Newman, for his part, says that he just didn't want to spend development resources on a character building tool. So I can, to some extent, sympathize with this sentiment. As someone who enjoys playing role-playing games, if I'm given the option I'll always create a character that I think looks cool. It's totally understandable that some people want to create their characters as they see fit. 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.' This is what women and minority gamers have been complaining about for decades 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. With gender it seems to be more of a geography-free complaint. For example, most complaints about being black in the game have generally been from Russian players. Newman explained the situation in the Guardian, characterizing the reaction to the change as 'extreme':įor race, this seems to be a regional thing. Men, particularly white men, are not happy.

So even if you're a white man in real life, you now may be forced to play a black woman.

Instead, it's a new feature recently added to the game, which has 500,000 players each week, by developer Garry Newman: Your character's gender and race are now randomized. It's a tense game, one in which your friends can suddenly turn against you and basically ruin everything you worked for just for their own personal gain.īut it's not the betrayal and tension that has gamers upset with Rust. Rust is a popular first-person survival video game where you start out completely naked, left to a barren environment to build yourself tools, weapons, and a home as other players try to do the same - and potentially try to kill you and steal your stuff.

Video game gender transformation