Why do you play as the opposite gender?

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NotYourAverageFeministGamer

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I usually play as a male, just because it saves me the hassle of rolling my eyes at what they call "female armor". Some games pull it off without making it an issue, but most games are embarrassing when it comes to female character design. If I'm feeling particularly rebellious or confident, I'll play as a female. My Xbox gamer tag is blatantly female (not my idea) so I tend to tread lightly when it comes to online console gaming.

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Redhotchilimist

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#202  Edited By Redhotchilimist

"The theoretical basis of this argument lies in Adrienne Rich’s critique of compulsory heterosexuality and Eve Sedgwick’s conceptualization of male homosocial desire, both of which are essential underpinnings of queer theory that postulate a substantial degree of ambiguity and ambivalence is woven into the entire spectrum of like-gender social relationships."

I wish someone could edit this article to be a bit easier of a read for someone who hasn't read Adrienne Rich's critique of compulsory heterosexuality, preferably the author. I thought my English comprehension was decent, for it not being my first language, but I just can't stand to read the entire thing. I'm happy other people in this thread have said it's a mess of words.

@kierkegaard said:

Your mode of play sounds like it actively avoids considering gender. Why? How can one possibly shape/experience a story without considering all aspects of the character you are shaping/experiencing?

Thank you for your thoughtful response! Okay, so empathy versus embodiment. You go for the former. Arguably, though, games are different than literature. I can't become Scout in To Kill a Mockingbird because she is extant. I can't become Laura Croft because she is her own person. I think that is about empathy. Understanding things from her perspective because I learn why she is and does.

But surely self-directed role playing games where you create a character are different! You are choosing to place yourself not only into the perspective of a person with a different race, gender, sexuality, ability, age, or ethic than you but also into that body, to literally move its limbs. You are choosing what that person says and does. How can that possibly be only empathic? That's not a derisive question! I just don't understand how embodiment does not exist there, inherently.

Sorry, didn't get the quote tags to work right when I wanted to quote a few of your posts. I want to argue my experience from these statements, if that's all right. We have different approaches when we make characters in games, so I thought it would be useful to establish how I think compared to you when talking about how I play games. It's worth a shot, anyway. It's been tough to collect mye thouhts about this topic since I usually don't think much about it, I just choose the opposite gender.

I'm a guy. I don't feel that I'm placed in the shoes of someone with a different life experience, age or ethic or anything like that when I play as a female character. The opposite is the case, that character is my representative in that world. To me, that's what an avatar is about. The way I think about her looks, her stats or advantages/disadvantages is separate from how I behave in that world. I'm not a big role player. Not in the dungeons and dragons, or RP message board/chat room sense. You clearly are, when you wonder how one can possible shape/experience a story without doing this. Personally, I'll always pick the choice that I am most comfortable with, generally the nicest possible. Especially in something like Bioware games or Fable, where the choices are so clearly either saintly good or terribly evil. I don't think roleplaying games in general are very good at giving you roleplaying options, by any metric. There's no point if I'm making it all up in my head, to me. It needs to make a visible difference in game. Bioware games generally only let you choose who you sleep with outside of renegade/paragon choices, so I always go for people I personally find the most attractive.

So the way to make me "embody" someone else isn't to let me choose my skin, it's to put me in the shoes of an established character with a clear story and personality and have me experience stuff through them. Even then, it sort of doesn't matter. Not really. I am not Geralt, or Lara Croft, or Yuri, or Samus, or anybody in a game that I know of. Not to the degree that I'd call it a "queer experience". Similarly to how I don't become my avatar in Pokemon or Dark Souls or Dragon's Dogma, I don't become Chun Li when I play Street Fighter. In her case, it's a choice of move set. In the case of Pokemon, it's because the dudes have had these designs I can't stand ever since Ruby/Sapphire. In Dragon's Dogma, build determines your ability to run fast and carry more items. I went for a short woman, since I wanted to run fast and like some short women(while I have no particular fondness for any short men, being straight). In Dark Souls, the choice alters no armor that I know of and have no benefits or drawbacks, and most of the time is spent in a zombie-like state where your appearance doesn't matter. Still, I went with a female character. Even when the choice makes no difference, I just think making female characters are less boring than making male ones. Sometimes it's to make something I think is hot or cute, sometimes it's the alternative being worse, sometimes it's because of move set or stats or voice actor. I've made an avatar that looked like myself once in Dragon's Dogma because the character generator was good enough to make a decent approximation that would be fun to show to other people before I changed it back(because why would I want to play as myself? To me, I am not exciting). It all depends. The one time I've done things out of an act of roleplaying was during Dragon Age Origins. The character select screen said dwarves of the lower caste had a tattoo to mark them that I could add if I wanted to, so even though I think tattoos are ugly I chose one to fit the narrative, and it helped because it was reflected in the intro. Later on, I actually chose a lover that I personally don't find attractive at all, but I didn't choose Zevran because of role playing: I chose him because I really disliked Leliana, the female option. looks, personality, across the board. The alternative was worse.

