Opinion: How Facepunch failed to communicate gender assignment in Rust

Last week, I stuck my foot in my mouth.

I wrote about Facepunch Studios' choice to automatically assign players of Rust, its open-world survival game, a male or female character based on their SteamID. In explaining why I disagreed with the implementation, I inadvertently trivialized the blood, sweat, and tears developers pour into making even the smallest, simplest games. "Facepunch invested the time and energy to create female character models," I wrote. "Surely creating menus full of sliders that let players customize those and other features can't be that much harder to build. At the very least, a screen with two buttons—Male, Female—is in order."

I've written about game design and culture for over 12 years. I know better than to undervalue the effort involved in creating something as complex as a suite of customization options. There's more involved than slapping together a bunch of sliders and rolling out a patch, because nothing in game development is simple. That was ignorant.

Since my original news story, more information has come to light. While I now possess a better understanding of what Rust's developers were going for, I believe they failed to communicate their goals on two fronts. The first: tone.

If you missed it, the kerfuffle started when Rust devs Garry Newman and Taylor Trotter wrote a blog post explaining the gender system's implementation: rather than let you pick male or female, Rust assigns a gender based on your SteamID—no ifs, ands, or buts. "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 any more [sic]. 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."

Rust's gender-assignment system sparked debate on various outlets and r/Games. That spark grew into a wildfire when Newman responded to Eurogamer's request for an interview. "You are who you are. Before we added different races and genders you played as a bald white guy - you never had a choice," he explained, referring to the fact that at launch, Rust assigned players a single character model because the studio couldn't justify spending hundreds of hours building an elaborate customization tool. "So we're not taking a choice away from the player, we're just adding more variety to the player models. I don't believe that playing as a different gender/race detracts from anyone's enjoyment of the game."

Over the next 48 hours, Facepunch was flooded with Reddit comments and emails from players on both sides of the debate. Two days after announcing the change, Newman wrote a piece for The Guardian in an attempt to explain the controversial decision. He outlines the economic concerns that informed it, and cited continuity and verisimilitude as equally important: the team didn't like game-y conventions like player names floating above heads, and they didn't want unscrupulous survivors to be able to attack someone, then come back later with a different face and pull the same con again. Players will still be able to trick fellow survivors, but they'll have to work for it by fashioning disguises and/or planning attacks, playing to the game's intended goals of carrying out survival tactics to get by.

As Friedrich Nietzsche observed, the tone used to express an idea goes a long way toward its acceptance. Many people interpreted the tone of Facepunch's announcement of how Rust would handle gender assignment as, "We know lots of you won't like having this choice taken away from you. We just don't care."

The tone of Newman's explanation on The Guardian sat better with me. Games cost money to make, so you've got to triage important elements and bump others down (or off) the list. As a bonus, Facepunch orchestrated a fascinating social experiment that conveniently stimulated awareness of its game.

I'm a proponent of authorial control: Just because your players don't like something—like, say, the ending—doesn't mean you should cave to their complaints. As a matter of fact, you don't owe me or anyone else an explanation. It's your game. Do what you want. Realize your vision. But there's a right way to communicate changes, especially those likely to elicit an emotional response. Facepunch went about this change the wrong way.

Which brings me to the studio's second failure. "Ultimately the decision comes down to gameplay," Newman wrote in his editorial. "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."

With respect, Mr. Newman got it wrong. Gender and other variables stemming from identity and representation do matter in games, even ones driven by gameplay over narrative.

In his editorial, Newman labeled the response to Rust's gender system as "extreme." Transgender players understandably found the system "unpleasant and uncomfortable." More than a few players accused Facepunch of pushing a political agenda. Many female players reacted with pragmatism. They've been playing dudes in games for decades; Rust making them play as a dude was par for the course.

Maybe it shouldn't be. Kelsey Schmitz, a graduate student studying how players form identities in games as part of her PhD program at University of Ottawa, told CBC News that women have to adapt their expectations when playing games due to most games putting them in control of male characters. Giving players a say in choices like gender and race, Schmitz pointed out, creates an opportunity to put them in someone (or something) else's shoes.

Setting aside personal choices such as transgenderism, many players simply lament being told what type of characters they must play, opining that it prevents them from bonding with their avatars. In 2012, Nintendo caught flak for not including Princess Peach as a playable character in New Super Mario Bros. U. "In Super Mario Bros 2, Princess Peach had her own unique moves and animation," director Masataka Takemoto explained to Now Gamer. "In this series, we want all the players to have the same moves and animations as Mario, and Princess Peach isn't suited for that."

Isn't she? In Super Mario Bros. 2, Peach (then Toadstool) could float, Luigi jumped highest, and Toad ran fastest. Nintendo had no problem homogenizing Toad and Luigi for inclusion in New Super Mario Bros. U; only Peach was sidelined, her levitation ability deemed inexplicably inoperable.

True, Rust is a sandbox game where players tell stories through the actions they choose to take. But the telling of their story can and often does revolve around who they are in the game. Auto-assigning gender strips players of a major component of their agency—ostensibly the foundation of open-world games, especially those predicated on survival.

Max Birk is a PhD student at University of Saskatchewan who recently published a paper on the relationship between player motivation and representation. His findings were clear: players who identify with their virtual selves feel more authority in game worlds, and tend to spend more time playing—an outcome high on any developer's wish list.

To be fair, Birk's paper also makes a point in Facepunch's favor. While players may not identify with an avatar at first, overcoming adversities can strengthen that bond or create one where none existed.

Still, the argument boils down to representation. Rust and its developer have a habit of making choices for their players: an earlier update assigned ethnicity based on external factors. And to a certain degree, that is the studio's right. Facepunch created Rust. They can make decisions and harness the consequences as they see fit.

They would be wise, however, to consider limiting how often they take matters into their own hands, and the matters they decide. Just because a game is predicated on gameplay over traditional narratives does not mean gender, ethnicity, and related characteristics have no bearing on these games. To some players, gender is as important to them as the weapon they carry into Rust's post-apocalyptic world.

It matters to them, because it matters.

David Craddock

Long Reads Editor

David L. Craddock writes fiction, nonfiction, and grocery lists. He is the author of the Stay Awhile and Listen series, and the Gairden Chronicles series of fantasy novels for young adults. Outside of writing, he enjoys playing Mario, Zelda, and Dark Souls games, and will be happy to discuss at length the myriad reasons why Dark Souls 2 is the best in the series. Follow him online at davidlcraddock.com and @davidlcraddock.