New Rust Update Assigns Players Permanent, Random Gender

[Steven Bogos]

New Rust Update Assigns Players Permanent, Random Gender

When Rust's next update goes live, players will be assigned a gender based on their SteamID that cannot be changed.

Gary Newman's open-world survival title penis sizes [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/tag/view/rust], and now finally, genders. The twist is that unlike other games which let you pick and choose to customize your character, Rust is assigning all these things randomly, based on your SteamID number, with the assignment being permanent. Just like in real life, you're stuck with what God dealt you.

"To clear up some confusion, when we it does go live you won't get a choice of whether you're female or male," explained Newman in his Rust devblog [http://playrust.com/devblog-69/]. "We're not 'taking the choice away' from you. You never had a choice," he stated, referencing some criticisms that arose when the whole "randomly assigned race" thing first came up. "A man's voice coming out of a woman's body is no more weird than an 8 year-old boy's voice coming out of a man's body."

The new change is coming as part of an update which will add "cosmetic items and Steam Inventory integration, strong female characters models, wood & bone armour sets, and a freelook mode." Newman stressed that items earned via the Steam inventory will be purely cosmetic - there will be no "pay-to-win" in this game.

Source: Rust [http://playrust.com/devblog-69/]

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[09philj]

It's an added layer of realism. You don't get to choose your original (biological?) gender in real life either.

 

[sonicneedslovetoo]

Is he trying to add controversy to the game? I mean this whole decision seems like a really pointless way to rile up your customers for no reason at all.

 

[Katherine Kerensky]

Well, at least now I know I don't really want to get Rust.
I think I'll stick to 7 Days to Die and the like. At least I can make a really ugly beast-human thing in that.
I like having choices to make in games, and not having them made for me, especially ones that a lot of games I have actually let me make.

 

[Vigormortis]

I still say this is an incredibly stupid idea.

Permanently assign a sex to a given character? Sure. I can go with that. You're stuck with whatever the game gives you until your character dies. But to have a random choice assigned permanently to the users SteamID?

That's just monumentally dumb. Especially for a survival game built around player choice.

I feel the decision was made solely to drum up some controversy. At best, it's a terrible gimmick.

It's an added layer of realism.

Which is instantly destroyed when the permanently assigned sex doesn't match the sex of the player or the sex with which the player would prefer to play.

I like having choices to make in games, and not having them made for me, especially ones that a lot of games I have actually let me make.

Precisely.

The concept could work, but is just so out of place with what the core of Rust is built around.

 

[Clive Howlitzer]

You are all too attached to your gender. Bring on the RNG!

 

[Thyunda]

I have no issue with this whatsoever. It'd force me to go with a different aesthetic style than I usually do. Mix it up a bit.
Dev's right though - there's nothing weird about a man playing a woman. Not compared to an eight-year-old playing a grown man.

 

[Leonardo Huizar]

Yeah... I think i'll stick to the games where i can optionaly play as a more-tanned-than-usual Hispanic or dark blue skinned character with silver hair.

 

[Thunderous Cacophony]

I have no issue with this whatsoever. It'd force me to go with a different aesthetic style than I usually do. Mix it up a bit.

What aesthetics? The game is all first-person, so at best you'll be able to see that your arms are permanently either male or female. It's not like you get a ton of customization options in game: You're dropped off in the middle of nowhere in your underpants, like 90% of survival games, and you wear whatever you can find.

And it may or may not force you to do anything: it will randomly decide, once and forever, whether you are using a "different aesthetic style" than you usually do. So the mixing it up is entirely by happenstance, with good odds that you won't be any different than normal.

 

[Lightknight]

Heh, just creating controversy in an attempt to generate sales for the game. I guess a good PR rep must have given them their resume.

I already gave them my money over a year ago. I would not have done so if I knew they were going to arbitrarily steal control from the players over sexual identity. That's more anti-trans than anything else like some sort of "pseudo-diversity".

 

[Scars Unseen]

*looks up*

What's that? Rust dev still going on about why I shouldn't play their game? Alright then.

I've got no problem with playing a different sex than the one I belong to IRL. I enjoy the recent Tomb Raider reboot, and I've actively chosen to play female characters where I could go with either because I preferred the female voice acting(Mass Effect, Saints Row 3/4). I've got a pretty big problem with a game that has the ability to let you play either gender making taking that decision out of my hands. There's no reason for it other than that the dev is a pretentious prick looking for headlines(and look! he succeeded!).

 

[Kenjitsuka]

Is he trying to add controversy to the game? I mean this whole decision seems like a really pointless way to rile up your customers for no reason at all.

My thoughts exactly! Games are a way of escapism, hence the name for this website for example.
Imagine being really bummed out about your biological gender not being the same as your psychological one.
Now there's this game forcing you (a 50% chance?) to live that again, but now in a world of makebelieve for no good reason at all!

People nowadays actually have the choice to change their gender, which is great. And here comes gamedev guy from the 1950's... bloody asshole!!! Gonna drop this as soon as all the hype you get from it dies down, huh? So you can get *another* piece of news coverage out of it. You marketing shits!!!

 

[Eric the Orange]

As someone with no intent of playing this game I like this if only to see how people react.

 

[AlbinoBunny]

Heh, just creating controversy in an attempt to generate sales for the game. I guess a good PR rep must have given them their resume.

I already gave them my money over a year ago. I would not have done so if I knew they were going to arbitrarily steal control from the players over sexual identity. That's more anti-trans than anything else like some sort of "pseudo-diversity".

I'm super mixed on this in general.

On the one hand I think the juxtaposition between the always absurdly shitty community atmosphere that exist in survival games against people being pushed out of their comfort zone is super, duper interesting.

On the other hand it actually makes me deeply uncomfortable to boot up Rust after not playing it since launch because I'd rather not wind up assigned a dude.

Essentially I think it's cool and has some really neat effects on the game and community around it (I always find that story of the guy who used to call everyone the N' word but stopped when he was assigned a black character and had to suffer it himself fantastic) but ultimately not for me.

For what it's worth I don't think the goal of the creators here was to enforce diversity. It's just taking the social experiment aspects of DayZ and the survival genre and pushing them forwards.

 

[Daelin Dwin]

From what I've seen the community is already worse than all the nine circles of hell. This is just more fuel for Newman's surprisingly profitable fire. I don't see any real benefit to this other than data for a study that will conclude dissatisfying customers = bad news bears.

 

[Anti-American Eagle]

There's no way this could go wrong!.. except for the part where it's giving people another reason to randomly attack you, kidnap you, and play silence of the lambs with you.

 

[Thaluikhain]

Seems like a stupid gimmick to me, but then again, trying weird stupid gimmicks is often how progress is made, because every so often they turn out to be decent ideas.

 

[FirstNameLastName]

I was pretty sceptical when they were doing the randomly generated race thing, and I still don't know what the point was other than to make headlines, but it seems that must have worn off since they're back for more of this RNG character creation.

I really don't care one way or another since I've never had any intention of playing it, but it does seem like they're busily pissing off most of the fanbase. I think the questions they ought to be asking is "how does this benefit the players? Does this improve the experience, and if so, how? If not, why add it?"

 

[kenu12345]

Honestly have and see no problem with this. I don't understand why people care what a virtual person has down under especially since they are not the ones who are going to be seeing the cosmetic changes anyway. So who cares. This isn't a defined character so it doesn't matter