah at 9:51 AM on April 12, 2016 [8 favorites]

Okay, that may have been a bit harsh. I apologize for that. I'll write out what I mean: Imagine you're a woman who wanted to play as a female character and you finally get it randomly assigned to you. Now you find out that, oh, wait, the game is harder for you now because you're a female character. Note that it's "some players" that are complaining not "most". Making female characters have a more difficult time in games would be punishing players for picking female characters. Why do this?

I don't know how many times you can be told no one's getting "punished" for anything here, except maybe for being self-centered misogynist assholes. The comment about 78% was meant to demonstrate the punishment women get in real life.

So instead of addressing it in society and culture you'd rather just make female characters' lives harder in games? So women, who would probably choose to play as female characters, would have a harder time in games? What would that accomplish?

It. Was. A. Fucking. Joke. One that is doing exactly what you claim it's not. Go re-read the comment.
posted by zombieflanders at 9:53 AM on April 12, 2016 [24 favorites]

I think if it was genuinely harder to play as a woman, you'd probably get some substantial number of (male) gamers who'd start playing it off as them being even more hardcore for actually surviving that way, and then you'd have people complaining that they couldn't actually choose to be female. I don't think that type is actually self-aware enough to draw any kind of conclusions between the game mechanic and the real world; it'd just end up with "haha men are actually better at being women than women are" or something.
posted by Sequence at 9:55 AM on April 12, 2016 [2 favorites]

It's one thing to change a trivial aesthetic component. (Sorry, that's all it is, in strict game terms — larger social context not withstanding.)

I'd just like to point out the intense level of privilege that gets to utterly disregard the larger social context.

Video games have assumed an enormous importance in leisure/entertainment time in our society. As such, we can really demand that they serve more than the same old racist, sexist, queerphobic bubblegum--same as has been demanded in Hollywood, for example.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 9:57 AM on April 12, 2016 [4 favorites]

Look randomly assigning half the population to earn 78% of what the other half earns is a terrible stupid game mechanic. It's a terrible mechanic in the game called The Workforce, and it would be a terrible mechanic in this game. Can we please stop pretending this would be a good idea for any reason other than schadenfreude? There aren't actually two sides to this argument we're pretending to have.
posted by 256 at 9:58 AM on April 12, 2016 [4 favorites]

Yeah I think my drive-by snark made a left turn somewhere well after I bailed out of the car. The idea here is that people can't choose their gender in this game; it is assigned to them at "birth" (ignoring trans* here, which isn't a part of the game, among the other ways in which this is not real life). My point was that people are furious over an entirely cosmetic character modelling change that they can't really even see (since the game is first person), so imagine how they'd feel if some more of the practical everyday baggage that comes with presenting as female also came with that change.

I wasn't really suggesting the game should punish female characters, let alone female players, with less loot (but again, you don't get to choose your gender in this game, so it's not about punishing actual women who choose to play female characters). I just thought it was an interesting thought experiment in taking the devs' new feature one step further toward modeling some of what goes on in the real world. I've never played Rust and have no idea how well the idea would work from a game design perspective.
posted by zachlipton at 9:58 AM on April 12, 2016 [17 favorites]

I think some people need to remember that there's nothing we at Metafilter can do to change the game.
posted by rebent at 9:59 AM on April 12, 2016 [6 favorites]

not super relevant, but i think any excuse is good enough to link DanielFromSL
posted by p3on at 10:01 AM on April 12, 2016

loot/XP/points/item drops/whatever the game has as the male characters.

As I understand it, this is all a moot point. Rust is more of a characters v. environment v. each other kind of deal - there's no XP or points. Loot crates are available to anyone who can get to them. Any hypothetical 78% would have to apply to crafting or combat, which would send a weird female characters aren't as capable message.
posted by zamboni at 10:01 AM on April 12, 2016

OK, I tell you what: we'll compromise. You get to pick your gender at start-time, but you don't earn any gamer score for accomplishments made by male characters, because you're playing it on easy mode. Also every character gets the same walking/running/idle animations
posted by Mayor West at 10:01 AM on April 12, 2016 [3 favorites]

Actually I think you'll find that it was Chris Redfield who had 78% of the inventory slots of Jill Valentine, proving that sexism is a myth.
posted by nom de poop at 10:03 AM on April 12, 2016 [5 favorites]

can we drop the 78% derail? and maybe stop arguing with people who have never shown concern for women?
posted by nadawi at 10:05 AM on April 12, 2016 [29 favorites]

nadawi is correct, please drop the 78% derail; and everyone who's pissed off maybe take a deep breath before posting.
posted by Eyebrows McGee (staff) at 10:06 AM on April 12, 2016 [4 favorites]

Making female characters have a more difficult time in games would be punishing players for picking female characters. Why do this?

You are layering a hypothetical scenario on top of someone else's hypothetical scenario in order to make some sort of sideways argument about something I don't understand and it seems like a lot of work
posted by beerperson at 10:06 AM on April 12, 2016 [18 favorites]

What a hilarious decision. I'd missed the earlier stuff about body shape (down to genital size) also being generated from your Steam ID. What a lovely subversion.

Is the game Rust fun? Like the minute to minute play? I've never played one of these survival MMOs and am sort of curious. But it also seems to be a mix of stressful and tedious.
posted by Nelson at 10:08 AM on April 12, 2016

fffm, take a break from this thread. Thanks.
posted by Eyebrows McGee (staff) at 10:10 AM on April 12, 2016 [1 favorite]

Has gamergate agreed on which woman needs their life destroyed over this yet?
posted by Theta States at 10:11 AM on April 12, 2016 [6 favorites]

A few thoughts :

I haven't played Rust, but some commenters have said that there is a 'best' body type available - small and dark-skinned, so that you are less likely to be seen at night. Since this couldn't be chosen previously, it's a bit of a wash within the discussion of gender, but your assigned body does matter.

Rust is an early-access game, which means you are warned that you should expect the game to drastically change after purchase.

Many game developers are conscious of the fact that they're providing a power and/or control fantasy for players. They are tend to be very aware of the fact that, if control is removed, they will get plenty of blowback, because players expect for this fantasy to be provided. I don't see this aspect of gaming discussed much outside of a developer bringing it up on their own. Regardless, I'd bet that Garry and co. knew exactly what they were doing here.

(I've personally gotten very angry at having apparent control removed. Back in the original Dragon Age game, it was hard to understand which dialogue option would result in flirting with a character. I'd choose what appeared to be a friendly, positive line of dialogue, and then my Warden would say something that just feels wrong and then I start yelling WHY ARE YOU HITTING ON MORRIGAN OH MY GOD NOT MORRIGAN and I reload a save game because there are precisely three boinkable characters in Dragon Age and they are 1. Alistair 2. Wynne 3. NOT MORRIGAN. For Christ's sake, anyone but bloody Morrigan. This stuff may go deep?)

I personally still consider 'realism' a dodge - this is fiction, and authors always make a choice on what to focus on. That said, the developers themselves don't seem to be making that claim!
posted by suckerpunch at 10:11 AM on April 12, 2016 [7 favorites]

I don't know if it was intentional, but Fallout has done the best job I've seen of averting the "everybody plays as a dude" trope. My first playthrough of every game in the series is female, because a) the voice acting is invariably better and b) there are in-game perks that let you do more damage/charm & sexify/have an easier time persuading members of the opposite sex to do your bidding, which is nominally gender-neutral but in practice ends up being much more useful for female characters, because all the game's Big Bads are men. (Or male mutated hellspawn from the radioactive wasteland. Same diff.)
posted by Mayor West at 10:11 AM on April 12, 2016 [5 favorites]

Thinking about it some more, I'll guessing this change will make things more toxic for women short, as male characters will react to them in stereotypical fashion and things will get ugly. So players assigned the female role will come to despise the being a female character, based on how others react to them.

That's just a guess though. Be interesting to see what happens over time.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 10:15 AM on April 12, 2016

So players assigned the female role will come to despise the being a female character, based on how others react to them.

So, you know, basically like being an actual woman? In the world?

FWIW often that process leads to feminism, which a lot of these dudes could surely use.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 10:16 AM on April 12, 2016 [14 favorites]

ignoring trans* here, which isn't a part of the game, among the other ways in which this is not real life

But there could be real-life transgender people who play Rust (or want to play the game) who may be unhappy that they can't play as a gender they feel more comfortable as.

I'm not necessarily saying it's a large percentage of the population, but I would imagine it definitely fits some of the population. I know, speaking for myself as a transwoman, I would find it pretty disheartening to have male avatar thrust upon me when there was also a female model available but just due to my SteamID I wouldn't be able to use it. Yes, it's just a game and you don't see yourselves, but still... sometimes these small symbolic choices make a difference.
posted by BecauseIHadFiveDollars at 10:17 AM on April 12, 2016 [4 favorites]

Plenty of guys have been playing women avatars in MMOs since the genre has been around and back into MUDS. In my experience, I haven't been faced with any toxic behavior when doing so. You dodge a lot of the potential for dealing with creepy assholes when you can just say, "I'm a dude," in chat and especially in voice chat. Unfortunately, I don't think there will be many learning experiences from this.
posted by Drinky Die at 10:20 AM on April 12, 2016 [2 favorites]

Assassin's Creed: Syndicate does a nice job of having both a female and male protagonists with some modest gameplay differences. I enjoyed it, particularly the ability to switch between playing as either of them. (They're twins sharing the story.)

On having an "optimal body" in Rust, I thought this article about Rust penises was hilarious: "players who have bigger penises will actually get the short end of the stick; taking a crotch shot in Rust deals more damage than a hit to some other areas of the body." I can't imagine it matters much in practice, but it is funny.
posted by Nelson at 10:20 AM on April 12, 2016 [6 favorites]

if it is important for someone to choose their character traits, rust is not the game for them. this has been true the whole time, they just keep adding more variables. before this latest change, every character model was male. some talk about this like some choice was taken from them. the choice was never offered and there was never an honest expectation that it would be offered.
posted by nadawi at 10:25 AM on April 12, 2016 [12 favorites]

komara: This is like a Christmas that wasn't even on the calendar. I want to [kiss / fist bump / hug / whatever] the developers that made this choice.

That would apparently be Garry Newman, maker of the successful Half-Life 2 mod that became a stand-alone sandbox game, Garry's Mod.

Best thing from that Polygon article? This body image switch was a quick tweak based on existing modifiable character traits, which Newman finds odd to be such an issue:

"Right now we have skin colour, faces, head shapes, arm size, leg size, height, head size, jaw size and penis size. We'll be adding sex some time in the next month. It's hard to say what other opportunities will present themselves in the future, a lot of this stuff is 5 minute changes to add some variety to the game."

So, is Rust turning into some weird social experiment where immutable physical differences are permanently mapped onto an unsuspecting player base? Newman brushed aside the question.

"To us it's pretty interesting that it's an issue at all," he said. "Player are kind of spoilt. They hate not being able to do things. It's how we've been bought up in games.

"I don't actually believe people behave differently to different races in game right now, because there's no minorities and people are segregated — everyone is scared of everyone else. I am pretty confident that if we found a way to separate races into different villages, then gave one race power over another, we'd start to see some events closer to the world we live in.

"Similarly, I'm more interested in seeing what happens when we add the female model. Whether women will get attacked more because they're perceived as weak, or whether they'll get attacked less because they're perceived as vulnerable. That stuff is interesting to me."

posted by filthy light thief at 10:27 AM on April 12, 2016 [6 favorites]

Note that he didn't say that there is any strength associated with genders or races, that it's all about the perception of other users.
posted by filthy light thief at 10:27 AM on April 12, 2016 [2 favorites]

My son plays this game, and I looked over his shoulder the other day to see he was playing as a black woman. (We're both male/mutts-who-pass-for-white) I didn't realize it was a random assignment, and told him it might be interesting to see how other players reacted to him, and if they treated him differently.
To his credit, he was pretty apathetic about what body he had, and carried on just doing what he always does in the game. Which is basically Minecraft meets Lord of the Flies.
posted by bashos_frog at 10:28 AM on April 12, 2016 [7 favorites]

I wouldn't want to play this game. Designing characters is a lot of fun and I tend to get picky about it. I do play female avatars often though so I would be more likely to get screwed over by being assigned male here.
This. Although I generally pick whatever has the fanciest stuff or better voice acting.
posted by lmfsilva at 10:29 AM on April 12, 2016 [1 favorite]

I'm not necessarily saying it's a large percentage of the population, but I would imagine it definitely fits some of the population. I know, speaking for myself as a transwoman, I would find it pretty disheartening to have male avatar thrust upon me when there was also a female model available but just due to my SteamID I wouldn't be able to use it. Yes, it's just a game and you don't see yourselves, but still... sometimes these small symbolic choices make a difference.

