Rimworld

[Jammy]

RPS posted an article about how Rimworld handles gender roles regarding relationships. Short answer, not well. The dev posted a pretty angry and defensive comment which hardly makes him look better.

[Vulpes Absurda]

It's interesting that the dev faults himself for his tone in the comments but as far as I can see does not apologies for it anywhere.

[SuperBiasedMan]

Is there a way to rescind support after buying a game? :/

[sclpls]

Well, that escalated quickly.

[Gormongous]

22 minutes ago, SuperBiasedMan said:

Is there a way to rescind support after buying a game? :/

 

Yeah, that's what I wish I could do. I enjoyed this game, but Sylvester comported himself about as poorly as it is possible to do when confronted with the implications of his own assumptions. It's really interesting (and confusing) that Sylvester programmed professions, skills, and backgrounds to be gender-agnostic, despite those things having the same kind of "evidence" for gender bias that he drew upon to make the system of social interaction and attraction.

[pkirkner]

That was a nice piece of reporting. I've wondered for some time whether the game's poor handling of relationships, mental health, and substance abuse was more a case of lazy placeholders in an early access game or the developer's view of the world. It was helpful of him to erase any doubt about that in the comments section.

[mjukis]

120% gamergater. Also defends his game with "all bi guys I know all turned out gay in the end" etc. 

[ariskany_evan]

This is fascinating, though I suppose not that different from what happened to me the other day.

 

Me reading some Raymond Carver short stories: "Man, these are fantastic! I love these stories! Who is this guy?" *brings up wikipedia* Oh, here's a quote from his first wife's biography:

"By fall of '74", writes [his first wife], "he was more dead than alive. I had to drop out of the Ph.D. program so I could get him cleaned up and drive him to his classes". Over the next several years, Maryann's husband [Raymond] physically abused her. Friends urged her to leave Raymond.

"But I couldn't. I really wanted to hang in there for the long haul. I thought I could outlast the drinking. I'd do anything it took. I loved Ray, first, last and always."

 

Oh, great, I love reading stories by a drunken abuser.

Thankfully the scare about the main Rimworld dev supporting Gamer Gate took this off my to-buy list before pulling the trigger. Stuff like this is prolly going to start popping up more and more as games get easier/cheaper to make and the current sea of developers becomes an ocean.

[juv3nal]

I think separating an artist from their work is a legitimate stance to take. I mean personally, I wouldn't do it in the case of Rimworld, but I think it is definitely more excusable in the case of Carver for a number of reasons.

One, alcoholism is an affliction and not necessarily volitional.

Two, Carver is dead.

Three, alcoholism and domestic abuse are probably not the kinds of things that Carver would use the platform afforded by his success to advocate for even if he were alive. Which seems to be less the case with something like supporting Gamer Gate.

[Bjorn]

2 hours ago, mjukis said:

120% gamergater. Also defends his game with "all bi guys I know all turned out gay in the end" etc. 

 

Yeah, I was going to specifically bring that up.  It definitely clarifies that he's just internalized a few tired, old stereotypes and rounded them up to reality.  But y'all, he did "research" and had "discussions". 

 

Quoted from the comments: "And personal observations: I’ve known some bi women and a large proportion of the nominally straight women I’ve known have discussed bi impulses or experiences they’ve had. In contrast, every bi man I’ve ever known has ultimately ended up identifying as gay. These patterns seem to apply even in very gay-friendly social contexts."

[ariskany_evan]

1 hour ago, juv3nal said:

I think separating an artist from there work is a legitimate stance to take. I mean personally, I wouldn't do it in the case of Rimworld, but I think it is definitely more excusable in the case of Carver for a number of reasons.

One, alcoholism is an affliction and not necessarily volitional.

Two, Carver is dead.

Three, alcoholism and domestic abuse are probably not the kinds of things that Carver would use the platform afforded by his success to advocate for even if he were alive. Which seems to be less the case with something like supporting Gamer Gate.

 

Totally agree on your points! I'm still reading Carver, just find myself unconsciously looking for any hint of those experiences/afflictions in the text. It's colored my experience.

 

I do the separating that you talk about constantly: ie. Danny Brown's new album Atrocity Exhibition is musically ferocious and the cartoonishly escalating look into partying/addiction hits home hard for me. But his lyrics are largely misogynistic. I do the separating necessary to enjoy the art, but it's a bummer in the end! I'm supporting a world view that I think is harmful.

 

I wonder if I was super duper into Dwarf Fortress style games if this would be more of a quandary. It sounded like there's no other games out there doing this atm....