The reason has never ever been "to experience what it's like to be a different gender". I don't use the picture of Bayonetta with my shaven head and beard to have a "queer experience", I use it because it's a funny edit my friends made one time. I don't use a female model that looks like Chie Satonaka in Saints Row with the voice of Troy Baker to emulate a transgendered person that identifies as female but has a male-sounding voice, I do it because Troy Baker also voiced Kanji Tatsumi from the same game as Chie(and I noticed in the clothing and hair options that I could generate a character that looked acceptably like Chie). If you want to look at something as simple as making a character of a different gender than yourself and call that a "queer experience" to get away from the angle of "dominating and puppeteering a powerful female figure that otherwise represents a threat to masculine privilege" like the study in the article talks about(Which Yee extrapolated from a bunch of people saying the "If I'm looking at an ass for hundreds of hours it might as well be a woman's ass" line, presumably? That's some jumping to conclusion), I think that's unnecessary. To me, that is silly reasoning. What I believe should be said, is that you control every character you play in every game. Choosing ones you think are good looking to play as doesn't make you any better or worse than anyone else, at least not in my eyes.

If you think choosing to play as my opposite gender is a "queer experience" regardless of the article, that's fine. But know that at least in my case, I don't feel that way at all. Sorry if I'm not contributing to what you hoped was the case.

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Dalai

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If given the option and the gender is merely cosmetic, I always go with the default option which is almost always male. I'm a guy, I identify with guys, I'm going to play as a guy. Only if it affects the game will I sometimes choose the female character over the male counterpart. Also my choices have nothing to do with sexuality or appearance since I try not to look at my characters in a sexual nature.

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Video_Game_King

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I thought my English comprehension was decent, for it not being my first language, but I just can't stand to read the entire thing. I'm happy other people in this thread have said it's a mess of words.

It's more just academic discourse, honestly. You have a lot of words with specific meanings, and a desire to cram as many of those words into a sentence as is humanly possble.

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Tom_omb

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I usually play as female characters. They are more interesting as protagonists because they are relatively rare. Also ladies are pretty.

I think of playable game characters like movie characters. They are separate from me, I don't identify as them directly.

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jeanluc

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#206 jeanluc  Staff

@turboman said:

eh, I'll play as a female character just to get a bit of variety. I don't ever role-play with any kinds of games and the whole "If I'm going to play a game for 50 hours, I at least wanna stare at a hot chick" argument is weird to me. I only do it purely because 95% of other games has men as the main character.

Yeah that's my main reason. Playing a girl when I have the option gives me more variety, because sadly the idea is still such a novelty.

I will say I tend to main girls in fight games because they are the faster characters I like to play.

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Stealthmaster86

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When I pick as a female character, it's because I think it works best that way for the game. Destiny, Mass Effect, and Saints Row comes to mind.

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Kierkegaard

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@ubertron986: Damn it. I thought of that, that honestly but didn't change it. I guess: why do you play as a different gender? Or any gender? Thanks for adding your experience despite the false binary I set up there!

@spaceinsomniac: Well, hetero males have not faced entrenched societal sexism for thousands of years, so it is a bit different. But yeah, I'd say I'm critical of anyone whose primary purpose in creating a character in a non-sexbased role playing game is allure. Seems to ignore much more interesting threads in such a choice.