Oh absolutely, and I wasn't trying to dismiss that part of it, but was more trying to express that the game is working at a fairly simplistic level here, and that comparisons to the real world (which I was sort of doing with the 78% crack) only go so far. I might well argue that this change is intended to troll gamer bros to make a point about gender equality, but it does so at the expense of people who, for all sorts of reasons, want if not need their in-game avatar configured a certain way.

It sounds like the designers of Rust have, as part of the game design, made some very conscious choices against character customization (taking away a choice being a classic design move). That's an interesting mechanic, but it is one that people will take different things away from depending on what personal experiences they're bringing to the table.
posted by zachlipton at 10:30 AM on April 12, 2016 [2 favorites]

"Similarly, I'm more interested in seeing what happens when we add the female model. Whether women will get attacked more because they're perceived as weak, or whether they'll get attacked less because they're perceived as vulnerable. That stuff is interesting to me."

This nags at me a bit. Should you run what are essentially social experiments on players without expressly stating you're running an experiment? I personally don't believe the simple act of exchanging money should allow Garry to get his Milgram on without your consent.
posted by suckerpunch at 10:33 AM on April 12, 2016 [1 favorite]

Trolling is an art.
posted by ethansr at 10:33 AM on April 12, 2016 [5 favorites]

I haven't played Rust, but in my understanding you die a lot when starting out, right? So wouldn't you cycle through a bunch of different randomly generated characters? Or does your SteamID generate the same avatar over and over?
posted by kittensofthenight at 10:34 AM on April 12, 2016

I don't love the way they put it, since you can read it as women all long to be men, which is ridiculous. But I like the concept and the exposing of misogyny.
posted by agregoli at 10:36 AM on April 12, 2016 [1 favorite]

...should allow Garry to get his Milgram on without your consent.

I agree with you basically but don't think this is an example of that, unless you count the entire genre of MMO survival early access games as psychological experiments. I mean they basically ARE Stanford Prison Experiments (with zombies, dinosaurs, or in this case random bald avatars.)
posted by kittensofthenight at 10:40 AM on April 12, 2016 [4 favorites]

rust is in early access and the social experiment part has been an explicit piece for as long as i've been following it. the idea that people aren't 'consenting' is ridiculous.
posted by nadawi at 10:41 AM on April 12, 2016 [11 favorites]

An MMO is already a Skinner box, all they're doing now is just messing with the wallpaper.
posted by griphus at 10:41 AM on April 12, 2016 [14 favorites]

kittensofthenight - the character model is permanently tied to your id (unless he chooses to change that later but there's no indication he will).
posted by nadawi at 10:41 AM on April 12, 2016

This nags at me a bit. Should you run what are essentially social experiments on players without expressly stating you're running an experiment? I personally don't believe the simple act of exchanging money should allow Garry to get his Milgram on without your consent.

This is part of the feature-set of Rust, though. When I saw this posted on Mefi, I was surprised, because it was old news to me. I had heard about this a while back, and realized that it's new only because the gender feature was finally rolled out.
posted by explosion at 10:43 AM on April 12, 2016 [3 favorites]

Yeah, in a way Rust is already a giant experiment in that vein. It's particularly interesting that it's this huge exploration and building game where the environment is only so dangerous. There's a huge advantage to working cooperatively with other survivors you come across to build shelter and gather shared resources, etc. But the fact that any of them might randomly kill you to take your stuff means that there's this constant paranoia and incentive to shoot first.

I mean, it's not explicitly a game about killing other players. It's a game about surviving in a somewhat hostile environment when you start with no food, tools or clothes. But every player that finds and picks up a weapon suddenly seems to turn into an apex predator.
posted by 256 at 10:44 AM on April 12, 2016 [2 favorites]

Metafilter: basically Minecraft meets Lord of the Flies.
posted by Confess, Fletch at 10:46 AM on April 12, 2016 [8 favorites]

I don't love the way they put it, since you can read it as women all long to be men, which is ridiculous. But I like the concept and the exposing of misogyny.

That bugged me too. I think their comment can somewhat charitably be interpreted as "whatever you think about the experience playing as your assigned gender, other people have felt that way too in real life," but I definitely read it the way you did too.
posted by zachlipton at 10:46 AM on April 12, 2016 [2 favorites]

Learn to overcome the crass demands of flesh and bone, for they warp the matrix through which we perceive the world. Extend your awareness outward, beyond the self of body, to embrace the self of group and the self of humanity. The goals of the group and the greater race are transcendent, and to embrace them is to achieve enlightenment.

- Chairman Sheng-ji Yang, "Essays on Mind and Matter"

AKA

Gamers need to chill out on this or else there's gonna be a nerve staple'n like you won't believe.

- Chairman Sheng-ji Yang, "Essays on Mind and Matter"
posted by robocop is bleeding at 10:54 AM on April 12, 2016 [2 favorites]

That bugged me too. I think their comment can somewhat charitably be interpreted as "whatever you think about the experience playing as your assigned gender, other people have felt that way too in real life," but I definitely read it the way you did too.

I've been interpreting this as "Previously, when everyone was assigned a male gender, there was a 50% chance that you would play as a gender not your own. Now, that we've implemented a female gender, there is a 50% chance that you will play as a gender not your own." In essence, overall disappointment has not changed, but it has shifted.
posted by suckerpunch at 10:55 AM on April 12, 2016 [24 favorites]

Yeah, that's how I read it too.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 11:00 AM on April 12, 2016

... We're trying not to sexualize the nudity in Rust," says [Facepunch founder] Newman. "That's easy for the male model because there's nothing sexy about a limp penis, in fact it's probably got an inverse sexual property. With boobs that's different maybe."

I think this is all an interesting experiment in gaming, but it's disappointing that Newman still clearly assumes everyone's a straight guy.
posted by fritley at 11:08 AM on April 12, 2016 [4 favorites]

Personally, I take offense at that flaccid attack on limp penises.
posted by griphus at 11:10 AM on April 12, 2016 [6 favorites]

to be fair, i'm a queer woman who sleeps with men (well, a man) and i find the dicks in rust to be hilarious not sexy.
posted by nadawi at 11:11 AM on April 12, 2016 [4 favorites]

IME guys playing female toons is such a common thing in multiplayer games that they rarely get treated like actual women. More often than not people just assume you're a guy regardless of the gender of your avatar. Once people actually identify themselves as IRL women, then they can start expecting either the m'lady treatment or blistering misogyny.

In over 15 years of being a man who almost exclusively plays MMOs under female avatars, this has been my experience as well. "There are no girls on the internet" is a thing that many people seem to genuinely believe, despite extensive evidence to the contrary.

This is also why I think voice chat is one of the more toxic innovations in multiplayer gaming, because anybody who has a female-sounding voice (regardless of their actual gender identity in the real world) will get singled out for harassment in a way that doesn't happen the same way with female avatars typing words into a chat box.
posted by tobascodagama at 11:16 AM on April 12, 2016 [7 favorites]

Eh. I can see why this is a thing that frustrates people, because they game as an escapist fantasy, and taking character creation elements out of that breaks some of the fantasy for people.

I mean, I get the shadenfreude people are having here of "Haha, you have to cope with being on the other team now!" but I don't... I dunno. I get that it's a thing people have, but it's not something -I- have. Then again, I switch up in games depending on mood, and I don't think of "the experience of playing a cross gender character" as especially relevant to actually experiencing what the other gender deals with in real life.

That said, the community reaction is pretty toxic, but that's not exactly an unpredictable variable. The community for lots of games is pretty toxic, and almost always also reacts negatively to change.
posted by Archelaus at 11:22 AM on April 12, 2016 [2 favorites]

This nags at me a bit. Should you run what are essentially social experiments on players without expressly stating you're running an experiment? I personally don't believe the simple act of exchanging money should allow Garry to get his Milgram on without your consent.

I'm not sure that's a very accurate comparison. I mean, Rust was already a Lord of the Flies world where roving bands of savages murdered defenseless naked people to steal their cans of beans, or hell — just for lulz. The environment itself is a kind of social experiment, a sandbox.

The deeper issue is that this blowback is coming from a culture that thinks nothing — nothing! — of games that feature cookie cutter stubbly-white-dude protagonists. Indeed, the argument made against female characters in games has always been that it shouldn't matter as long as the game is good. Predictably, though, that rule seems only to go one direction: White Dudes are "neutral" and other races and genders are some kind of crazy social experiment being foisted on the playerbase.

These players are not being "experimented on" any more than non white dudes are being "experimented on" when they play, say, Far Cry.
posted by verb at 11:30 AM on April 12, 2016 [14 favorites]

taking character creation elements out of that breaks some of the fantasy for people

But from what I understand, nothing has been taken away, because Rust doesn't have what we think of as character creation--that is, players don't get to choose traits. They're randomly assigned, and this is just another randomly assigned trait being added to the game.

If you're looking for an escapist fantasy where you can play a character you've designed, you're not playing Rust anyway.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 11:33 AM on April 12, 2016 [9 favorites]

Eh. I can see why this is a thing that frustrates people, because they game as an escapist fantasy, and taking character creation elements out of that breaks some of the fantasy for people.

yes. this his how a fairly large segment of the gaming public have felt for almost the entire history of games - for many of us, we've always had to see our so called escapism through a white male face. there was also no expectation that character creation would be on the table for this game so nothing here has been lost.
posted by nadawi at 11:35 AM on April 12, 2016 [29 favorites]

As the personification of a Norse God, I have been greatly upset at the lack of Norse Gods in games. Yes, my muscles are a sight to behold, as can be said of so many white, male heroes, but my locks are golden and flowing! And I am not sporting two days of stubble, but a full and dense beard of gold! Even if I were to be a mercenary seeking revenge or a thief in the shadows, I would still hold to my true appearance.

Game makers, right this wrong or face my wrath!

(In less cheeky words, what nadawi wrote.)
posted by filthy light thief at 11:46 AM on April 12, 2016

As a gamer, I have to say there's a huge difference between the game having only one character that everyone is stuck with, or a game where every time you die, you roll up a new character, and a game where you are stuck permanently with a character you may hate, and even worse, other people have better characters, the one you may want, forever, and there's nothing you can do about it. You actually have less ability to fix it than actual real life.

This is not fun. I will not buy this game where I can't choose to play a woman just because some developer assholes want to troll the dudes.
posted by corb at 12:22 PM on April 12, 2016 [2 favorites]

they didn't do this to just troll dudes. this is an integral part to the game they've been making from the beginning. it's not for everyone and i've even suggested in this very thread that people don't play it, so i fully support not getting it, but it's misunderstanding the random assignment of traits to say the sole purpose is trolling misogynists - it's just a funny effect of the already stated rules of the game.
posted by nadawi at 12:27 PM on April 12, 2016 [17 favorites]

If only players who felt they had the wrong body type in the game had the option to transition to one that they are more comfortable with, except that (A) most people are super judgey about that decision, (B) half the game developers keep posting about how they should remove the feature, and (C) it takes a lot of money and time to physically change the character's body...

Trolling is an art.

Don't you mean, "trolling is a art?"
posted by Foosnark at 12:40 PM on April 12, 2016 [6 favorites]

But it sounds like it hasn't been, right? First people were nondescript, then they added race and face and gender. So I'm just imagining buying this game, and enjoying it, and then "surprise, you look like your rapist and can never change it ever. Thanks for your $20."
posted by corb at 12:40 PM on April 12, 2016 [1 favorite]

This is not fun. I will not buy this game where I can't choose to play a woman just because some developer assholes want to troll the dudes.

Ok. You should only spend your money (and your time!) on games that give you the features that you want.

That doesn't mean that this game shouldn't work the way the devs want it to though. It just means that you won't buy it.
posted by sparklemotion at 12:42 PM on April 12, 2016 [3 favorites]

This is also why I think voice chat is one of the more toxic innovations in multiplayer gaming, because anybody who has a female-sounding voice (regardless of their actual gender identity in the real world) will get singled out for harassment in a way that doesn't happen the same way with female avatars typing words into a chat box.

my "I don't have a mic sorry" excuse could only hold out for so long in a somewhat competitive, team-based MMO environment

funny thing is tho once i finally got voice the whole team thing went up in flames anyway because the revelation that I'm a girl made the 'team' i had pretty unbearable so

i like this idea, i think it's a great thing
posted by suddenly, and without warning, at 12:43 PM on April 12, 2016 [2 favorites]

But it sounds like it hasn't been, right? First people were nondescript, then they added race and face and gender.

The game is in Early Access. The randomly-assigned character avatars have always been an intended and advertised feature. It's just that certain avenues of randomisation were not in the game until recently, because the dev team had not gotten around to them yet.
posted by tobascodagama at 12:45 PM on April 12, 2016 [2 favorites]

About it being a side effect:

They actually say one reason why they do random assignment, and it's not to troll dudes. Their eventual goal is to have in-game characters diverse enough that you can recognize other players by how they look.