[SuperBiasedMan]

11 hours ago, Gormongous said:

 

Yeah, that's what I wish I could do. I enjoyed this game, but Sylvester comported himself about as poorly as it is possible to do when confronted with the implications of his own assumptions. It's really interesting (and confusing) that Sylvester programmed professions, skills, and backgrounds to be gender-agnostic, despite those things having the same kind of "evidence" for gender bias that he drew upon to make the system of social interaction and attraction.

 

I don't think this is that strange. It's very common at this point for people (particularly younger people) to resist the most obvious forms of strict sexism. People wont outright say "as a woman you cannot do this job".

 

But it's stuff like this that's persisting among a lot more people, where people insist on inherent biological difference that they've observed. Stuff that 'makes sense', or 'feels right' but doesn't examine the subconscious biology of why you think it.

[marginalgloss]

That's a really fascinating article about the coded (in this case literally) ideology of social systems. By the time I finished it I thought 'well, this is all extremely odd and problematic, but I'm sure it would be possible to have a civilised conversation about it and fix it'. But the dev's response...well, I really wish someone had exerted some editorial control over that...

 

I'd be interested to read a lot more of this kind of journalism and I'm pleased to see RPS running with it. It's probably impossible for a game to model relationships in a way which would be entirely free from gendered political assumptions - but those assumptions are certainly deserving of scrutiny.

 

And to be honest, I'd be happy to see games displaying a lot more in the way of individual positions on gender politics than they have until this point. I've always found the old approach of 'anyone can get off with anyone' -- adjusting any NPC's sexuality to serve the interests of the player -- kind of an easy get-out clause. At the same time, it's disappointing to see a game which tries to pass off some half-baked assumptions about gender preferences as universal truths about the laws which govern human nature. And it's further disappointing to see someone who, when questioned about those assumptions, can only double down on them.

 

I guess therein lies the problem: in any systems-driven game like this, there must be 'laws' of some kind. You have to pick your prejudices carefully. But in real life there are no laws; you could spend a lifetime trying to balance the probabilities behind human attraction and never come up with a fully convincing model. Part of me wants to say that the whole business of trying to model the unknowable workings of the human heart in IF and THEN statements is a fool's errand, and that only narrative media can attempt this convincingly. But perhaps it's just that nobody has got it right yet.

[YoThatLimp]

3 hours ago, marginalgloss said:

That's a really fascinating article about the coded (in this case literally) ideology of social systems. By the time I finished it I thought 'well, this is all extremely odd and problematic, but I'm sure it would be possible to have a civilised conversation about it and fix it'. But the dev's response...well, I really wish someone had exerted some editorial control over that...

 

I'd be interested to read a lot more of this kind of journalism and I'm pleased to see RPS running with it. It's probably impossible for a game to model relationships in a way which would be entirely free from gendered political assumptions - but those assumptions are certainly deserving of scrutiny.

 

And to be honest, I'd be happy to see games displaying a lot more in the way of individual positions on gender politics than they have until this point. I've always found the old approach of 'anyone can get off with anyone' -- adjusting any NPC's sexuality to serve the interests of the player -- kind of an easy get-out clause. At the same time, it's disappointing to see a game which tries to pass off some half-baked assumptions about gender preferences as universal truths about the laws which govern human nature. And it's further disappointing to see someone who, when questioned about those assumptions, can only double down on them.

 

I guess therein lies the problem: in any systems-driven game like this, there must be 'laws' of some kind. You have to pick your prejudices carefully. But in real life there are no laws; you could spend a lifetime trying to balance the probabilities behind human attraction and never come up with a fully convincing model. Part of me wants to say that the whole business of trying to model the unknowable workings of the human heart in IF and THEN statements is a fool's errand, and that only narrative media can attempt this convincingly. But perhaps it's just that nobody has got it right yet.

 

Yep, agree on the difficulty of making a realistic relationship system. I think a lot of the problem is he didn't own up for his own failings/bias. Everyone has biases but unpacking your feelings in an honest way, even if honesty leads to ugly realizations, is the only way to move forward. 

 

I did not do my research on Rimworld, if I had known he was a gamergater I probably wouldn't have grabbed it. Its the reason why I never picked up Offworld Trading Company. Normally I am pretty good about seperating artist and art, but GamerGate was too aggressively destructive for me and I would hate to support any part of it. 

