Videogame Rust Randomly Assigns Character Gender

Rust, an “early access” first-person role playing game where you are dropped completely naked into a hostile and unfriendly world, has received criticism following a recent update by developer, Facepunch Studios. Players have found that their character’s race and gender will be randomised upon starting the game.

It would be easy to dismiss this as white, male privilege and sexism across the videogame fandom, and it appears largely that most people are simply frustrated that they will not be able to play the game in the manner they wish. After all, the whole experience of a role-playing game is creating and living vicariously through a character that fits your image and personality.

However, Facepunch Studios founder, Garry Newman, wrote in an article in the Guardian that the complaints received have been made mostly by men, writing: 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.”

Newman went on to add that the decision has a more practical basis as he did not wish to spend resources on a character creating tool for Rust, stating: “we didn’t want to spend six months making a player customisation tool – we wanted to concentrate on the game.”

The argument being made that the decision is criticised by mostly white male players because, despite the increase of female and ethnic video main characters in video games, it is the white male demographic that prominently featured as video game protagonists. Newman wrote: “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.”

According to Newman, female players have been accepting of the decision to randomise their character’s gender as they do not feel it will affect the gameplay experience as they have been playing as men in the game for the past two years. In an article on CBC News, Kelsey Schmitz, who researched how video games create digital identities online for her PHD at the University of Ottawa, reiterates this point, stating: “Women already have to [modify] their gaming experience, they have to adapt their storyline expectations around a pre-selected gender all the time.”

Schmitz went on to add that, from her research, female video gamers were more likely to play as characters who bore no physical resemblance to them at all if it meant they could enjoy a different experience. Male characters, on the other hand, were more likely to choose female characters for strategic purposes, or for something simple as aesthetics, stating that: “If they were playing games like a role-playing game and they had to look at the character for an extended period of time, they chose female.” Further to this, transgender players have also criticised the decision, with Newman writing that one player argued: “assigning a fixed sex was reminiscent of a real world phobia.”

Newman insists that assigning a randomised race and gender for a character should not have an impact on how one experiences the game, writing: “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.”