As a gamer, I know that when you're allowed to choose how your character looks, there are always more and less popular options, and the characters end up being less diverse than the options allow. There are more male characters than female characters; there are more light-skinned characters than dark-skinned ones; maybe five out of the ten hairstyles are popular. Facial features tend to skew toward the most "attractive."

I enjoy character creation and probably wouldn't enjoy Rust, but random assignment of traits is something that has been in the game from the beginning. It's not like they're taking something away. You were assigned male at first. Now they added another random trait, and you can be assigned male or female. You were never going to be able to choose which you played; choice was never part of the game.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 12:47 PM on April 12, 2016 [6 favorites]

First people were nondescript, then they added race and face and gender.

Everyone was a White Male initially, so not "nondescript" at all, no. Very particularly, uh, descript, just not diverse.
posted by griphus at 12:48 PM on April 12, 2016 [20 favorites]

Here's what else the developer has to say about this. For context, it's a paragraph that comes right after the one mentioned in this post ("We understand this is a sore subject for a lot of people... ")

This is really just the first pass of an ongoing rework of the player model. I’ll continue to add variations over the comings weeks which means you’re probably not stuck with your new face forever. We’ve got a decent synced workflow between the assets I make in Zbrush and the assets you’ll see in-game now, so it opens up a lot of scope to easily add or change features without a great deal of technical faffing in-between.

posted by Brandon Blatcher at 12:50 PM on April 12, 2016 [1 favorite]

if people don't like things about a game changing broadly, they shouldn't buy into early access games.
posted by nadawi at 12:50 PM on April 12, 2016 [8 favorites]

When I said nondescript, I meant from what I understood, people didn't even have faces.
posted by corb at 12:53 PM on April 12, 2016 [1 favorite]

surprise, you look like your rapist and can never change it ever. Thanks for your $20

since it started out as all white men, it was way more likely people would get character models that look like their rapists in the beginning. besides, don't like your 'permanent model' now? wait a few months and it'll likely be reshuffled again when another model is rolled out.
posted by nadawi at 12:53 PM on April 12, 2016 [10 favorites]

corb, I appreciate your statement, but I think that may be over stating the graphics of Rust which, in terms of the character models, are barely up to 'Oblivion with nude mod' standards.

Then again I really dislike games where the focus is on PVP conflict and would recommend that anyone concerned about those kinds of triggers avoid MMOs in general unless you find a group of friends/server that specifically moderates abusive behavior. I find PVP in games, and MMOs in general, to bring up a lot of stress and anxiety which are not why the way I have fun playing games. So I can't imagine playing one of these games at all, with the constant threat of harassment or bullying or otherwise triggering behavior. That's a huge problem itself, which I think the developers of Rust are addressing in a novel if not ideal way. Unless I'm completely misunderstanding this post.
posted by kittensofthenight at 12:54 PM on April 12, 2016

I mean, I get the shadenfreude people are having here of "Haha, you have to cope with being on the other team now!"

I think you're misunderstanding the schadenfreude. It's the schadenfreude of "Most games I have to play a dude whether I want to or not; in this game everyone has to play an arbitrary gender whether they want to or not."
posted by straight at 12:56 PM on April 12, 2016 [1 favorite]

if people don't like things about a game changing broadly, they shouldn't buy into early access games.

I don't know how many times this needs to be repeated or emphasized, but THIS. It's not a victim-blaming or consent issue, and if you can't (or won't) understand that, at least stop attempting to twist this around to be one.
posted by zombieflanders at 12:58 PM on April 12, 2016 [7 favorites]

KiA is trying to turn this into a "consent" issue. lol

It's already sort of come up, but i give it maybe two weeks before all out war is declared and:

1. They undo this, likely over some bullshit reason GG pushed(probably stemming from the "but what about women who want to play as women/what about trans people!" angle to try and give their BS some legitmacy)

2. Despite some huge rallying call to do the above, it blows over.

Regardless of what route this takes i bet someone is going to get doxed and severely harassed. I have no idea what exactly it is about it, but i swear some really stupid assholes play this game and i wouldn't doubt they overlap with GG. It's like adult versions of FPS griefers from the 2000s.
posted by emptythought at 1:11 PM on April 12, 2016 [1 favorite]

if people don't like things about a game changing broadly, they shouldn't buy into early access games.

True, but I suspect some people didn't think things could change this broadly.

Few people sigh up for early access thinking "WOO HOO I'M DOWN FOR WHATEVER." There is some sort of implied understanding that certain things won't change, right, like the premise or plot or character. Which is fine, just really interesting to see where some people drew lines that they probably didn't know they had.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 1:11 PM on April 12, 2016 [3 favorites]

If I sign on for an early access game that promises me a dungeon crawler, and halfway through development they change it to Princess Horse Adventures, I'm probably gonna want my money back.

(I'm not equating that change with this one, but the argument that "Early Access means -anything- can change feels pretty off, to me)
posted by Archelaus at 1:14 PM on April 12, 2016 [2 favorites]

Few people sigh up for early access thinking "WOO HOO I'M DOWN FOR WHATEVER."

Pretty sure Garry's Mod, Newman/Facepunch's one thing they were known for before Rust, can safely use exactly that phrase as a tagline.
posted by griphus at 1:15 PM on April 12, 2016 [3 favorites]

The message from the devs, which is placed even above the price and description of the game, reads:

“We are in very early development. Some things work, some things don't. We haven't totally decided where the game is headed - so things will change. Things will change a lot. We might even make changes that you think are wrong. But we have a plan. It's in our interest to make the game awesome - so please trust us.”

If you can't be arsed to read that but can get worked up over how the game is being developed, the problem isn't with the devs.
posted by zombieflanders at 1:20 PM on April 12, 2016 [6 favorites]

True, but I suspect some people didn't think things could change this broadly.

you sound, uh, concerned for these people you imagine exist
posted by beerperson at 1:22 PM on April 12, 2016 [11 favorites]

Damnit, someone has to care!
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 1:26 PM on April 12, 2016

i feel like a lot of people don't follow early access/alpha development? because games absolutely have fully changed what type of games they are (genre, style, the works), some games have never really become playable, some games regularly wipe out your high scores or progress. and all this predates streams early access - anyone who signed on to minecraft in alpha and are still playing can attest to just how much a game can change. as for rust specifically, they have always been upfront about how this game started as a bare prototype and would change from the foundation up many, many times.
posted by nadawi at 1:43 PM on April 12, 2016 [3 favorites]

While we can certainly discuss Early Access expectations in general, Rust's developers specifically have loudly, clearly, and repeatedly stressed how they're willing to change 'whatever,' if they think that will make for a better game

I think you overestimate how much the majority of Early Access adopters follow every breathless word from a developer. If I bought a zombie game and then suddenly there were no zombies, I'd be furious too. And I cheerfully play The Long Dark, which has seen a lot of shifts - but the shifts have been tinkering with the game to make it better, not changing what the hell the game was in the first place.
posted by corb at 1:53 PM on April 12, 2016 [2 favorites]

I think you overestimate how much the majority of Early Access adopters follow every breathless word from a developer.

Then they do not get the most basic fundamentals of Early Access. This shouldn't be difficult to understand.
posted by zombieflanders at 1:54 PM on April 12, 2016 [6 favorites]

then i really just honestly suggest you stay away from early access games unless you've researched them a bit. there are a lot that really do have huuuuuuge shifts. they also say right on the purchase page that the game won't be staying how it is. if people want to buy without reading anything on the page they hit the pay link from, that's pretty much up to them.
posted by nadawi at 1:57 PM on April 12, 2016 [7 favorites]

Similarly, I played a lot of Sunless Sea (which had a major gameplay shift in how combat worked), Invisible Inc and Darkest Dungeon through the Early Access cycle. I really think shifts of the magnitude you're talking about are the exception and not the rule.
posted by Archelaus at 1:58 PM on April 12, 2016

I severely doubt anyone upset about this is upset about any kind of violation of the spirit of early access.
posted by Artw at 1:59 PM on April 12, 2016 [10 favorites]

So what is your take on how paying to be a beta tester should work?
posted by griphus at 2:02 PM on April 12, 2016 [2 favorites]

I'm personally tickled pink. It's not like anyone's being forced to play... and why would you play a game that wasn't fun?
posted by mikurski at 2:02 PM on April 12, 2016

So what is your take on how paying to be a beta tester should work?

Honestly, probably refunds if one of the changes makes it so that you feel you can no longer continue with the game.
posted by corb at 2:03 PM on April 12, 2016

Yeah at this point, we're detailing something fierce over a minor disagreement, so probably best to drop it. People can feel however they want about this.

Curious to see if this changes the game's dynamics though, and if so, how.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 2:04 PM on April 12, 2016 [1 favorite]

Honestly, probably refunds if one of the changes makes it so that you feel you can no longer continue with the game.

Even if you were fully warned such a change could happen? How is that different from monetarily punishing the devs for doing their job (i.e. continuing to develop and make changes to a non-retail version of a game)? This would make the game returnable at any time, for any reason and at that point the beta testing may as well be free (which, IMO, it should be but that's a whole 'nother argument.)
posted by griphus at 2:08 PM on April 12, 2016 [1 favorite]

we're talking about skins on first player view characters. changing the way the rocks look would be a bigger change for the player. if the argument is that the players are going to be bigger jerks because now there are female skins...well, i can only assume some people haven't already watched some just play videos or read anything about the rust community.
posted by nadawi at 2:19 PM on April 12, 2016 [6 favorites]

This would make the game returnable at any time, for any reason and at that point the beta testing may as well be free (which, IMO, it should be but that's a whole 'nother argument.

I mean, you know I got my start in beta testing in text adventures, so I am admittedly much more used to free beta testing, or at least buying your beta testers coffee or something, than pay-to-test, and much more on that side. I get that paid beta testing helps the development continue, but ultimately, I think it's a poor model, especially when you're changing stuff on such a significant scale as this. I also think though that the goodwill you would circulate on this would encourage more people to pay to test in the first place, if they knew they weren't going to be out much on a screwy shift.
posted by corb at 2:22 PM on April 12, 2016

while i rarely participate in it, the early access program seems to be a resounding success and lot of people do seem to like buying into the development cycle. i don't see a lot of confusion from people who think they're buying a finished product. if someone is the kind of person who would feel cheated because of, say, character skins change, they should probably wait until games are out of early access.
posted by nadawi at 2:29 PM on April 12, 2016 [6 favorites]

ultimately, I think it's a poor model, especially when you're changing stuff on such a significant scale as this

Reskinning an element of a pre-release game is shockingly insignificant
posted by beerperson at 2:50 PM on April 12, 2016 [10 favorites]

Reskinning an element of a pre-release game is shockingly insignificant

So, if a developer decided that they really wanted to get a political view out there, and made it so all building models now had posters campaigning for said view (for example, "Abortion is Murder!" with accompanying pictures of aborted fetuses), people should be cool with that because it's just a reskinning of an element and that's shockingly insignificant?

Technically it may be insignificant but some choices have definite symbolic significance for some people. So yeah, getting refunds "monetarily punish[es] the devs," but if some decision now no longer makes it a game people want to support, why should they feel the need to continue to support it?

(Also, I should say that while I don't play Rust, I actually think this idea of randomization of people is neat and it's interesting to see where it goes. But I totally understand why people might be pissed if things were changed suddenly after having made a character, etc. )
posted by BecauseIHadFiveDollars at 3:07 PM on April 12, 2016 [1 favorite]

what
posted by beerperson at 3:08 PM on April 12, 2016 [13 favorites]

so like i know that female is in many ways a marked category and that some will find it jarring and will think the inclusion of female characters is "political."

but like, female bodies are not political statements in themselves.

putting female bodies into a game is not the same as putting anti-abortion posters into a game in so many ways.

it's not an illuminating comparison.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 3:15 PM on April 12, 2016 [27 favorites]

But I totally understand why people might be pissed if things were changed suddenly after having made a character, etc. )

You don't make a character in Rust. It's made for you.
posted by Jalliah at 3:17 PM on April 12, 2016 [6 favorites]

So, if a developer decided that they really wanted to get a political view out there, and made it so all building models now had posters campaigning for said view (for example, "Abortion is Murder!" with accompanying pictures of aborted fetuses), people should be cool with that because it's just a reskinning of an element and that's shockingly insignificant?

Yeah, it's exactly like that, except that in this case the political message being plastered over the game is the tautological "Random populations are random."

I mean, I don't want to be that guy but the idea that white male player avatars are neutral while other avatars are a message is the heart of white/male supremacy*. Not like, "waving nazi flags and shouting epithets at women" showy stuff, but the heart of it — the assumption that white dudes are a sort of bedrock for humanity and that everyone else must justify their presence.

