Garry Newman is giving s&box characters necks because the reviews wouldn't stop mentioning it

Garry Newman has spent months reading s&box's negative reviews, and one note in them was apparently unavoidable: the characters have no necks. So the characters now have necks.

What changed

Newman says the default citizen model has been updated so that it has a neck and a default face that is not frowning. The reasoning he gave is refreshingly unglamorous: the missing neck "comes up consistently in our many many many negative reviews." Body proportions are handled by sliders covering things like chest, waist, neck and nose size, so anyone who preferred the neckless look can dial it back.

It is a small change that speaks to a bigger problem. s&box's default characters were a deliberate stylistic choice, not an oversight, and Newman has previously defended them at length against the pull towards generic, conventionally attractive humanoids. Conceding the neck is conceding that the look was costing the project goodwill.

The wider review problem

The necks are one item on a longer list. In breakdowns of s&box's reviews that Newman has discussed publicly, roughly 35 percent of them compare the game unfavourably to Garry's Mod and wish it were more like its predecessor - a hard complaint to engineer around, given s&box is a different engine and a different toolset by design. About 12 percent complain about NFTs, which Newman says are not in the game and never will be.

He has been more receptive to the performance complaints, calling those a legitimate grievance the team is working on.

Why it matters

s&box carries the weight of being Garry's Mod's successor, and a large share of its criticism is simply that it is not Garry's Mod. Watching which of those complaints Newman engages with - necks yes, engine philosophy no, NFTs that don't exist definitely not - is the clearest read available on where the project is actually going.