

We’d become cozy in a hillside town we’d built, but we had nothing to fear. I have no illusion as to why: We had enough to be of value, and he knew where we were. He built up violent rivalries with the server’s strongest and reduced them to ashes. He recruited a crew of merciless gangsters, kill-on-sight roamers who looted any poor soul silly enough not to barricade his custom-crafted fortress. In our original server, Shawn rose to infamy pretty quickly. In Rust, each server is always in the process of creating legendary lore. Each server has its own individual legacy of distinct stories the player base remembers. In Rust, it’s unlike anything I’ve seen before. Someone's making a statement.Emergent storytelling - player behavior and actions creating a unique story - isn’t a new concept in games. He is the villain, and we are his army.Ī random, roadside find. The in-game chat mostly revolves around how he’s affected everyone around him.

We hear stories of his work, his sadistic manipulation of other players who will do what he asks or lose everything at his hand. He is the potential for obliteration, a feared force that could appear and lay ruin to everything. He is an infamous entity who exists as an idea. The days of cowering in the mountains, concealing a fire that’s cooking a meal we desperately need to eat, and quaking with fear that someone may find us, are gone. I do not lead our gang of bandits - and we have become bandits. I am not the main character in my game of Rust.
