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[QuantumSquid]

He meant the people reacting to it.

As in, people bitching about this didn't start until he added variety to the randomly generated models. That's what's disgusting.

Ah, sorry. Forgive me for being dense.

Am I imagining things or was the title of this thread changed from "Genetic lottery begins again" to "Genital lottery begins again"?

 

[DoubleYou]

Rust: The New Model Interviews by Argyle Alligator
Thought some of you might like to see the social experiment in action. That kid at the end though.

 

[Enthus]

I ended up getting a female model with the last update. I don't care either way, but my old model actually looked a bit like me, which was cool.

For all the people complaining, once you start getting clothes and armor all the models start looking pretty gender neutral.

 

[moggio]

Rust: The New Model Interviews by Argyle Alligator
Thought some of you might like to see the social experiment in action. That kid at the end though.

"I like to touch my boobs sometimes, you know?"

"It's just too thick. I'm not saying it's short, I'm just saying that it's too thick."

Ha. That's great.

 

[CountAntonius]

Garry Newmac Artice for the Gaurdian

Originally every player appeared in game as a white bald guy. We were still in the early stages of development and had other things to focus on. Recently, though, we decided to change this. We decided that we didn’t want players to pick their own appearance. We felt that player customisation had got a bit out of control in other games. And we didn’t want to spend six months making a player customisation tool – we wanted to concentrate on the game. We also wanted the appearance of the players to be consistent over time. A survivor shouldn’t be able to attack another then come back later with a different gender or race and befriend the same player. They should be recognisable consistently and long-term – so anyone likely to commit a crime would be more likely to wear a balaclava or a face mask.

More at link. Turns out Russians are the ones who complain most about having a black character.

 

[Kurt Russell]

Garry Newmac Artice for the Gaurdian


More at link. Turns out Russians are the ones who complain most about having a black character.

I'm OK with Garry's explanation (and I don't have a problem with the way the game works now) but I think that he doesn't know a lot about transgender people. I get that the ingame gender doesn't have anything to do with real life gender, but then there's this quote:

"I understand the arguments from transgender players – well, as much as a straight man can."

Which tells me that Mr. Newman is a bit out of touch regarding gender issues. He's obviously confusing gender with sexuality there.

 

[Piggus]

I just logged in to check my new bod, and I'm now a woman with incredibly small tits!

NSFW

I'm a proud woman and embrace my body. Thank you Garry.

 

[sugarless]

Eurogamer Interviewed Garry(Newman) about this when the update launched. Some choice quotes.

"It's the SteamID itself," he explained. "It's used as a random seed, then these attributes are pulled from that seed. This way it's different for every SteamID - but it's also consistent. It also has the effect of being totally balanced, so half of players will be female, half will be male etc."

This part seems very important to me and is being overlooked. For this world the dev doesn't want a landscape full of the same character model. They want appearance to be a factor in trust - and that means balancing the different kinds of appearance so characters aren't clumped around the same type of appearance most players might choose themselves. I think it's a smart move for this type of game. It means if you are a sneaky type who befriends me then tries to kill me but I get you first, then you can't just come back in looking different. You'd have to try hard to change your appearance with clothing to try to trick me again. It's very interesting as a gameplay mechanic - don't just make gamertags the way you tell who is who. As per this other interview:

We also wanted the appearance of the players to be consistent over time. A survivor shouldn’t be able to attack another then come back later with a different gender or race and befriend the same player. They should be recognisable consistently and long-term – so anyone likely to commit a crime would be more likely to wear a balaclava or a face mask.

 

[Par Score]

Heartening to see progressive moves like this met with success.