Now, some of the followup ideas that folks have joked about here would certainly be political commentary — reducing the resources women-avatars receive, changing the stats for avatars based on race, stuff like that. But none of that has happened and none of it is being proposed. The "politics" is being brought to this situation by the players of the game, not the creators.

* Point of order: I'm not saying you're a white/male supremacist, just that the presupposition of normalcy/neutrality for a particular gender and race, while demanding that others justify their presence, is itself a political point of view that elevates the so-called neutral type above all others.
posted by verb at 3:21 PM on April 12, 2016 [29 favorites]

Alright -- let's, for the sake of argument, take the "developers are making a political statement" thing at face value and say that adding a bunch of pro-life signs, or swastikas, or whatever is the equivalent to putting boobies on some people. it's so not for reasons already discussed above that will be repeated by other people more eloquent than me again in this thread I'm sure.

So yeah, getting refunds "monetarily punish[es] the devs," but if some decision now no longer makes it a game people want to support, why should they feel the need to continue to support it?

This isn't an ongoing monthly subscription like WoW or Eve. There is no continuing support from the consumer except that they continue to play it (and maybe talk it up/give positive buzz). The players paid for early access to a game still in development, and they got it. If they don't like how the game gets developed, they can feel free to make that clear to the devs, and stop playing.

Those same players can then also choose not to purchase games (or early access to games) from these devs in the future because they don't like their development philosophy. Free market, QED.
posted by sparklemotion at 3:25 PM on April 12, 2016 [4 favorites]

I'm not saying they are equal, I'm just saying the significance of something might differ wildly between two people. So to say "oh it's just a model, it's no big whoop, get over yourselves" minimizes that some people might be pissed about it for a variety of reasons, some which may have nothing to do with misogyny.

I just guess I feel they could have handled this better, maybe offer it up to people "Hey, all new players will have a 50 percent chance of being either gender, but people who have been here, you have a choice whether or not you want the possibility of a change, but know it is irreversible." People feel ownership of their characters, even if they are just virtual.

Anyway, if a player isn't happy, and the game is just in "early access" and something changes that they find significant that they don't like, I'm not sure why it should necessarily matter if it punishes the devs monetarily. If the game isn't really a released product, I'm not sure people should feel obligated to complete their purchase. It would be nice if they would (I would!), but I don't think people should be forced to support something they don't want anymore.
posted by BecauseIHadFiveDollars at 3:32 PM on April 12, 2016 [1 favorite]

they did complete their purchase when they put the early access game in their cart and went through the payment system. they purchased early access and they got it. they didn't purchase being happy with the dev's decisions through every step of the way. if people could get refunds whenever for whatever reason, believe you me that would be gamed in such a way to punish developers who make things like 'gone home.'

no choices were taken away because no choices were ever offered. i guess some of these complaints make sense more than a year ago before different skin colors were introduced, but at this point it seems everyone should know there is a strong possibility of their characters getting rerolled.
posted by nadawi at 3:39 PM on April 12, 2016 [12 favorites]

They're not being forced to support anything. And punishing the devs for people ignoring several different and distinct layers of disclaimers and messaging from several parties seems pretty ridiculous.
posted by zombieflanders at 3:42 PM on April 12, 2016 [1 favorite]

I just guess I feel they could have handled this better, maybe offer it up to people "Hey, all new players will have a 50 percent chance of being either gender, but people who have been here, you have a choice whether or not you want the possibility of a change, but know it is irreversible." People feel ownership of their characters, even if they are just virtual.

It sounds like what you're saying is that the problem isn't the randomness, but the implementation of the randomness at this point in the development cycle, after players had been told it would happen but before some had created their characters.

As others have pointed out, Early Access games in general and multiplayer sandbox games in particular are VERY frequently modified to hangs or even erase and reset characters before final release.

This angry outburst isn't happening in a vacuum, either. It's happening in a subculture that has consistently attacked and dismissed anyone who said they wanted something more than white dudes for gaming avatars. They are commonly accused of being whines, not real gamers, "radical activists," etc. Thag context — in which white dude characters are neutral by others are an inherently political act, a violation of consent, a horrible slap in the face, is important to remember.
posted by verb at 3:51 PM on April 12, 2016 [7 favorites]

Also, for the record, it's useful to remember that much at the outrage towards people who were interested in more diverse representation in games came from people who said they were "Interfering with the artistic vision of the developers." Again, predictably, apparently white dude avatars are artistic vision, but anything else is politics.
posted by verb at 3:55 PM on April 12, 2016 [8 favorites]

I think this was a poor design decision. It strike me as a white-dude idea: that gender doesn't matter, because hey, dudes played Lara Croft. Would a female developer have come up with this notion of adding a female model and not letting people choose it if they wanted it?

I don't think the push for diversity of player characters is supposed to mean "show them to me but don't let me play them."
posted by zompist at 3:56 PM on April 12, 2016 [1 favorite]

so like i know that female is in many ways a marked category and that some will find it jarring and will think the inclusion of female characters is "political."

but like, female bodies are not political statements in themselves.

Literally no one here is arguing that the inclusion of female characters is political. What people are arguing is that forcing people - including women - to play in the wrong gender when the choice exists to play in the right gender, as a way of making people think about how gender works in videogaming, is quite clearly political.
posted by corb at 3:59 PM on April 12, 2016 [1 favorite]

If the game isn't really a released product, I'm not sure people should feel obligated to complete their purchase. It would be nice if they would (I would!), but I don't think people should be forced to support something they don't want anymore.

What they are buying is an Incomplete Product, the incompleteness and mutability are part and parcel of early access. It's the trade off for getting to play it NOW instead of when it is actually done. If they don't want it anymore after a major change, they don't have to play it, but they didn't rent the game, they bought it in the incomplete state that it is in and agreed to the fact that the game may change in ways they don't like. Why should the devs lose money they made because someone doesn't like the direction the game is evolving in when "this game may not go in the direction you want it to go in" is part of the contract for Early Access, and why should the devs lose money on all the associated costs with having a player on an MMO server who after a year (or however long past Steam's refund grace period) of using server resources decides they don't want to participate anymore AND that the devs shouldn't be compensated for the time they spent playing the game and enjoying it.
posted by griphus at 4:00 PM on April 12, 2016 [3 favorites]

if gender were the only trait you couldn't choose, then that argument would make some kind of sense. but you literally can't choose a single character trait. it is fascinating how this change is seemingly even more distressing for some than the random skin color assignments that happened a year ago.
posted by nadawi at 4:02 PM on April 12, 2016 [19 favorites]

why should the devs lose money on all the associated costs with having a player on an MMO server who after a year (or however long past Steam's refund grace period) of using server resources decides they don't want to participate anymore AND that the devs shouldn't be compensated for the time they spent playing the game and enjoying it.

Because all of that time and resources were actually spent with the player giving free betatesting labor to the devs, which the devs presumably benefited from, at far under the usual labor rate if the dev had had to actually hire betas?
posted by corb at 4:03 PM on April 12, 2016

Devs in the MMO field don't hire beta testers that I'm aware of - like, ever. They might do some small-scale market research in a compensated way (like, a "get a $10 gift card" sort of way) but the compensation for beta testing in this sphere *is* the early access. I don't love pay-to-beta as a scheme, but let's not get unrealistic here about where it falls on the spectrum of normal industry practice.
posted by restless_nomad at 4:05 PM on April 12, 2016 [5 favorites]

i mean, it'd honestly be really weird and not at all in line with the game if gender were the only trait you could choose. it would completely break the random thing the game is going for.

arguing that steam's early access shouldn't be a thing (or should be changed in such a way that people could organize mass defundings of a title/developer) has nothing to do with rust and also seems like arguing about barn doors once the horses escape.
posted by nadawi at 4:08 PM on April 12, 2016 [6 favorites]

I don't think the push for diversity of player characters is supposed to mean "show them to me but don't let me play them."

TBH, I don't see why this isn't a perfectly good way to implement diversity of player characters. No one gets a choice, everyone gets to see "themselves" represented somewhere in the game. As a black woman who sometimes plays games, I promise you that this change will let me see more black women characters in an MMO than I would otherwise ever get to see in a game. Same with asian men, or any other minority.

What people are arguing is that forcing people - including women - to play in the wrong gender when the choice exists to play in the right gender, as a way of making people think about how gender works in videogaming, is quite clearly political.

No choice exists in this aspect of the game: that's the whole point. It's not like some people get to choose what they want and some don't. You're just being assigned. Like in games where your avatar is made to be a purple spark instead of an orange spark.

If the devs really wanted to troll, they'd make it so that nobody would roll a white male.
posted by sparklemotion at 4:10 PM on April 12, 2016 [10 favorites]

And just because I don't expect everyone to remember my resume - I worked in MMOs for several years, and spent last summer working part-time on an Early Access game that people were spending money on that got cancelled after three months because the money projections just weren't there. Those folks bought into the game and possibly paid additional money for in-game currency, and when the game shut down, that was that.
posted by restless_nomad at 4:10 PM on April 12, 2016 [2 favorites]

"surprise, you look like your rapist and can never change it ever. Thanks for your $20."

AFAIK you can get a refund from Steam. If the positive reviews on Steam are any indication of the quality of this game (and its user base in particular) it's probably doomed in the long run anyway.

My favorite positive review:

"This game would make the perfect gift for someone who has beeing wanting to commit suicide but needed that final reasoning to actually go through with it."

Some other snippets from positive reviews:

"will definately turn you into a terrible human being"

"Some guy shoved his ♥♥♥♥ in my mouth and screamed Aloha Snack Bar.."

"...the community is toxic..."

So yeah, Rust is a basically a game for 13 year old boys. The devs are certainly getting dank lulz (or something Channish like that) at the expense of those kids LOL. Pass.
posted by MikeMc at 4:10 PM on April 12, 2016

Heh, I just googled "rust early access" and the very first hit is this official FAQ which I think conveys everything short of calling you on the phone, yelling CAVEAT EMPTOR and hanging up:

This means that everything could potentially change. Everything. We could decide that instead of walking around everyone should ride dragons and fire apples at each other. This is unlikely – but it’s the kind of thing to be aware of. It means certain features might not work properly, or might work one week and then the next week might not work. It means the game might not even run sometimes.

posted by griphus at 4:11 PM on April 12, 2016 [9 favorites]

if people are curious about the community or the gameplay, they should search youtube for 'rust' and 'troll'. searcher beware, etc etc etc.
posted by nadawi at 4:14 PM on April 12, 2016 [1 favorite]

No choice exists in this aspect of the game: that's the whole point. It's not like some people get to choose what they want and some don't. You're just being assigned.

When I say 'the choice exists', I mean 'It would be trivially easy for devs to allow players to reroll if they didn't like their assigned character, or reroll on death.' The choice exists and is programmed in - they simply aren't allowing the players that choice.

I think one enormous part of the problem I have is the linking the roll to the steam ID, so that you can never, ever, ever have a new character - your only way to do so is to create a new steam ID, then buy the game all over again.
posted by corb at 4:20 PM on April 12, 2016 [1 favorite]

but that was the case before the gender addition. it's a fundamental part of the game. and, i mean, it's likely it will change again, just not by the player's hand. i can see it as an argument for why you wouldn't like the game, but i don't see it as an argument for why they've done something wrong or shady or political.
posted by nadawi at 4:25 PM on April 12, 2016 [14 favorites]

I'm considering buying it just to check it out. (Controversy sells!)

Here is the warning on the Steam page:

Early Access Game
Get instant access and start playing; get involved with this game as it develops.
Note: This Early Access game is not complete and may or may not change further. If you are not excited to play this game in its current state, then you should wait to see if the game progresses further in development.

It's not fine print, it's not buried in a EULA, it's right there where you can't miss it. The game can change. Buyer beware.
posted by Drinky Die at 4:25 PM on April 12, 2016

One might argue that it's right there in the words "early access".
posted by Artw at 4:33 PM on April 12, 2016 [1 favorite]

Metafilter: dank lulz.
posted by sparklemotion at 4:44 PM on April 12, 2016 [1 favorite]

It's not like a lot of games do this. If you want a game where you can choose everything yourself, those games exist. And if you really want to play as a man, those games exist, too. We're not exactly drowning in games that randomly assign a gender and appearance to your Steam ID.

So I think that inclines me towards the stance of, "If it bothers you, just play a different game."
posted by RobotHero at 4:52 PM on April 12, 2016 [2 favorites]

BecauseIHadFiveDollars: "I just guess I feel they could have handled this better, maybe offer it up to people "Hey, all new players will have a 50 percent chance of being either gender, but people who have been here, you have a choice whether or not you want the possibility of a change, but know it is irreversible.""

