Rimworld developer address recent controversies on Reddit

In general the people writing critique like this are out of touch with video game development.

They assume games begin as perfect simulations of real-life. Not having some types of characters or the characters not being able to do something is somehow the developer making a decision to prevent it and pushing some kind of an agenda.

Of course, in reality it's the exact opposite.

You make the minimal amount of assets and features for the game to work. Introducing something like an additional gender can mean ridiculous amount of added complexity for a feature that doesn't necessarily have any relevance in the game.

You spend development time on features that are most beneficial for the desired gameplay. You implement character interaction and roles in the way that achieves most perceived depth to the player with minimal amount of actual complexity.

The social constructs of real life with genders, races, sexuality, disabilities and such are incredibly complex sciences on their own. Developing games with human characters in them cannot require the developer to account for all of it and build a perfect system.

I mean, if someone is offended by game logic being too simplistic to portray a given topic in a realistic and non-offensive way, I'm sure the developer is happy to have it fixed it if you hand them a development team with budget to work on it.

Targeting indie developers with accusations like this is incredibly cheap and counter-productive. Games with extremely simplified worlds built by one or few people only to facilitate game mechanics are not intended as some kind of serious social commentary.

Hell, it would have been easier for the Rimworld developer to achieve some depth with just female and male characters having relationships with each other (e.g. difficulty in form of colonist variety) and even that should be an acceptable solution, but he went through the trouble of including sexual preferences - only to receive criticism about the system not being perfect.

/r/Games Thread Parent Link - reddit.com