While chatting with Jeff on the subject of group sizes in Rust, we speculated on what appeared to be two distinct eras, which could be called the Teamspeak era that lasted from 2014 to 2016 and saw larger groups sizes, and the Discord era of 2017 to 2019 where the typical group size was smaller. Much of this article is thanks to his experience in the scene more than mine.
The Teamspeak era
Rust (or what would become known as Rust Legacy) was first released in late 2013. There existed large “multi-game communities” where the members would buy the same games to play together. These communities “survived and adapted across different games that came and went” to “find meaningful gameplay“, and in 2014 Rust became one of the games played by some of them. They used Teamspeak for communication, and the culture was more formal than what would be heard in group voice channels in later years. To make a large voice channel work, there would need to be some level of discipline – nobody spamming music or leaving their microphone transmitting constantly. So having an assigned push-to-talk button, and listening to a group leader was common.
Some of these “sprawling organisations” were “money-making enterprises” that could “grow peoples social relationships into an asset that could be owned“, so there was a motivation to keep the system working. The leaders may have been the ones with the technical experience (or drive) to have figured out how to run (and pay for) a Teamspeak server, with subleaders being trusted (loyal) members. To keep the large voice channels from chaos, the leadership exercised the power to mute or kick rowdy users or trolls. There might be smaller groups within the community that would be able to chat more informally, but the whisper function enabled the subleaders of these smaller groups to easily communicate with fellow subleaders sharing critical information at the press of a button across different channels, so they remained a close part of their community – potentially all operating out of one large base.
The subleaders (informally referred to as Lieutenants for this article) would report to the leader(s) (Captains), which in turn might even report “up to someone the ordinary members couldn’t see.” Although a constraint to large groups is that the more people you have, the more people-problems you have. There were also large multi-game communities in Garry’s Mod, but it’s a fast-moving scene, and I find that large communities tend to struggle to entertain their members, lasting a few years at most. Teamspeak servers (and sometimes Ventrilo) had offered a central place for friends and groups to connect, with better quality audio (or atleast more reliable) than the early programs like X-Fire and Steam voice calls. Players did appreciate Teamspeak, but it was functionally replaced by Discord around 2016.
The Discord era
Described as an “explosive” change, Discord disrupted the scene as it became the more popular voice communication program (and also offered video calling). It was much easier (and free) to make your own group with text channels and high quality voice channels. The program steadily grew in popularity through 2016 and 2017, and it enabled small groups to form in Rust, which in earlier years would have had to rely on the Teamspeak servers of the larger (perhaps authoritarian) communities.
There had been a culture in online gaming where players connected to particular game servers, and played in large (active) communities. But a shift towards user-friendly instance-based matchmaking and the new ease of friends creating their own groups allowed them to enjoy just hanging out amongst themselves and automatically find gameplay at the press of a button. The formal (disciplined) days were gone, and you could now dip out of one group and hop into another without looking back. There were so many groups that getting banned from one was almost meaningless now. Small communities had struggled to communicate before, and would “knife eachother“, but now the groups of friends could easily hang out regularly.
There were multiple factors that broke down the team sizes. I think many players enjoyed hanging out with groups of friends rather than a large community, like you might get kicked for playing music in large groups, but in small groups that have the same taste in music they might enjoy it and even start making song requests. The Lieutenants of the large communities had now taken their subgroups that they enjoyed playing with and made their own (separate) little communities (perhaps thanks to having gained the experience to survive on their own to some extent), and “the Captains went away.” I didn’t hear about large (corporate) groups making profit, unless they focused on one particular game, but even then they still had risks like running into legal trouble (being profit-driven). Discord being free and easy certainly made it easier to toy with the idea of making a group, even if the group didn’t have large ambitions.
Rust (as it was developed) certainly seems to favor smaller sized groups, as challenges in communication and base upkeep can become significant issues as the group size increases. It might be a competitive advantage to have more soldiers in your army, but people want to have a voice, which is easily drowned out when there’s too many people talking over eachother. One reason the larger team sizes don’t work (when comprised of multiple small groups) in the Discord era is that the challenge of communication between small groups keeps them from working together closely. What would have taken one button press on Teamspeak (the whisper function) now requires you to minimise your game, and hop channels on Discord to relay a message, then hop back. Gone were the days of the Teamspeak “shot callers“. The whisper function gives some motivation to return to Teamspeak 3, but most users point out the awkward (if not confusing) UI and connection system. You might now find a cluster of small groups that are loosely allied, rather than one large group.
One interesting development in Rust itself that may have influenced the team size culture was the implementation of the in-game map. Rust Legacy had used a set map that had landmarks, which you could glance at by minimising the game (if you had it saved on your desktop) or having it on your Steam overlay browser. But the change to randomly generated terrain made it a challenge to orient yourself and find your comrades before the in-game map system was implemented. Part of the discipline in the large community era had involved some players acting as “navigators“, otherwise the players had to follow roads and powerlines and rely on being bagged (so they could spawn) at a base if they couldn’t find it. When the in-game map was added (you had to craft it, before another update allowed you to see the map without needing to craft the map item) you no longer needed to rely on the organization of a large team to avoid getting lost, although this may be a minor point.
Group sizes
It’s difficult to put a number on the size of these groups, but I suppose you might see up to 25 players online at the same time in a group on the early days, when the groups might have thousands of members. After 2016 it was still common to see groups, but their scale might generally be less than 10 players online (which is obviously the case if you’re on one of the many solo/duo/trio servers). Ofcourse there are exceptions to this, as small groups existed from the start of the game, and there are still large groups by 2023 (including some “zerg” clans), but this article has hopefully speculated on the interesting forces that eroded the size of the largest groups from 2016 to 2019.
This article was also posted to the recently created Rust Community Archive Steam group, which is aimed at helping to preserve Rust gameplay culture.