Though then you would risk the woman model being a sign that someone is a "newb."
posted by RobotHero at 4:52 PM on April 12, 2016

What is the end goal of Rust? I thought I was intrigued, based on write-ups elsewhere and this discussion, but checking out some videos... Seems like I can't figure out what the point of the game is. Mincraft - charm + FPS with terribly graphics? I love the idea of randomized characters but wonder if there is anything else interesting going on in the game.
posted by kittensofthenight at 4:54 PM on April 12, 2016

It's not fine print, it's not buried in a EULA, it's right there where you can't miss it. The game can change. Buyer beware.

Yes, and Early Access games do change. But I think there's a big difference between game changes for gameflow, and game changes because the game developer is Trying To Make A Point. It's certainly within the official rules, they're not lying to you, but they're also not really abiding by the social contract I would say is implicit in most early access games - that they're clear about what they're striving for from the beginning, but may take some time and tweaks to get there.
posted by corb at 5:00 PM on April 12, 2016 [1 favorite]

What is the change that is Trying To Make A Point in this case that is not an extension of their previous choices with character generation?
posted by griphus at 5:17 PM on April 12, 2016 [7 favorites]

Yeah, this wasn't to make a point.

But still I would argue the creators can change whatever the heck they want for whatever reason they want in this scenario as far as I'm concerned. The only thing I would want a refund for is if they gave up or seriously half assed their efforts to create the vision they believed in.

Imagine if you signed up to read a novel by your favorite author each day as they wrote it. Would you want to tell that author they owe you a refund if they makes changes you aren't on board with? No way for me.

This isn't George Lucas messing with a film classic, it's buying a backstage pass to the creative process as it unfolds. In some ways, it's like buying tickets to a sporting event. You paid to watch, nobody is promising you will like what you see.
posted by Drinky Die at 5:28 PM on April 12, 2016 [2 favorites]

I think there's a worthwhile conversation to be had about what the social contract for a game in beta actually *is*, because there's nothing that creates bad feeling like mismatched expectations and outcomes. As I mentioned, on Early Access you can pay for a game, even pay more than the initial price, and the game can be shut down and completely removed from service, leaving you with no recourse. That's not atypical, although it sucks. It even happens with live MMOs with regularity, and while no one likes it and I think it also sucks, it's at this point totally legal and not unexpected.

When a game *changes* drastically - think Trammel in UO or the NGE in Star Wars Galaxies - communities tend to lose their shit over it. But the thing is, if it makes the game measurably more profitable and likely to keep going, the companies are going to make the changes and take the reputation hit. This is also well-established in this market space. Games have fundamentally changed their gameplay, their reward structures, and even their business models *post-beta* and them's the breaks. You can stop playing if you like, but no one's likely to take you seriously if you ask for a refund.

When you're in an explicit beta, I think the standards should certainly not be *higher* than for a live game, and should realistically be a lot lower. I personally object to charging people for a game that's still in beta because the game tends to suck a lot more, and unsatisfied customers are going to be much crankier if they feel like they wasted their money *and* their time on your product, but I also know that getting funding for a project on that scale is a nightmare and publishers want proof of financial viability before they invest. (That's what happened to the game I worked on last summer - the numbers weren't there, so no publisher was willing to pay for a full launch.) But the expectations for an MMO is that it will definitely change, and may start sucking, and at that point you can leave - not that you buy a game and that's the game forever and if you don't like a patch you can just not install it. They're really different beasts from non-massively multiplayer games, and I think keeping that distinction in mind is really important when talking about this situation.

(I also wonder if Steam Early Access is picking up a lot of non-MMO players and that's partly why people are so upset. But honestly, I don't think that's most of it.)
posted by restless_nomad at 5:36 PM on April 12, 2016 [1 favorite]

What is the change that is Trying To Make A Point in this case that is not an extension of their previous choices with character generation?

That's the part that confuses me. Even the interview makes it clear that he and the other devs regarded this as an uncontroversial extension of the player-feature-randomization system that has been evolving since the beginning, and is an inherent part of the game's design philosophy.

I mean, I absolutely understand the argument that this is not cool, or that it is bad, or that you wouldn't enjoy it. What fascinates me about this (and corb, this is what baffles me about your argument against it) is that the game is absolutely pursuing its often-articulated "artistic vision" and the people who are most angry about the change were okay with that vision and the changes that came with it until they realized they might have to play something other than white dudes.

As other posters have said, Rust is not a game for people who think that they might be triggered by violence, sexual assault, paranoia, betrayal, or a toxic playerbase that derives its enjoyment from tormenting anyone who can't defend themselves in-game. It is jam-packed with players who relish that brutal, amoral chaos… but for whom not being portrayed on-screen by a big-dicked white dude is just too emotionally wrenching.

In any other game, with any other well-expressed design philosophy, with any other playerbase, it wouldn't be as amusing and fascinating. That's what I meant by context in my earlier post. The idea that Rust has an "implied social contract" that the game won't change too much is like saying that Monopoly has an "implied social contract" that no one should build hotels.
posted by verb at 5:37 PM on April 12, 2016 [12 favorites]

about it for a variety of reasons, some which may have nothing to do with misogyny.

I don't see the other reasons. What are they?
posted by agregoli at 5:43 PM on April 12, 2016 [1 favorite]

Adding women isn't making a point, it's adding something the game was missing. But it does seem the design choice of not adding any way for players to control their gender was done to make a point, given Newman's comments on the matter. But as noted, it's consistent with what he's done previously with all other variation in the player's avatar.

Here's an article from almost a year ago about the addition of skin colour.

As mentioned in that article, at the very beginning, everyone appeared as a white man. He has never taken away anyone's ability to customize their appearance, he has only chosen not to add that ability.
posted by RobotHero at 5:48 PM on April 12, 2016 [1 favorite]

the argument i've heard, and sympathize with, is that trans people find being randomly assigned the wrong gender more painful than the general populace. i do think ultimately if the game is staked on randomly generated 'permanent' characters, you have to decide if that's something that sounds like fun for any number of reasons.
posted by nadawi at 5:49 PM on April 12, 2016 [4 favorites]

I have to admit, I'm getting more curious to buy Rust - not because I particularly like this kind of game, but because I'm curious about who this Steam me would be. It feels like this exciting unknown lurking on my computer.
posted by Deoridhe at 5:58 PM on April 12, 2016 [2 favorites]

Some players are not happy.

I'd play that game.
posted by sneebler at 6:09 PM on April 12, 2016

So I think that inclines me towards the stance of, "If it bothers you, just play a different game."

Which is all well and good, except when say, it's a change made in a game which you were otherwise, in fact, enjoying, and is a purely arbitrary design decision. I honestly don't see the -up- side of this design decision, from the developer perspective.

That's why I'm not on board with this change. It's not a question of "well, it's early access," because -obviously- they were going to add in more diversity and female avatars. That's been a thing they were promising from the start. It's that it's all -by assignment- and not -by choice-, and that assignment has been made retroactively for people.

If they'd made this change in such as way as folks could opt into looks they like, that would be a lot less bothersome. I get that they want more diversity than maybe folks would usually choose, but this is a bad way to enforce that, because it cancels out player agency.
posted by Archelaus at 6:14 PM on April 12, 2016 [1 favorite]

But how is any of that inconsistent with the identical thing already happening for skin color and face type? The assignment of all these things was retroactive and not opt-out-able. Why should gender be the discrete point of troublesomness within the stated design philosophy? Within that context, the choice isn't arbitrary in the least, just a natural extension of the previous choices on a new axis.
posted by griphus at 6:21 PM on April 12, 2016 [5 favorites]

Eh. I think it's been bad design the whole time. Gender's just the one where suddenly there's news articles.
posted by Archelaus at 6:24 PM on April 12, 2016 [1 favorite]

> because it cancels out player agency.

It doesn't sound like this game gave the players much agency at all when choosing characters or character traits. Like, none.

Would people freak out so hard if they had initially been assigned a character that was a green lizard and a year into beta were told they were randomly going to either stay a green lizard or become an orange platypus?
posted by rtha at 6:25 PM on April 12, 2016 [4 favorites]

If they'd made this change in such as way as folks could opt into looks they like, that would be a lot less bothersome. I get that they want more diversity than maybe folks would usually choose, but this is a bad way to enforce that, because it cancels out player agency.

This is what I don't understand with some of the comments being made. How does it cancel out agency that never existed in the first place. From the beginning the game assigned what you look like and over time it just added more ways of looking like different skin color. Now it's just expanded this randomness that has always been a feature to gender and what? Now it's just too much to take or something?

Don't mean to just pick on this comment there have been others along the same lines. I don't get if people just aren't understanding what the game has been about already or if so why adding in the possibility of women to the randomness feature is such a bigger deal then all the other random ways your character could turn out.
posted by Jalliah at 6:26 PM on April 12, 2016 [5 favorites]

Like I said in the post you just quoted: because I can't conceive of any particular benefit to this particular denial of agency in avatar customization. (And, as I elaborated, I think the option to customize should have started from the moment they added more options than the default avatar).
posted by Archelaus at 6:31 PM on April 12, 2016

Gender's just the one where suddenly there's news articles.

Except for when they did the exact same thing with skin tone, which also generated a ton of news articles.
posted by tobascodagama at 6:39 PM on April 12, 2016 [1 favorite]

I think it's been bad design the whole time

well, the developers disagree and they've been consistent in their disagreement. there were articles about skin color and dick size and face too. the gaming subreddits and the subreddit specifically for this game have discussed all these things at length as well. we are way, way past the point where anyone who does a modicum of research into how they spend their gaming money (as in, reading the page they buy the game from) would be surprised by what this game is offering. i don't understand why people still find call of duty fun, but they do, so i don't buy those games and instead buy things that seem fun and interesting to me.
posted by nadawi at 6:41 PM on April 12, 2016 [5 favorites]

Nadawi - I can't help but feel like what you're saying here is "well, your opinion isn't valid, because this has been discussed, and if you don't find it fun, tough, do something else." (I happened to miss that there were news articles on the previous change, but I admit to not having done any research. This time it just happened to cross my particular radar on games news, I suppose).

I'm not saying that's what you wanted to communicate, just think you've come off very dismissive of opinions other than "well, folks can do whatever, they don't -have- to play it."

Folks get up in arms about cosmetic things in games. That's not... even remotely a new trend. They're going to have strong opinions -about- cosmetic appearance stuff in games. Again, not a new trend. This is traceable back to at -least- as far as Vanilla WoW, and I'm sure it could be plotted further back.

I get that "appearance options" seem like small potatoes, but this is a -really- common issue in game development. That's why I say "locking out that option" is a pretty poor design choice. The devs are welcome to dispute my opinion in whatever manner they see fit, but that doesn't change that most games are pretty careful to give players that choice, these days, for -precisely this reason-.
posted by Archelaus at 6:56 PM on April 12, 2016 [3 favorites]

is it a poor design choice or is it a purposeful design choice to go expressly against the norm? i think it's the later. but i also have a fuckton of weird art games in my steam library. it would be a poor design decision if they just didn't think of it or think it wouldn't matter, but if you do some searching you'll see it's discussed in depth as an integral part of the game. i can say until i'm blue in the face that i hate overlong cutscenes in my jrpgs, but final fantasy is going to keep putting them in. that's not a bad design decision on their part - they have their very eager fans - but it is where we part ways. they ~know~ some people hate that and they continue on anyway because it's a purposeful decision in the franchise. if that sounds dismissive, then i guess that's where we're at. not all games are made for all or most people (except a very few exceptions). if you want a character creator of any kind, you won't want this game.
posted by nadawi at 7:02 PM on April 12, 2016 [6 favorites]

You've completely disregarded the creator's opinion in this. The creative choice made by the creators of Rust is that players don't get to choose anything about their avatars. Of course they considered that some players might want control over their avatars. They made a deliberate choice, for whatever reason, to avoid giving players control over their avatars.

Some people might prefer to play Gone Home as a buff Space Marine who kills demons. But that would be the wrong choice, creatively, for that game. Would you support adding a character creator to Gone Home, for the players who don't want to play as a young woman?
posted by tobascodagama at 7:07 PM on April 12, 2016 [7 favorites]

(And, as I elaborated, I think the option to customize should have started from the moment they added more options than the default avatar).

Here's the thing though - why is a white man the default avatar?

Part of me has to wonder if they're rolling it out like this on purpose, to be honest. It seems like the perfect order to shake people up about the presumed everyone-can-identify-as-this white-male avatar that are an actual, literal minority demographically but which dominate US media and culture.