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Skittlenizzle

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When I was a bit younger I used to like playing as male characters (Btw, I am a white girl). I used to always name them "Ian" as well. Because, that was the name I would have been given if I was born a boy from what my parents told me. I don't exactly know why, but it was kind of fun to me to roleplay and pretend that I was a guy. I also liked to try and make my guy look very attractive and would think, "I hope I would look this cool if I were a guy." To be honest I never put much thought into it at the time, but I guess at the time I did sort of think that being a guy seemed so much cooler than being a girl.

Nowadays I don't tend to make guy characters though. I don't exactly know what changed, but I feel like I just became bored of playing as a guy. I started to play a lot of different types of games that the default was always a male hero so maybe that is the reason? But now, even when I play I don't play as a white girl usually. I tend to like playing as a person of color or just a girl that just seems very far removed to how I see myself in real life. I don't care to play a character that I make to look like me or to play a character that I can relate to straight away.

I hope my answer makes sense. Haha.

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SpaceInsomniac

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yeah, I'd say I'm critical of anyone whose primary purpose in creating a character in a non-sexbased role playing game is allure. Seems to ignore much more interesting threads in such a choice.

But when I create a male character in a game, I also try to make him good looking, as least as far as my opinion goes. I've never been one to play games using a scared or elderly character who I give a history to, or one to create characters who look as goofy as humanly possible. I normally create characters, men and women, who I think look cool. Part of that is my subjective opinion of attractiveness, and the rest is clothing. It's usually a mix of allure and attire. The interesting threads that you refer to should be provided by the game itself, IMO.

I'm happy to be completely shallow when it comes to designing the appearance of a character, because all I'm designing is an appearance. What I end up thinking of that character during or after the game is in the hands of the writers and the voice artist. I'm just making a blank slate.

My Xbox gamer tag is blatantly female (not my idea) so I tend to tread lightly when it comes to online console gaming.

You have my curiosity. Exactly why do you have a gamer tag that wasn't your idea, and why don't you just change it? 10 dollars isn't all that much when you consider how often you'll be using it, and how you should have a user name that you're happy with and that appropriately represents you.

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LackingSaint

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Keeping the story interesting, mostly. Most game protagonists are male already so if I picked male by default in every RPG, i'd only get game stories with female protagonists like 5% of the time.

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geirr

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I enjoy encompassing different roles on this mortal coil; hence what options a character selection screen presents, I will usually pick the one most foreign to my own being.

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NotYourAverageFeministGamer

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@spaceinsomniac: My husband made my gamertag for me without even thinking about it and I'm waiting to change it until we have to stop saving money for a house. You're right, ten bucks isn't much but I also don't want to hurt his feelings. He was very proud of the name he came up with. lol

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AtomicEdge

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#215  Edited By AtomicEdge

Ultimately I stereotype. If my character is a chain-gun wielding type or a tank, I make it a male. If I am a sniper or a stealthy character I make it a female.

This may seem a bit closed minded, but also the animations seem to fit the models better when doing that.

Also, I don't really know why, but sometimes in a game I make "me", and sometimes I am just controlling another character.

In EVE online my character is "me", but in WoW my Orc Krilldor is a personality of his own that I am controlling.

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FancySoapsMan

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I don't. I usually play as a generic white guy with slightly darker skin tone since I'm Hispanic and probably look like that.

The key exception is Saints Row 2, where I played as an obese black man in a hot dog suit.

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ShadowSwordmaster

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When I make a female character it's because I like to switch it up a bit after playing as a guy in another game.

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FacelessVixen

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Bumped this while looking for another thread.

In my late teens and early 20's: The Dave Snider ideology of "If you're going to stare at the back of a character for hours, it might as well be a female," so the intent was to more or less be a perv.

Since my mid 20's to now-a-days: Sexualization is still a thing as I am a heterosexual cisgender male, but it's a few steps removed from sexual desire. With the Mass Effect trilogy, it was preferring Jennifer Hale's performance or Mark Meer, and losing my initial fixation over romance options in games in general due to the "nice guy" mentality of sex being a reward for being a decent human being, which really makes BioWare's "guides to relationships" very misleading for the more inexperienced and impressionable players out there.

