I’ve watched some Rust actual play videos from time to time on YouTube; it’s part of a post-Minecraft survival/building genre like Day Z.
I don’t find the game itself terribly interesting, but I do find this decision by the developers fascinating, especially because of the subsequent hissy fit kicked up by players:
In March, Rust began randomizing players’ race by assigning a skin tone derived from their Steam ID. Last month, it used the same method to determine a player’s penis size… the latest Rust update similarly started randomizing player gender.
I guess if you’re going to have visible penises, you should have randomly generated penises…
“To clear up some confusion, when it does go live you won’t get a choice of whether you’re female or male,” Rust developer Craig Pearson said in a blog post. “We’re not ‘taking the choice away’ from you. You never had a choice.”
Facepunch said that it is still finalizing the female player models, though that doesn’t mean players will get what they want, which seems to be a guiding principle for Facepunch when designing Rust. You don’t get what you want. You get what you get and you have to learn how to deal with it and survive.
Also, re: the look of the model, which seems to be an issue for some (male) gamers quoted in the Motherboard article:
When the female model was first announced, Facepunch’s Tom Butters wrote, “We’ve started investigating a female model. We really don’t want to make the female model unrealistic in the sense of her being aesthetically idealized. In the same way that our male models aren’t perfect specimens of the male body, neither should the female be. No huge boobs nor four-inch waists here.”