The "default" human is viewed to by white and male because white males have historically favored and rewarded each other - from passing on property, to limiting educational opportunities to others (and their poor brothers), to denying the right to have property and agency even over one's own body to others (and often their poor brothers). Stories about Rust can be an opportunity to double down on how white and male should be the default avatar, or to question that power differential.
posted by Deoridhe at 7:13 PM on April 12, 2016 [5 favorites]

I mean, some games are about having the freedom to be whoever you want to be: Fallout 4 literally sold itself on this point, for instance. This one game is about the opposite of that. I don't know why this is so hard to grasp.
posted by tobascodagama at 7:14 PM on April 12, 2016 [5 favorites]

"This is insensitive to trans people" strikes me as a really, really weird argument to make because — again — there was no choice present in previous iterations of the game. It is, thus, no more or less insensitive to trans people than it was previously.

If you believe that not giving players control over the gender and skin color of their in-game avatars is per se insensitive and wrong and an affront to player agency in any game whatsoever, I would say you have an interesting view on the imperatives of game design. I would disagree, and say that the broader problem is that one particular type of in-game-character-avatar is grossly overrepresented, but you'd be making an interesting argument and I would nod appreciatively.

But if you're saying that this particular game's decision is uniquely bad, you have an incoherent and indefensible understanding of games as a medium, both historically and in the abstract.
posted by verb at 7:19 PM on April 12, 2016 [4 favorites]

i am gender fluid and in no way speak for trans people as a whole or in specific, but i don't think trans people who are upset are attacking this game or think the developers need to bend to them. i think they're just speaking about how it makes them feel, about whether or not they will get this game or continue to play this game. there's enough wrongheaded, weird, based in white patriarchal supremacy arguments being thrown at this game/the changes that i think we can just trust that trans people are coming to this in good faith and there's no need to lash out at them by saying their understanding is incoherent or indefensible.

when trans people speak to us about how they interpret and experience things like this it would be great if we didn't try to automatically pick it apart or belittle it and instead either sit with it or pass it by.
posted by nadawi at 7:33 PM on April 12, 2016 [6 favorites]

Here's the thing though - why is a white man the default avatar?

Not that I disagree that white-male-as-default-human is bullshit, but part of me snickers at the kind of shitstorm that would have erupted if the devs had chosen, say, a black male (or, on the other end of the sterotype spectrum, an asian male) as the default avatar and then had them start out buck naked and start messing with penis size. Or if the game had started with a female (of any race), as the only choice and had all the players start naked (and then started mucking with breast size).

It seems that if the devs really wanted a naked-and-afraid type start, and didn't want to design up all the race/gender options right away, the only way to avoid landmines was to go with the white man because white supremacy/patriarchy means that any choices that you make for the bodies of non-white men are going to be hella scrutinized.

This is not to say that the naked-and-afraid start was a compulsory design decision or anything (they could have drawn on some underwear).

Now that it's clear that everything is so randomized, they don't have to worry quite so much about the blowback of someone rolling a black dude with a BBC to match, you know?
posted by sparklemotion at 7:41 PM on April 12, 2016 [1 favorite]

but i also have a fuckton of weird art games in my steam library.

Indeed, no game gives players complete agency, and the choices that designers make about what kinds of options are presented to players is one of big differentiators. Stretching out and providing different kinds of choices (beyond weapon/conversation path/skill tree) is one of the things that seems to differentiate the new generation of indie game.

"This War Of Mine" is an interesting example of one of the new kinds of games that's becoming more and more... well, not popular or even mainstream but at least more visible. It gives players no choice over their character, it is relentlessly depressing, and it provides certain kinds of agency while explicitly not providing others. You can, for example, choose to break into the house of an elderly couple and steal their food, ensuring they will starve to death. Your character might also become suicidally depressed in ways that are beyond your control and choose to hang themselves while you're distracted managing some other part of the game. On the other hand, you can find children who are looking for their father and share some of your meager supplies with them, ensuring they live another week while one of your own companions grows sicker and weaker. Playing that game was sobering, compelling, emotionally intense, and something I don't think I'll ever do again.

In The Division, on the other hand, I can choose to be an asian dude, an african american woman, a redheaded white dude, and so on. I can wear a purple jacked and a red scarf, track shoes or winter boots, a pom-pom hat or a trucker cap. But what I don't have is any problem-solving tool other than a bullet. When I find a sniper who's camped out in a building, I don't have the option of picking up a bullhorn and negotiating. I don't have the option of shouting down the street to the kids who are looting a store and telling them to get back to safety and don't steal. The choices I am given are to shoot them and kill them or walk away.

Rust gives players no choices in terms of player-creation-agency, at all, period, finis. It gives them the ability to build buildings, craft clothing, murder each other for cans of beans, and so on. It's very open in some ways and closed in others. I don't play it because it captures (at least in my opinion) the worst and least enjoyable aspects of player-versus-player MOORPGs. But other seem to enjoy it a lot.

i am gender fluid and in no way speak for trans people as a whole or in specific, but i don't think trans people who are upset are attacking this game or think the developers need to bend to them. i think they're just speaking about how it makes them feel, about whether or not they will get this game or continue to play this game. there's enough wrongheaded, weird, based in white patriarchal supremacy arguments being thrown at this game/the changes that i think we can just trust that trans people are coming to this in good faith and there's no need to lash out at them by saying their understanding is incoherent or indefensible.

I've yet to hear a trans person who was "upset" or "attacking" this game. I have heard someone say, "Yeah, I feel uncomfortable when a game makes me play as the gender I don't identify with," and I have heard a lot of cispeople in the Rust community who were fine with unchangeable white-dude avatars suddenly express a profound concern that maybe having a woman avatar would be very very disrespectful towards trans men.

I am not belittling or lashing out at a trans man who says that they are uncomfortable being forced to play a game that provides them with an unchangeable female avatar. I'm saying that they are hypocrites if they played and enjoyed the game without concern for trans women who were previously forced to play using male avatar.

It is that fundamental hypocrisy — on the part of all players who were previously unbothered but now very bothered — that is what I find interesting and revealing. It is a fundamental failure of empathy.
posted by verb at 7:46 PM on April 12, 2016 [10 favorites]

i have seen trans women discuss how seeing women in the game and being a male themselves was a shock to them and then them unpacking it. i haven't actually seen a lot of trans men discussing this at all. i am here all day long for mocking cis people for their reactions because they don't have to ever go through any part of real life being seen as something other than they are. i agree with your broader point on empathy from large parts of the player base, i just wish you had phrased your comments about trans people's reactions in a different way or left it alone.
posted by nadawi at 7:56 PM on April 12, 2016 [1 favorite]

I guess my entire view can be summed up as, "If someone has a problem with this, and didn't have a problem with default-dudes in the vast majority of other games, they have an uphill battle to convince me that they are arguing in good faith."

I mean, if this issue suddenly opened their eyes to the problem, and they now understand why not providing a diverse set of avatar-options is problematic in the entire medium of games, that's one thing. But again, that's not the argument I see anyone making. I see them saying that this particular change is problematic. That this game's lack of control is particularly problematic. That this particular game is potentially triggering.

It is not; it is simply presenting the same problem that has always existed to a different sample of people.
posted by verb at 7:57 PM on April 12, 2016 [3 favorites]

and i'm saying trans people aren't the ones suddenly being like OMG. rather they're expanding the conversation in the ways they've been talking about this. treating idiot dude bros and trans people - specifically trans women - like they're coming from the same place is a mistake, imo.
posted by nadawi at 8:05 PM on April 12, 2016

and i'm saying trans people aren't the ones suddenly being like OMG. rather they're expanding the conversation in the ways they've been talking about this. treating idiot dude bros and trans people - specifically trans women - like they're coming from the same place is a mistake, imo.

I agree. To be clear, I did not say to anyone that "the place you're coming from is a mistake." I'm saying, as always, that anyone who had no problem with dude-avatars as an unchangeable default but objects to this implementation has a pretty steep hill to climb.

I'm glad that more and more games are providing detailed customization options, especially RPG-like games where the intent is to create a tailored, customized representation of one's self. "You can be anything you like as long as it's a white dude!" was the norm for way, way too long.

But I don't believe that providing unchangeable avatars is, per se, a problem for games as an entire medium. Some games tell stories, and sometimes those stories are about characters of a particular gender or race. It is absolutely a problem that the industry has consistently only told stories about white dudes, but I think (for example) that there is absolutely a place for games with unchangeable non-dude and non-white characters and player avatars.

If you want to see yourself represented as a dude, boy howdy are there loads of options for you in the gaming world. And if you want to see yourself represented as a lady, well, Rust is now statistically more likely to give you what you want. But it will not guarantee that, any more than Magic: The Gathering will guarantee that you will pull the card you want when you tear open a booster.
posted by verb at 8:34 PM on April 12, 2016

Rather than dealing with second-hand accounts here is an article written by Michelle Ehrhardt about this.

I feel she doesn't really say, "this is a bad choice and they shouldn't have done this," but does make the parallel to real life, and contrasts how games that did give her the freedom to choose were a comfort to her.

Also a couple tweets from Anna Anthropy who comes across a little more solidly on the "opposed" side.
posted by RobotHero at 8:35 PM on April 12, 2016 [3 favorites]

That Killscreen article by Michelle Ehrgardt is interesting:

In forcing some players into a gender that may not match their actual gender identity, Rust may be the first MMO to allow its cisgender players to understand some small portion of what it might be like to be transgender.

This is even more the case in light of the client-side mod that the webmistress pointed out upthread. It allows players to see themselves as any gender or race (or penis size) they prefer, but everyone else playing the game will see them as their "assigned form."
posted by verb at 8:52 PM on April 12, 2016 [4 favorites]

I think one of the interesting things about this design design is that everyone brings their own personal baggage to the table, ranging from idiot gamer dude bro to trans, and because of that, everyone's going to respond to a game that addresses personal identity a little bit differently.

It's easy to say that the game should give players the tools to craft their character as they see fit, because some players have dealt with enough nonsense in real life and in other games and they shouldn't have to put up with more. Michelle Ehrhardt's article quotes Garry Newman as saying "No wiggle room…You are who you are." That's a valid game design choice, but it's also a crappy thing to say in a world where some people have gone through hell to be who they really are.

And that's where there seems to be a superficial resemblance in the reactions of a gamer bro refusing to play as a woman and, I'm really not trying to cisplain here, the negative reaction of someone like Anna Anthropy. Both are saying the game should give players control over their own identity (and in a first-person MMO where you display your avatar to everyone else, identity is generally important), but for very different reasons. Both can find being misgendered in the game to be a negative, or at least complicated, experience. That's not to say they are coming from the same place, because they aren't at all, but the reactions bear some resemblance.

People have their own reasons why they want to control their character's gender, and some of those reasons are ones I really sympathize with, while others I very much do not. That's a challenge for me. I'm not sure how you satisfy the game design objective of "life is unfair, deal with it," while also not being unnecessarily cruel to people who cannot and should not be told to "deal with it" when it comes to their gender.
posted by zachlipton at 8:55 PM on April 12, 2016 [7 favorites]

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.

Half of the population isn't suffering from gender dysphoria.
posted by Going To Maine at 10:32 PM on April 12, 2016

Half of the population isn't suffering from gender dysphoria.

They were in Rust.
posted by sparklemotion at 10:35 PM on April 12, 2016 [2 favorites]

I don't love the way they put it, since you can read it as women all long to be men, which is ridiculous. But I like the concept and the exposing of misogyny.

I'm not a gamer but I just want to say that my interpretation of their statement was that half of the player base (the female half) had no choice but to play the gender with which they don't identify IRL until the devs added female skins. Now nobody has a choice about what gender they play. I don't quite think it makes sense to interpret it the other way, although it might be incorrect of the devs to assume that all women are distressed by being forced to play male characters (I suspect most female gamers, cis or trans, are thoroughly inured to that particular experience.)
posted by gingerest at 10:36 PM on April 12, 2016 [3 favorites]

Half of the population isn't suffering from gender dysphoria.

We talked about this upthread somewhere, and I read it that way at first too. I think their point is that the game previously only allowed you to play as a man, so half the population (albeit not half of the players) already wasn't represented. The devs are equating the dissatisfaction some have now with their character's randomly assigned gender with the dissatisfaction others had before when the game forced everyone to play a male character.
posted by zachlipton at 10:39 PM on April 12, 2016 [2 favorites]

Ah, yes. Okay. Though now I'm wondering what percent of Rust's players are women. Beside the point, but I'm pretty curious.
posted by Going To Maine at 10:54 PM on April 12, 2016 [1 favorite]

There was no reason to play Rust anyway.
posted by Docrailgun at 11:38 PM on April 12, 2016 [1 favorite]

Innes McKendrick going with the "delicious tears" stance.
posted by RobotHero at 8:40 AM on April 13, 2016

God, Innes McKendrick is on fire right now.

Anyway. Rust. It was a zombie survival game that took out all the zombies. This change is tiny in comparison.
posted by running order squabble fest at 10:25 AM on April 13, 2016

I'm saying, as always, that anyone who had no problem with dude-avatars as an unchangeable default but objects to this implementation has a pretty steep hill to climb.

