Recently, I've been playing an MMO survival game called "Rust." If you don't know what an MMO is, because you have a life and friends, it stands for “Massively Multiplayer Online.” Essentially, it's like "World of Warcraft" in that a lot of people can play it over the internet at one time and interact with each other. What makes Rust different from most MMOs is that it thrives on realism. As much realism as a game where you hit a tree with a rock and then get enough wood to construct a log cabin, at least. It's essentially Minecraft online.
You start up on a beach as a naked, bald person. If you look at your character model, your first clue that this game is banking on “realism” is that your character is completely anatomically correct- minus the lack of any hair. The next thing you'll notice is that someone who is actually dressed, has gear, and weapons will brutally murder you. This will be your first interaction with another player. Then you'll start over again, respawning at a different beach, maybe. Then you will get shot again and repeat the process about fifteen times.
If you ever needed proof that mankind was overdue for extinction, you'll find "Rust" provides that and then some. I imagine the pitch meeting for this game where they decided not to have any restrictions on character interactions worked a lot like the geniuses who initially thought that a 9/11 themed mattress commercial would in no way backfire. You'll find that it's free game and everyone just wants to shoot helpless newcomers who don't know what's going on.
Eventually, if you wish on a shooting star made out of four leaf clovers and rabbit feet on the seventh of July you'll find a secluded area where you won't immediately be slaughtered for the heinous crime of existing in the same vicinity as someone with more stuff than you do. You will quickly learn that the only way you're going to survive is to either collect the scattered stones and mushrooms off the ground or whacking trees and boulders with a rock until you level up enough to make a bow and arrow. By that point, you'll have more lumber and stone to make twelve log cabins, so you'd better make one and a sleeping bag so you won't respawn in the middle of nowhere the next time someone decides you need to be murdered. Before you know it, you'll be shooting animals for food and to turn their fat into precious, precious fuel. Then you'll use that fuel to make a furnace to smelt all the metal ore you've found while mining random boulders and soon enough you'll be adding a second story and a garage to your cabin before crafting a makeshift jacket. Soon enough, you might find yourself spending hours working on various building projects. You'll be enjoying hunting and building so much that you won't be able to wait until you have enough metal fragments to make that neat lantern so your home won't be so dark when night -
BAM!!
Two jackasses with inexplicable timing will murder you, take your stuff, hack your body up for resources, break into your home, ransack everything inside and then destroy your sleeping bag. Everything you made over the process of three hours will be taken from you in the matter of two minutes by a couple of people who don't deserve to the right to oxygen. On top of all that, you'll respawn at a beach somewhere and begin again at square one- completely naked and with only a rock to your name.
If you're anything like me, you've already spammed the local chat box with the kind of swears that Satan himself is too polite to utter while calling out the failures of existence that have more than enough resources of their own without having to forcibly take them from someone minding their own business. But it's Saturday night, you don't have anything better to do because you're sad and lonely, so you keep playing despite the ulcer this game is no doubt giving you.
After getting killed thirty more times by other players who find nothing more hilarious than sniping helpless people, you'll eventually give up and swim away from the mainland and discover an abandoned island. It won't have much wildlife or resources, but it's too far off for anyone to bother traveling to. Luckily, your experience is the only thing you don't lose when you die, so you'll be back up on your feet faster than last time. This time you make weapons- guns, swords, spears, bombs, grenades, whatever you can make with what little you find. It's going to take some time, but after you've created your large furnace your crafting time has sped up dramatically. You've even got a water purifier now on top of an impenetrable steel door with a security lock that can only be opened with a password that only you know. Finally, progress! You'll have made yourself a suit of armor and you'll feel invincible. After all, you've taken on bears by this point and come out with hardly a scratch. All you need is a bit more gun powder and you'll be ready to-
BAM!! HEADSHOT!!
Yeah, you've got to start over again. Tell the local chat box I said “hello” when you're done cussing everyone out. And then the people who have just usurped everything you made with your digital blood, sweat, and tears will mock you. There's no victory quite like sneaking up on some innocuous person and slaughtering them so you can steal all of the stuff they made. The kind of people that Hitler looks at and says, “Dude that's harsh.” I'll bet their mothers are proud.
So you're at square one again. This is when you rage-quit and shut off the game. You calm down, drink some water, and try to forget about what's happened. And then you team up with that guy from the apartment across the street and cleanse the server with fire and as many explosives as you can craft with rocks and animal fat. And when people on the local chat box rage, remind them that you are the monster that they created.
