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Rust - Representing Race in Games - Extra Credits
Key insights
6 takeaways- 01Rust enforces permanent, randomized character ethnicity tied to a player's Steam ID, removing all user agency over their avatar's physical appearance.
- 02Player discomfort with being unable to choose a character matching their own ethnicity highlights a privilege often taken for granted by majority groups in gaming.
- 03This design choice functions as a sociological experiment that forces players to experience the game world through a racial identity they did not choose.
- 04By intentionally allowing uncensored player communication, the game exposes users to racial discrimination and slurs, compelling them to confront the realities faced by marginalized groups.
- 05The experiment demonstrates that games can foster empathy and social reflection through subtle, non-mechanical design choices rather than explicit messaging.
- 06The current implementation is limited by the absence of female character models, though it still effectively challenges personal biases regarding the arbitrary nature of physical appearance.
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Transcript
So, I want to talk about Rust. If you haven't seen it before, it's sort of a Minecraft meets DayZ multiplayer survival game, but I'm not really here to talk about any of that. I want to talk about one particular design decision they made in the earliest moments of the game, character creation. It's something that has absolutely no in-game mechanical effect and yet has had a profound effect on the way players play. I want to talk about the fact that you get no input whatsoever in how your character looks. Yep, the game randomly rolls what your character looks like and that roll is tied to your Steam ID. So, you can't just reroll or try again. You are who you are and you're stuck with that. And that happens to include your race. And I'm not talking fantasy races here like Nord or Khajiit. I just mean the color of your skin. What race you are in this multiplayer game isn't a matter of choice. It's what you're born with. This is forcing a lot of people to face a lot of things and it's making a lot of players pretty uncomfortable. And that's a brave design choice. This
wasn't a fiscal decision. In fact, this choice has almost certainly lost the company money, but they made it because they felt like it was the right choice. They made it because they felt like without taking anything away from the game, they could use design to give us another opportunity to better understand who we are. And if this game makes you uncomfortable, that's okay. Sometimes art is supposed to make us uncomfortable. It's the discomfort that comes from getting out of our normal boundaries that helps push the limits of who we are. But personally, I found this fascinating as a sociological experiment. I've seen on message boards players talk about the fact that playing this game was the first time they suffered racial discrimination. That they had never had racial slurs used against them before. That they were white males who had never felt what it was like to have terms of racial hate leveled at them. I even saw a discussion about what it feels like to play a minority from somebody who self-avowed was the type of person who threw around the N-word in multiplayer games. And Rust creators have talked about the fact that they've chosen not to automatically filter racial slurs because they feel that part of the strength of games is that they give us the opportunity to safely experience a part of life we
might otherwise never get to and through doing so come to a greater sense of empathy. As the lead designer said when a friend of mine was interviewing him, I would love nothing more than if playing a black guy in a game made a white guy appreciate what it was like to be a persecuted minority. There's still work to be done so consider this just the boiler plate of an idea for now but it's quite pleasing to see different races working together in game and makes you realize how arbitrary race is. That is a powerful statement. A perspective on race only games can bring. It shows how we can use this medium to advance the dialogue even if it's in painful sometimes uncomfortable ways and it goes beyond just the bounds of the game itself. If you read many of the Steam reviews you'll see complaints from people saying that they just can't get immersed in the game because they don't have a character that looks like them. That's the best argument for more diversity in games that I've ever heard. Time and again I've seen people say that they don't feel like games need to be more diverse. That they hate how diversity's being pushed into the games industry but if you can't get immersed in a character that doesn't look like
you in a first-person game, okay, but just imagine what that means for all the players who are minorities, who are drastically underrepresented in games, who almost never get to play a character that looks like them. Think about how many people lose out on the immersion that many of us take for granted just because we share a skin color with Link or Mario or Marcus Fenix. We should be able to give that to everyone. My only complaint with the diversity in Rust is that right now they've only got one character model and it's male. But as it's a survival game where you start out completely naked, I unfortunately understand the choice. It's pretty depressing that not giving players a naked female character model because of what it would do to your game makes sense but there it is. I hope they can find a solution. But despite that I think there's a lot to learn from Rust because Rust shows us just how much impact a game can have on our understanding of society and each other without hitting us over the head with the message, without even impacting play. A game doesn't have to be about race to teach us about race, or to get us to better understand ourselves and to better understand one another. Instead,
it only has to just give us the tiniest taste of what it can be like to be somebody else. See you next week.
Summary
The survival game Rust utilizes a unique character creation system that assigns players a permanent skin color tied to their Steam ID, removing all player agency regarding their avatar’s ethnicity. This design choice serves as a sociological experiment, forcing players to inhabit characters of different races and, in many cases, experience racial discrimination or the use of slurs for the first time. By intentionally avoiding the censorship of player language, the developers aim to foster empathy by providing a safe, albeit uncomfortable, environment for players to confront the realities of being a marginalized minority.
The primary thesis posits that games can serve as powerful tools for social reflection and empathy without requiring explicit messaging or mechanical changes to gameplay. The discomfort expressed by players who struggle to immerse themselves in a character that does not match their own physical appearance highlights a significant disparity in the industry. This reaction underscores the necessity for greater diversity, as it reveals that many players take for granted the ability to see themselves represented in popular media, a privilege rarely afforded to minority groups.
While the current implementation is limited by the lack of female character models, the experiment demonstrates that subtle design decisions can effectively challenge societal norms and personal biases. By stripping away the ability to choose one’s race, the game forces a confrontation with the arbitrary nature of physical appearance. Ultimately, the experience suggests that the medium of gaming possesses a unique capacity to advance social dialogue by allowing individuals to step outside their own perspectives, thereby cultivating a broader understanding of the human experience.