Let me try to explain a little better, because I think there's something pretty big being missed.

I'm a lady who's been gaming for over 20 years. So boy, howdy, have I been playing with dude-avatars as an unchangeable default for a long time - long before there was customization, long before people even thought of including lady characters. From Commander Keen to Farcry, there are simply a lot of games where the default character is male.

But I have never really identified with those characters enough to feel a deep and abiding wrongness in it. I just felt the developers were lazy - too lazy to make the models for women because they figured there wasn't an audience, or they didn't want to write additional dialogue, or what have you. Gaming at that point did not offer enough choice about who you were playing as to enable the kind of deep identification that is more normative today.

Today you have games like Fallout, and Dragon Age, and Skyrim, and Saints Row, and many, many others where you are able to control every detail of your character expression and hair and many other features. Consequentially, we know, or believe we know, roughly how difficult or expensive it is to do so, which is "not as much as it previously was, stop your whining, devs." So when I see a default male character in a game now, I assume one of two things: 1) this game is being put together on a motherfucking shoestring budget to end all shoestring budgets, or 2) this game is an immersive storybased game that is focused on telling one particular story from one particular point of view.

Rust kind of explodes both of those, in a fuck you that seems amazingly epic. They're not trying to claim "it's too expensive to make these avatars", because they have already made them. They're not saying "this game is immersive and storyoriented and can be played only from one viewpoint." They seem to be saying, "We think it's fun to create a diverse world and tell you who you're going to be forever, and not let you express your own diversity in that world, and not let you change it even when it really, really bothers you, for funsies and the joy of drinking your tears."

That, to me, reads as a really loud "Fuck You" to the dedicated players who have been paying to betatest for some time.

Now restless_nomad makes a good point upthread about how MMOs are different, and that may be the case. I've never really played MMOs, even games that had MMO capability. The social expectations there may be very different. But my social expectations for single player games seem really, really broken by this. I probably wasn't Rust's target audience, but I might have considered it on a lark - now I'm kind of like "you will never get a dime, assholes."
posted by corb at 10:30 AM on April 13, 2016 [5 favorites]

Oh my gods... "if it were say, polygon/femfreq types losing their shit over being forced to play big white men, would you be laughing?"

They really seem to miss that this is, like, the majority of AAA games. I'm not sure HOW they miss it, given all of the AAA marketing showing big white men even when there are other options, but somehow.... they do.
posted by Deoridhe at 10:32 AM on April 13, 2016

what you seem to be missing, corb, is that this game has had massive sweeping changes from go. those 'paying to betatest' folks are very aware of things getting all shaken up every so often. they went through a very similar wipe a year ago. it's not a fuck you, it's built into the experience. it sounds like you wouldn't like that experience but it really stretches the imagination to think people in early access for rust don't know what they've signed up for.
posted by nadawi at 10:36 AM on April 13, 2016 [4 favorites]

Yeah, corb, I appreciate your POV here, but coming in to make a long statement that concludes with "I don't actually know anything about this" is not good participation.
posted by restless_nomad at 10:40 AM on April 13, 2016 [10 favorites]

They keep inflicting diversity, the bastards.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 10:55 AM on April 13, 2016 [2 favorites]

Rust kind of explodes both of those, in a fuck you that seems amazingly epic. They're not trying to claim "it's too expensive to make these avatars", because they have already made them. They're not saying "this game is immersive and storyoriented and can be played only from one viewpoint." They seem to be saying, "We think it's fun to create a diverse world and tell you who you're going to be forever, and not let you express your own diversity in that world, and not let you change it even when it really, really bothers you, for funsies and the joy of drinking your tears."'

I'm a woman who has been gaming since the days of pong. I'm well versed and used to having to play default dude if I wanted to play games. For many years that was pretty much all there was. Now gaming world is finally opening up a bit, not just in terms of some games offering oodles of customization for your character. This is relatively new as well in game world. I can recall lots of games where you just are the character that the developer creates. Those still exist as well and some of those are excellent and some not. The ability to customize a character is a design choice. Some games have it some don't. It's great that more and more have it and I love a lot of ones that do because I can play what I want. I still will play games with a main character is very specific. Usually ones like Witcher where the game is about a very specific character and story and where game play allows a bit of role play but it's very strict. The Tomb Raider reboots are an example of a female main character. This is the way they are designed, character specific. Tomb Raider as a story just wouldn't work the same without it being about Lara, specifically.

Mass Effect and Dragon Age are great examples of stories that work no matter what your gender. These are awesome. They were specifically designed around this structure.

This is why don't see what Rust is doing as some overarching 'Fuck you 'at all. From the beginning customization was never part of the design. It is not what the game is designed to be about. It is immersive yes but it was never designed to be immersive in the same sorts of way a Dragon Age or Skyrim is. It's not those games. It's not a single player game. Single player and MMO type games are different beasts.

There's no issue with not being into games that aren't designed in ways we like or don't have features we like. I have limited time to play games right now so I do a lot a research on what a game is about and how it works to find one that fits 'me' as close as I can. The choice is so much more diverse and better then it was in the past which is great. Of course there is only room for improvement. I would love to see more Tomb Raider like female lead games for instance.

If Rusts design principles aren't your thing that's fine. No game can or will please everyone and it shouldn't.
I want games with different designs. Gaming needs this to happen.
posted by Jalliah at 11:04 AM on April 13, 2016 [14 favorites]

I appreciate the issue that this is about, but:

"Some guy shoved his ♥♥♥♥ in my mouth and screamed Aloha Snack Bar.."

I read this and got really, really fascinated with the question of what on earth "Aloha Snack Bar" actually means.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 12:03 PM on April 13, 2016 [1 favorite]

I read this and got really, really fascinated with the question of what on earth "Aloha Snack Bar" actually means.

The answer is a lot less charming than one might wish.
posted by jeather at 12:21 PM on April 13, 2016

It's a l33t sp33k corruption of the Takbir.
posted by robocop is bleeding at 12:21 PM on April 13, 2016

It's a l33t sp33k corruption of the Takbir.

....

GOD DAMMIT PEOPLE SUCK SOMETIMES
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 12:26 PM on April 13, 2016 [14 favorites]

This game doesn't have to be everything to all people. You don't want to play Rust because it won't let you create a character to reflect your self? Great! Don't! Let those of us who do want to play the game as it is, with the permanent assigned character models do so. I say this as a trans woman with a male character model in Rust. Please let us have our game, those of us that want this. You have literally every other MMO ever to customise characters in. This is hardly an inescapable problem (like having no choice but white male representation in games was for a long time). Why is one game doing something different such a problem?
posted by Dysk at 2:41 PM on April 13, 2016 [7 favorites]

I understand the schadenfreude, I do. If the dudebros are upset, we can feel that Facepunch must be doing something right. But try to put them aside a moment.

There's a hall of shame of devs' reasons not to allow people to play as women:

* "we'd have to do new animations" (Assassin's Creed)
* "we'd have to redo all the hitboxes and do extra QA" (Team Fortress 2)
* "the stories we wanted to tell were about men" (Grand Theft Auto 5)
* "it wouldn't sell" (too many games)

And now we can add a new one: "we see gender as a permanent feature of your Steam ID".

It's not an MMO thing. Here are a few MMOs which allow people to play as women: Black Desert, DC Universe Online, Age of Conan, Minecraft, Gotham City Impostors, World of Warcraft, Eve Online, LOTR Online, The Secret World, Star Wars TOR, Star Trek Online, DayZ, Runescape, Elder Scrolls Online, EverQuest, Second Life, Wurm Online, ARK: Survival Evolved.

I can see a case for randomness on death or something. If you play League of Legends ARAM, you get a random character, no problem, but it's not always the same one.

Personally, I dislike playing males and I'm glad that female avatars are increasingly available. To create them and then not make them available to those who want them is just a really weird design decision.
posted by zompist at 3:04 PM on April 13, 2016 [3 favorites]

A 'really weird' design decision that has been absolutely in line with every single one of their character-related design decisions since day 1. A 'really weird' design decision that has a whole lot of people suddenly Caring Really Deeply about being able to choose characteristics in a game which has never allowed it.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 3:14 PM on April 13, 2016 [5 favorites]

It's a l33t sp33k corruption of the Takbir.

Shades of hocus pocus.
posted by Going To Maine at 3:15 PM on April 13, 2016

From Rust's About page.

Rust’s world is harsh. The environment is not kind. Bears and wolves will chase and kill you. Falling from a height will kill you. Being exposed to radiation for an extended period will kill you. Starving will kill you. Being cold will kill you. Other players can find you, kill you, and take your stuff.

A game of Rust begins with you completely naked, with only a rock and a torch.

A lot of MMOs have beginner zones, where there are less difficult monsters so a new player can stay there until they are ready for more challenging areas. Many will also designate PvP and non-PvP zones, again, so people can choose when they are ready for PvP. Rust does not have this.

I mention all this to argue "Fuck you" seems to be the game's leading design principle.
posted by RobotHero at 5:27 PM on April 13, 2016 [1 favorite]

'It's a harsh world' doesn't strike me as quite the same as a 'fuck you', especially not a for-my-pleasure/shits-and-giggles motivated one.
posted by Dysk at 6:11 PM on April 13, 2016 [1 favorite]

Though it is fairly disempowering as far as video games go.

I suppose you could see a similar level of disempowerment in horror games, but a lot of games go for more of a power fantasy.

Even the most direct influence on Rust, Day Z, you start the game with no weapon but at least you have clothes. In Rust you start the game literally naked. That is also an unusual design choice. And it's the choice of someone who wants to hammer home how disempowered the player is, I think.

So that's the context where I can see someone going, "You know what? You're going to have whatever race and sex the game gives you. You have no say in this matter."
posted by RobotHero at 8:11 PM on April 13, 2016

There's a hall of shame of devs' reasons not to allow people to play as women:

* "we'd have to do new animations" (Assassin's Creed)
* "we'd have to redo all the hitboxes and do extra QA" (Team Fortress 2)
* "the stories we wanted to tell were about men" (Grand Theft Auto 5)
* "it wouldn't sell" (too many games)

And now we can add a new one: "we see gender as a permanent feature of your Steam ID".

It seems extremely disingenuous to lump "everyone in this game is assigned a random character" in with a bunch of games that are all "this game has no playable female characters."
posted by straight at 9:11 PM on April 13, 2016 [11 favorites]

You could have explained why you think it's a good design decision to not allow people to play female models when they are available. But you choose to be insinuatingly snarky instead. I guess you win, good day to you.
posted by zompist at 10:12 PM on April 13, 2016 [2 favorites]

You could have explained why you think it's a good design decision to not allow people to play female models when they are available.

I've seen this sort of phrasing a lot in this thread, and it competely baffles me. It's not that you aren't allowed to play the female character models, it's that you have no choice. You are no more 'allowed' to play the male character models, or the short ones, or tall ones, etc.

Characters are persistent so that you can recognise other players in game. Characters are random for the same reason - you can be damn sure that people would start picking the same appearance en masse if they could. The game starts you naked not to laugh at how you're disempowered and squirm, but so that the player is empowered - everything you get and do in the game is your own work, you, the player. That's not disempowerment. While you don't control who you are or what you look like, you do control literally everything else about how your character acts, what they do, why, etc. in a way that you just don't in many games.
posted by Dysk at 4:21 AM on April 14, 2016 [9 favorites]

Another reason it's awesome: you cannot read anything into anyone's appearance. How someone looks tells you nothing about them, something that is only true precisely because you cannot choose anything.
posted by Dysk at 4:29 AM on April 14, 2016 [9 favorites]

Dysk: "That's not disempowerment. "

I suppose that's valid. Maybe it's more about hard-won accomplishment. If you dropped me on some island with just a rock and a torch in real life, I'm not confident I would handle it quite as competently.
posted by RobotHero at 7:25 AM on April 14, 2016

I'd never heard about Rust before, and now I'm intrigued! I might try it, although I'm pretty hesitant to play a multiplayer-mandatory game with a playerbase that is apparently even more toxic than usual for a multiplayer game.

The random appearance mechanic is a really cool idea, and as a female player I particularly like the gender randomization. It gets really tiring playing games in a world where women are apparently 5% (or 0%) of the population rather than 50%.

Being able to choose your gender is nice, but tends to result in way more male characters and some....wariness if you do choose a female character. So the solution I like most is having a somewhat limited list of (fairly gender-balanced and power-balanced) characters to choose from, with different traits that force players to try out all the characters for the full game experience - like my current two favourites, HOTS and don't starve. It works really well for getting an even mix of male and female characters in each game without anyone making a fuss in either direction or even really thinking about gender at all in each game (although I do find myself referring to players with female characters as "she", which is a nice change from my usual bad habit of assuming male as a default). It sounds like this Rust mechanic will have a similar outcome in the end, despite the complaining now as people adjust to it.