[pkirkner]

Yeah, I didn't find the article all that damning. It was illuminating about the assumptions that were coded into the game and seemed like a good jumping off point for a broader discussion interrogating those assumptions and the short-cuts and compromises that are necessary when modeling incredibly complex human systems in a game like this. It's a shame Sylvester was more interested in railing against the publisher and author than having that conversation.

[dium]

The erasure of bi men is maybe the grossest part, but the bit about gender differences wrt attraction and age was also disgusting. Disgusting! Knowing that's going on under the surface is probably enough to keep me from enjoying Rimworld from now on.

 

It was a good video game. I suppose I should regret giving it my dollars (especially since Sylvester seems to have entrenched himself in his harmful pov rather than have any discussion about it) but mostly I don't, I had a lot of fun with it. I'm thinking, now that I really can't go back to Rimworld without seeing the gross ideology behind it, it might push me to finally learn and play Dwarf Fortress.

 

(unlikely)

[SuperBiasedMan]

I'm going the opposite way and wondering how hard it'd be to mod this out.

[cavilatrest]

I'm hoping it's something he changes his viewpoint of cause I really do enjoy Rimworld. From reading the comments, he wants to achieve an approximation of real life relationships, but his biases are definitely getting in the way.

[Dewar]

14 hours ago, ariskany_evan said:

 

Totally agree on your points! I'm still reading Carver, just find myself unconsciously looking for any hint of those experiences/afflictions in the text. It's colored my experience.

 

I do the separating that you talk about constantly: ie. Danny Brown's new album Atrocity Exhibition is musically ferocious and the cartoonishly escalating look into partying/addiction hits home hard for me. But his lyrics are largely misogynistic. I do the separating necessary to enjoy the art, but it's a bummer in the end! I'm supporting a world view that I think is harmful.

 

I wonder if I was super duper into Dwarf Fortress style games if this would be more of a quandary. It sounded like there's no other games out there doing this atm....

 

It's been a while since I played Dwarf Fortress, but most games I've played of this style avoid these issues by not having gay characters at all and/or not having a concept of rejection at all. I mean it was only the most recent Sims that allowed gay players right?

 

I think the way I'd try and handle this is have each individual relationship as an entity tracked separately, and the status of each relationship go up and down based on rejections/acceptances. Of course, that's not very extensible. With 5 people, you'd have 10 relationships to track, with 20 people, you'd be up to 190. Having gender and orientation on a sliding scale instead of a binary also a big plus, but also harder to work with *shrug*

 

Hopefully, given some time to think about it, Sylvester can be a bit more reasonable and make some changes to his system.

[cavilatrest]

If anyone's interested, the dev's posted some additional points on the Rimworld subreddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/RimWorld/comments/5ax9a9/some_notes_on_recent_controversies/

[jennegatron]

3 hours ago, Dewar said:

 

It's been a while since I played Dwarf Fortress, but most games I've played of this style avoid these issues by not having gay characters at all and/or not having a concept of rejection at all. I mean it was only the most recent Sims that allowed gay players right?

 

You could have gay sims back in the Sims 2.

edit - you could have gay sims in the Sims 1, they just couldn't get married. 

[Twig]

dorftress has gay relationships but it's much rarer than hetero

[Cyborg771]

I've been so disappointed with the internet at large's reaction to this. It's always good to come back here and see thoughtful discussion. Thanks Idle Forums.

[lunch]

On 11/2/2016 at 6:41 PM, pkirkner said:

That was a nice piece of reporting. I've wondered for some time whether the game's poor handling of relationships, mental health, and substance abuse was more a case of lazy placeholders in an early access game or the developer's view of the world. It was helpful of him to erase any doubt about that in the comments section.

 

As someone who hasn't played RimWorld (and in light of the developer's response, might not), how did the game handle mental health in a way you found poor?

[Dinosaursssssss]

I 100% agree that the developers response to this ('all bi men are gay' etc) is gross and indefensible, buuut I also think the reporting on this was extremely dishonest. All the code presented in the article comes from decompiling the game, which would NOT show comments or variable names. The only thing the writer says about this is:

Quote

For the sake of non-coders among us, longer sections are presented in pseudocode that tells you what it does, without requiring you to be fluent in C#.

So they're presenting some of the code as though it came directly from the developer, including comments with forward slashes, implying that they were actually present in the source, which they are not. Likewise, the writer presents variable names as though they were named as such in code, which wouldn't be readable after decompiling.

 

edit: To be clear, I don't necessarily think this was done maliciously as a hit-piece or whatever the developer suggested, but it is sloppy and should DEFINITELY be noted in the article.