When Rust first launched random skin tones in March of last year, there was a bit of an outcry from gamers who suddenly found themselves playing a different race. Nevermind that previously everyone played the same generic white dude — including players who were neither white nor dudes — this was an outrage.
However, things seem to have mellowed considerably since that update, such that designer Garry Newman felt confident telling Polygon last June that “I don’t actually believe people behave differently to different races in-game right now.” The developer has also felt emboldened to embrace a similar tactic when rolling out new female-assigned body meshes, which are likewise generated based on a player’s identification number on Steam (and thus cannot be changed with a reset).
“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,” Newman writes in Rust‘s devblog status update. “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.”
This update drops in the midst of a growing number of bills and other legislation specifically targeting transgender individuals, so it has the potential to be topical, at least. How might a player feel when he logs in to find he’s seeing the world through the eyes of a body that doesn’t conform with his gender identity, and knowing that other players might now treat him differently? I don’t personally think these ‘social experiments’ are too terribly effective in promoting empathy or understanding among players, far less regarding trans issues — but if what Newman says is true, and players have stopped treating race as a major differentiating factor in the game, it will be interesting to see if adding a second gender has the same results.
Um. Eventually. Probably best not to browse through Rust’s Steam forums in the meantime…
(h/t Polygon.)
Kris Ligman is the News Editor of ZAM, and actually considered browsing said Steam forums for ‘player reactions’ to this update, but decided they valued their mental health more.