It's really great to see new approaches to achieving gender balance in games, even though not everyone will like them - that's fine! Most (all?) games can't appeal to everyone anyway. You pick the games that you prefer....and everyone has different preferences, which means game variety is ALWAYS a good thing. There are already lots of games with the mechanics that people are demanding Rust change to. If we try to make all games use the "best" mechanic, we're being just like those people who have a hissyfit if someone suggests that gamers are not all young, white men who only want to shoot things and see digital boobs. So bring on the novel game mechanics, whether I personally enjoy them or not!
posted by randomnity at 9:16 AM on April 14, 2016 [4 favorites]

You could have explained why you think it's a good design decision to not allow people to play female models when they are available. But you choose to be insinuatingly snarky instead. I guess you win, good day to you.

I SAID GOOD DAY
posted by beerperson at 10:33 AM on April 14, 2016 [8 favorites]

Is the Rust player base particularly toxic? I've never played it so I don't know, it sounds to me like a lot of the noise over this issue is being made by people who don't even play the game. Don't realize it doesn't have character customization at all, etc.
posted by Drinky Die at 10:36 AM on April 14, 2016

I mean that characterizes most of the noise in this very thread
posted by beerperson at 11:04 AM on April 14, 2016 [3 favorites]

randomnity, I started playing after reading this thread, and I am enjoying it! There is a variety of servers to play on; I found one that is focused on hunting/crafting/building and is very collaborative and friendly. So far I've been eaten by one bear, and almost starved, but I "woke up" in the game today to find someone had left me a bunch of stuff to make my house more secure. So I will gladly recommend this game to you, if you like that sort of thing!

(Bald white female. My daughter says my character has weird eyes and need to make a wig out of bear fur.)
posted by tracicle at 1:20 PM on April 14, 2016 [5 favorites]

I'm glad to hear of tracicle's experiences and may give the game another try.
posted by baf at 6:01 PM on April 14, 2016 [1 favorite]

So, that's an interesting thing - if you want to get 50% male/female avatars, and assume that _in general_ people play the gender they identify as (with women potentially playing male avatars more often to avoid harassment in multiplayer games), then even a game with a 50/50 male/female userbase split will not necessarily be 50/50 male/female avatars.

So, if you want _realism_, in the sense of the humans in the game reflecting a standard gender split, you have to game that system.

Do you think it would have caused more or less outrage if players were able to customise their characters, but were only allowed to choose gender if the numbers of male and female avatars in the world had parity - otherwise they had to choose the less represented gender or wait?
posted by running order squabble fest at 4:01 AM on April 15, 2016 [1 favorite]

"In the world" is a weird one with Rust, as there are many, many servers, each with their own 'world'. Your character model is consistent across servers. There being an equal number of male and female characters that exist in the game does not necessarily mean that that will be true of any given server (though with player caps usually in the hundreds, it's unlikely that'll you'll get a homogenous population).
posted by Dysk at 5:00 AM on April 15, 2016 [1 favorite]

Sure - so you could load balance per server/instance, to a degree - but the math is still against you if user choice tends towards there being more male avatars picked overall than female...
posted by running order squabble fest at 5:16 AM on April 15, 2016

I just bought it and will give it a whirl this weekend. I've played other survival games but not this one. I'm super curious about what my avatar is going to be and how I'm going to relate to it. I usually play games where I can go super customized and have a certain look that I'm comfortable with. I always go woman if the option is there and if it's not I do have a favoured Dude type. Looking forward to something different.
posted by Jalliah at 5:23 AM on April 15, 2016 [2 favorites]

Sure - so you could load balance per server/instance, to a degree

No you can't, really, at least without limiting which serves people can connect to, because it is a global account setting, not a per server one.
posted by Dysk at 7:09 AM on April 15, 2016

there are many, many servers, each with their own 'world'

Ooooh, is there an Amazon server? There should be an Amazon server. Where the women rule, reclining in luxury reading each other Sapphic poetry. Meanwhile the men are kept naked as slaves, scavenging for supplies and food and tending to the whims and needs of the women. Occasionally there may be a slave revolt but the Amazon women quickly put it down for the male slaves are naked and have a vulnerable extra hit box right in the middle of their model. Head shot, as it were.
posted by Nelson at 7:19 AM on April 15, 2016 [2 favorites]

I imagine that there are several Rust servers hosted on AWS.
posted by Going To Maine at 11:09 AM on April 15, 2016 [4 favorites]

Booooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

(for making that joke before me)
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 11:57 AM on April 15, 2016 [2 favorites]

No you can't, really, at least without limiting which serves people can connect to, because it is a global account setting, not a per server one.

Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying. If the goal is to have a roughly 50/50 gender split, and the effect of player choice (if players are given a choice) is such that you cannot have that 50/50 split if gender choice is entirely in the hands of the player, then you could to an extent balance it by shifting the locus of choice - i.e. saying "you can't play as %gender on this server, but you can join this other server, or you can wait until the gender balance on this server evens out to the point where you can join it". But even then you probably end up with too many people who want to play with male avatars - you're just moving the problem around. So, to have an equal (or even approximately equal) avatar gender split across all servers, you'd have to remove player choice, as Rust has.

(That presupposes that more players want to have male avatars than female avatars in general, but I think that's a fairly safe presupposition.)

That's pretty much what Garry Newman says in the Guardian comment piece - that a diverse set of avatars serves the goal of the game, whereas giving players the chance to choose their own avatar race and gender would not:

Ultimately the decision comes down to gameplay. We don’t believe that letting you choose your race and gender would improve the game. On the other hand, randomising everyone’s gender and race meets all our requirements. We get an even spread of races and genders that make players more identifiable – while at the same time making the social aspects of the game much more interesting.

posted by running order squabble fest at 3:28 PM on April 15, 2016

Right, which proves my point that there is no meaningful way to balance that without removing the choice. You cannot give the choice and still balance representation. Limiting server access like that is a complete non-starter. Say two thirds of players pick make avatars - that's a 2:1 ratio
Now if you wanted to maintain gender parity, fully half of the male character players cannot join any server at all due to the lack of women. Since the character choice is both global and permanent, you've just effectively locked a third of your playerbase out of your game competely.
posted by Dysk at 12:12 AM on April 16, 2016

That is again exactly what I just said, yes. I think we're agreeing with each other in pretty much every particular.

Of course, there is a way you could have both player gender customization and in-game gender parity, but it involves creating a game that appeals to a 50/50 split of [people who select male avatars] and [people who select female avatars], and is marketed in order to get an equal number of both groups through the door. Very, very roughly, that would mean an equal gender split in the player base*.

That's not impossible by any means - you could do it, for example, by making a mobile builder game (usually about a 60/40 male/female split) and then marketing it towards women - but it's a lot of trouble to go to when you could achieve the same goal by doing essentially exactly what Garry Newman has done.

*Assuming that _as a general rule_, people select avatar gender in line with their own gender identity.
posted by running order squabble fest at 5:43 AM on April 16, 2016

That's not impossible by any means - you could do it, for example, by making a mobile builder game (usually about a 60/40 male/female split) and then marketing it towards women - but it's a lot of trouble to go to when you could achieve the same goal by doing essentially exactly what Garry Newman has done.

That would be a very different game to Rust in every single way, of course.
posted by Dysk at 9:24 AM on April 16, 2016

Of course, there is a way you could have both player gender customization and in-game gender parity, but it involves creating a game that appeals to a 50/50 split ... Assuming that _as a general rule_, people select avatar gender in line with their own gender identity.

But of course the entire point of Rust's randomization is (1) they want the race/gender diversity to reflect the fiction of their particular world rather than any particular real world of gamers, and (2) many gamers absolutely do customize their characters by all sorts of other criteria besides just a reflection of their own identity.
posted by straight at 10:25 AM on April 16, 2016

We appear now to be stating things that we all know and agree on.

So... Ice cream is delicious?
posted by running order squabble fest at 11:45 AM on April 16, 2016 [2 favorites]

Thrill as hundreds of assholes suddenly discover that rape culture is a thing.
posted by WizardOfDocs at 11:51 AM on April 16, 2016

Beyond the general lens of patriarchy, I don't think that rape culture has anything to do with this.
posted by Going To Maine at 12:01 PM on April 16, 2016 [1 favorite]

the entire point of Rust's randomization

What I've read -- only what's linked here -- the point was to play the repeated Prisoners' Dilemma* from behind the veil. The cruelty of the world is the PD, making one's appearance permanent makes it a repeated game, and assigning characteristics randomly reweaves Rawls' veil. What do gamers call the worldview that games reify into mechanic? (I'm not a gamer, I really don't know.)
posted by clew at 1:02 PM on April 16, 2016

What do gamers call the worldview that games reify into mechanic? (I'm not a gamer, I really don't know.)

You are confusing gamers and game critics for academics. Games researchers might have a name for it (or several different names for it, in several different papers). Gamers and critics would simply call that a mechanic.
posted by Going To Maine at 3:50 PM on April 16, 2016

Beyond the general lens of patriarchy, I don't think that rape culture has anything to do with this.

I think the point is that male gamers who have female avatars are now going to see their characters treated as if they're female, which includes things like sexual harassment and assault.

(I don't necessarily agree -- I think male gamers treat female avatars that might have male players behind them differently than female avatars they know are played by women.)
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 3:05 PM on April 17, 2016

So I've been playing for two days. It's been quite fun. My avatar is a tiny, black woman. I started out on a PVE server which was great. Super friendly people and no worries about being killed until I learned the game. After a few hours I ventured onto some full PVP servers. A couple were so crowded that I barely lasted ten minutes at a time. I tried a few more and finally found one that seemed to mesh with me. Still got killed a lot by people but mostly animals but the attitude of the people was that it was all in fun.

There was only one server where I saw fairly bad stuff in chat and it didn't last long. The person was banned in under five minutes.

I haven't been harassed at all for being female. Interestingly the default assumption that player me is a dude. Or at least I'm assuming so because I'm being called bro a lot.
posted by Jalliah at 6:47 PM on April 17, 2016 [4 favorites]

Jalliah, that sounds right to me. The conversation in this thread about female avatars receiving sexist oppression doesn't mesh with the general gamer misconception that every gamer is male.
posted by rebent at 6:21 AM on April 18, 2016 [2 favorites]

Alas I have an addendum.

I tried a few more servers last night. I went on a few of the higher population official Facepunch servers, a couple Canadian and a couple of US ones.

On every one of those I came across racists signs and the chat had people with gross misogynist names and chatting. Bleh. And on one I got some pretty gross things said to me about black women. Totally creeped me right out. Oh gawd the licking noises....

So I skiddadlled right back to the ones I had already found. I chatted on those ones about my experience and they all said that yeah that crap doesn't fly on this one.

When you chose your server there are official servers, community one and modded ones. From my brief experience it looks like the not official servers are personally controlled by players. So they set the tone and rules for their servers. A lot of them do say no racism, no crap, no isms in general in there description as well any other rules.

So experience will vary depending on where you go. I can see how people could be super turned off if they decided to join one of those official servers that allows that level of crap.
posted by Jalliah at 5:27 AM on April 19, 2016 [9 favorites]

Jalliah could you let me know what servers you are on if you don't mind sharing? I just bought it and I'm going to explore my friends server but want to check out other good places as well.
posted by SarahElizaP at 8:31 PM on April 21, 2016

And.... they've got their hooks in me.

Finally bit the bullet and bought it this weekend. And it's exactly what I wanted Minecraft to be, and was disappointed when Minecraft didn't have. The first good sign is that I rolled a black female -- it was almost weird seeing someone who looked like me (with better boobs) on the inventory screen.

I bounced through a couple of servers but ended up on an "official" one. There are still idiots in the chat but they seem to get shut down relatively quickly. The game does let players put up signposts and the like, so sexist/homophobic slurs and crudely drawn penises abound. I could probably paint over them, but I'd like to get a little stronger first before I start declare war on morons.

I probably put in 15 hours over the weekend, and I haven't gotten any personal harassment yet, and I'm really having more fun running away from bears and crafting spears while trying to keep from starving to death.

I'm really liking the lack of XP/quests, I'm sure that they'll get added eventually, but right now it's great kind of being at the same "level" as all the other players. I don't feel like I'm missing much being 2 years behind in playing this game.
posted by sparklemotion at 7:31 AM on April 25, 2016 [2 favorites]

sparklemotion: "I'm really liking the lack of XP/quests, I'm sure that they'll get added eventually, "

Surely at this point, it would be a mistake to expect them to add something just because lots of games do it.
posted by RobotHero at 6:05 AM on April 26, 2016 [1 favorite]

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