‘Rust is not a game about identity,’ says Rust dev on player frustration over randomized gender

Back in June of last year, Garry Newman, the creator of Garry’s Mod and lead developer on Rust, announced that female characters would be added to Rust. Recently, females finally entered the world of Rust – ending the survival game’s sausage fest that started in 2013.

Rust, unlike almost every other game out there that allows you to choose your gender, does not allow you to choose your character’s identity. Every aspect of your character, sex, height, race, appearance — even breast and dong size are determined by players SteamID.

Facepunch Studios, the developers behind the game, released female characters into the world with full knowledge that some fans would not be accepting of it. Unfortunately, the topic has reached a level where Newman took to The Guardian to comment on the subject.

Rust is not a game about identity. The objective in Rust is to survive…

…Here’s one of the many messages we’ve received from disgruntled male players: “Why won’t you give the player base an option to choose their gender? I just want to play the game and have a connection to the character like most other games I play. Not have some political movement shoved down my throat because you make the connection we can’t choose our gender in reality so let’s make it like that in game too.”…

…It’s maybe understandable why some male gamers wouldn’t want to play as women. They’re just not used to being forced to. You could probably count on your fingers the number of major, big-budget games where you have no choice but to play as a woman, never mind having no choice but to play as a black woman. Female gamers are obviously more forgiving – they’ve been playing games as men for most of their lives.

I understand the arguments from transgender players – well, as much as a straight man can. But it feels to me like the same response stands. We’re assigning gender randomly in game – not in real life.

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.

You can read the post in full on The Guardian.