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[The Technomancer]

So RockPaperShotgun did a dive on the code in Rimworld and discovered some...interesting things

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2016/11/02/rimworld-code-analysis/

Returning to Reed, we can see that the pick-up lines don’t get her down. She receives no penalty to her mood for being barraged by come-ons. But the two men, Rob and Boots, feel differently. They have a near-permanent mood and relationship penalty for Reed, because they keep asking her out, and keep getting rebuffed. But it’s not really their fault – Rob and Boots can’t stop hitting on her because they’re men, and because she’s just so gosh-darned pretty. More precisely, that’s how they’ve been programmed.

In other words, female pawns are about eight times less likely to try and start a romantic relationship. Granted, this is not the only factor – other elements include presence or absence of an existing romantic partner, and how they feel about said partner. However, this single check on gender has such a profound effect that it makes female-initiated romance attempts incredibly rare.

There are no straight women in RimWorld, as in, there are no women only attracted to men. Instead, every single non-gay woman in the game has some chance of being attracted to another woman.

Notice that there’s only two possible orientations for men, gay or straight. In RimWorld, there are no bisexual men, only gay or straight men; there are no straight women, only gay or bisexual women.

In RimWorld, male pawns will always find pawns between 20 and their own age attractive. If the male pawn in question is under 20, that doesn’t make a difference – because it’ll check the “lower” bound first, they’re guaranteed to find a 20-year-old attractive. This explains why Rob (age 32) and Boots (age 17) keep trying to ask out Reed (age 23). But, since the same code doesn’t check for relative age, 17-year-old Boots wouldn’t actually find a fellow 17-year-old teenager all that attractive. There’s also a minimum age for attraction, 16 years old, and a maximum age, any pawn 15 years older than themselves. So in this case, Boots wouldn’t find any woman over the age of 32, or any woman under age 16, attractive.

On the other hand, women overwhelmingly prefer partners older than them. And, unlike for men, there’s no firm cutoff for pawns that are “too old”: even pawns 40 years older than the woman in question have a chance of being perceived as attractive. Contrast this to the calculation for men, where pawns 15 years older than them have absolutely no chance.

On top of that, what RimWorld doesn’t model is as important as what it does. Remember how constantly being hit on and rebuffing people doesn’t lead to a mood penalty, only a reduced opinion of the person pursuing? In daily life, the feeling of having to constantly turn people down is not a nice feeling. But these negative feelings are only reflected mechanically for those being rejected, and because of the way romance initiation is handled, you end up having to cater for the sad rejected men, rather than the women who are always having to turn away these unwanted encounters.

We could label that behaviour a bug, perhaps. But those are just the surface symptoms. Those are the easily-noticed, in-game consequences of a system whose base structure has literally encoded assumptions about how men and women operate. Now, representation is a tricky subject, and we will probably never create a perfect model of romantic behaviour.

But the problem with this model isn’t that it’s flawed. It’s that it’s flawed in a way that perfectly mirrors existing sexist expectations of romance, with such specificity that it is hard to view it as unintentional . And if it is unintentional it is on us to ask what this system is trying to show. What are the possibilities that it allows? What is RimWorld setting as the boundaries of possibility?

And the creator jumped into the comments with this gem:

Now, I'm absolutely certain that this thread is going to be filled with "but women pursuing older men is how the real world works!" and "but men initiating more relationships is how the real world works!" I think that's bullshit for myriad reasons but can we at least acknowledge that its fucked up that there are no bisexual men and no straight women?

Damnit. I was considering buying this when it left EA also, but the dev's reaction doesn't particularly instill confidence that they even know why this is a problem

 

[TheMoon]

edit button, yo.

 

[KingV]

It is a game about rimming.

 

[Red Liquorice]

Always have a discreet sniff first. Always.

 

[SomTervo]

Like, my personal/anecdotal experience mirrors the developer's... But why the heck would I trust and/or base a fictional game system on my narrow subjective experience? I'd like to see the research he's talking about.

 

[Vashetti]

Always have a discreet sniff first. Always.

Red Liquorice
needs to check himself

 

[Chobel]

Need to see this "research".

 

[Orayn]

Having in-depth mechanics simulating attraction and sexuality is really cool and interesting, but using them to reinforce stereotypes and deny the existence of bi men and straight women is not.

 

[Harlequin]

Now, I'm absolutely certain that this thread is going to be filled with "but women pursuing older men is how the real world works!" and "but men initiating more relationships is how the real world works!" I think that's bullshit for myriad reasons

I agree that a lot of the stuff mentioned is indeed bullshit (like the age limits or the whole sexual orientation stuff) but I do think that the whole "men are more likely to actively pursue a potential mate than women"-thing is accurate in our current society simply because of all the data that's been collected by dating apps. I don't remember the specific numbers (so the ratio this game is using may well be wrong) but I have read articles (being a gay guy, I wouldn't actually have any real-life experience of this phenomenon) detailing how men are generally much more likely to message a woman (and thus message much more women) than the other way around. So I'm inclined to say that that's one of the few things this whole dating algorithm got "right" (if the goal was to accurately portray the current dating behaviour in Western society, anyway, which shouldn't necessarily be the case considering this is a sci-fi game).

The guy's comment sounds somewhat nonsensical, though. It's quite the leap to go from "I feel like there are more bisexual women than bisexual men" to "I didn't include any straight women or bisexual men in my game" especially when it sounds like that wouldn't have been a difficult thing to do in terms of implementation. I mean, by that logic, why include any diversity at all? Gay men and women are much rarer than straight men and women (or straight men and bisexual women, going by this guy's logic) so why include them?

Having in-depth mechanics simulating attraction and sexuality is really cool and interesting, but using them to reinforce stereotypes and deny the existence of bi men and straight women is not.

Agreed. The basic concept is quite interesting and feels like it could even be used as almost a bit of a virtual social experiment. Hell, even using stereotypes, it could be quite interesting, if the stereotypes were being used ironically but that doesn't seem to be the case here.

 

[DevilDog]

Like, my personal/anecdotal experience mirrors the developer's... But why the heck would I trust and/or base a fictional game system on my narrow subjective experience? I'd like to see the research he's talking about.

Maybe he works better this way. People who make art are weird.

 

[jack....]

So.. can you get a rimjob or what?

 

[The Technomancer]

I agree that a lot of the stuff mentioned is indeed bullshit (like the age limits or the whole sexual orientation stuff) but I do think that the whole "men are more likely to actively pursue a potential mate than women"-thing is accurate in our current society simply because of all the data that's been collected by dating apps. I don't remember the correct numbers (so the ratio this game is using may well be wrong) but I have read articles (being a gay guy, I wouldn't actually have any real-life experience of this phenomenon) detailing how men are generally much more likely to message a woman (and thus message much more women) than the other way around. So I'm inclined to say that that's one of the few things this whole dating algorithm got "right" (if the goal was to accurately portray the current dating behaviour in Western society, anyway, which shouldn't necessarily be the case considering this is a sci-fi game).

The guy's comment sounds somewhat nonsensical, though. It's quite the leap to go from "I feel like there are more bisexual women than bisexual men" to "I didn't include any straight women or bisexual men in my game" especially when it sounds like that wouldn't have been a difficult thing to do in terms of implementation. I mean, by that logic, why include any diversity at all? Gay men and women are much rarer than straight men and women (or straight men and bisexual women, going by this guy's logic) so why include them?

The "initiation ratio" is the thing I probably take least issue with to be fair. I think I might actually be most frustrated though, at the fact that rejection is only an emotional negative for the men doing the propositioning, and not for the women who has to keep turning men down.

 

[SomTervo]

Maybe he works better this way. People who make art are weird.

I do that too - or at least try to. It's important to constantly challenge your own assumptions. I guess maybe he focused on innovation elsewhere.

 

[TheLostBigBoss]

Pretty odd there are no straight women, but I think OP is kinda reaching for the amount of anger that should be directed in the developers direction because someone dug into his games romance system.

 

[Par Score]

The way the game handles these mechanics currently is bad, and it's perfectly valid to criticise it in it's current state, but I wouldn't have a big problem with it if the dev came out and said "hey, it's Early Access, this was just a kludge and we're working on something better".

It would have been so easy. It's like, PR 101, a freethrow, an open goal. Swish.

But nope! The guy comes out fists flying with bi-erasure and dumb bullshit justifications that make me wish I'd never bought this game.

And then his questionable comments made me dig an inch deeper and yep, he's opposed to #BLM and bingo... he's a Gamergator too. FFS.

Pretty odd there are no straight women, but I think OP is kinda reaching for the amount of anger that should be directed in the developers direction because someone dug into his games romance system.

It's not the system, it's his stated reasons for the system.

 

[Triteon]

Like, my personal/anecdotal experience mirrors the developer's... But why the heck would I trust and/or base a fictional game system on my narrow subjective experience? I'd like to see the research he's talking about.

Im not getting into the specifics of this particular game but isnt the "narrow subjective experience" in the plus column in regards to indie, authored games? You get the designers vision?

Not having bi dudes is kinda fucked up though.

 

[The Technomancer]

Pretty odd there are no straight women, but I think OP is kinda reaching for the amount of anger that should be directed in the developers direction because someone dug into his games romance system.

I don't know if I'm particularly angry so much as frustrated and quite unhappy with the dev's reactio-

And then his questionable comments made me dig an inch deeper and yep, he's opposed to #BLM and bingo... he's a Gamergator too. FFS.
.

Oh wait now I might actually be angry. Wait what?