Then there's getting more involved with art and thinking about character design where games like the Saints Row series could be my canvas for in lieu of 3D modeling being one of my artistic skill sets. Fallout 4 works in this way as well since there's a broader range of clothing and armor options that look appealing to me for Nora (not counting mods and I use the never nude option with CBBE these days). And just the general notion of creating and playing as badass female characters in other games too like in Skyrim, Dragon Ball Xenoverse 1 and 2, God Eater, Code Vein, Nioh 2, Monster Hunter, Cyberpunk 2077, and other games with character customization.

And then there's the notion of creating a female version of myself. Replicating things like my likes, dislikes, hobbies and occupation are easy to replicate in The Sims [3], but I find myself asking about what would "female me" do in regards to relationships and what female me's sexuality is when those occasions spontaneously arise; not so much with Mass Effect at this point because I've very familiar with BioWare's writing in this regard, but more recently in Cyberpunk when interacting with Judy as female V. A few interesting self-reflective questions come to mind when going down that rabbit hole, as well as the general treatment of women in games and whether the onus of "male gaze" falls on the players or the developers (and publishers); whether or not one side is perpetuating negative stereotypes and objectification, or the other is being oversensitive and holier than thou. That said, I think the truth is somewhere in the middle, all things considered, but I digress.

So, after about 12 years of gender-bending in games, this has become my new normal. It's not that I'll refuse to play a game where I'm only allowed to play as a male lead, but gender-bending in games satiates certain curiosities that I'm less than willing to explore or ask about in person, and it's power fantasy in the sense that I'm creating/playing as female leads that are as substantial as their male counterparts. It works for me on so many levels since I generally don't like other dudes and thus I seldom connect with male characters, and I prefer female company even if it's just platonic.

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styx971

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i mean i usually don't if i have the choice. being a chick i normally play as a chick when given the chance which while has gotten to be more often is still not all the time. that said If i have the choice and pick male its usually cause the customization is just so ugly i don't wanna look at it. i mean like others said if i'm gonna see it for hours i might as well like what i'm looking at. either way i usually just play however i would naturally if its a game with choices. its why even tho things like say a bioware game have multiple branches n such i only really ever play them once.

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MeierTheRed

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I really don't get this desire to completely identify with the player character, which is probably one of the main reasons I hate silent protagonists. I never actually feel like I am the main character in a game, I always view it more like I am guiding the main character through the story.

The reason I often choose a female character when given the option is simply because the majority of games star men, and it's a nice change of pace. It has absolutely nothing to do some desire to dominate women or to myself become one, it's because I find stories with female protagonists much more interesting in this medium where it's a rarity.

This is pretty much my stance on this subject as well.

I will also add that it comes down to how the game presents the protagonist do they have stats or gear that is better for my play style. Or like let´s say in terms of Monster Hunter World i found the armor pieces where better designed for the male character then the female model. So in that case that was my one criteria for picking that option.

Or another example is AC Odyssey, the male characters voice was to terrible to me, that the female version was my only option for actually enjoying that game. Also turned out the voice actor in general was just way better at reading her lines.

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lapsariangiraff

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Wow, I remember when this thread was new.

I'm old!

Anyway, kinda funny answer. For the longest time when I was very much cis-male, I liked playing as female characters in games whenever I could because I usually preferred their voice acting. I also found it easier to make decent looking player characters with those tools, not in a sexual way, but in a purely aesthetic sense. Especially games like Saints Row or Sunset Overdrive, love rocking a slightly preppy butch aesthetic as a lady in those games.

After a while, I noticed I was making really similar characters every single time. And I got really self-conscious for a hot second. I thought, "oh my god, am I just playing Barbie with game character creators to make some ideal woman like a fucking creep? EUUUUUUGH."

And then, skipping a whole lot of life and rigamarole, for totally unrelated reasons, I found out I'm trans.

WELP.

I still play exclusively female characters in games when I can, just because it's rarer. But I feel a lot better about it now.

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Geezy

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I play as whatever is the default because that seems to be the artistic vision. If I have to make a choice I pick whatever character I think looks coolest. I've played as males and females in games and there are cool/interesting male and female characters in games and in various media. As for controlling a character, that's what you do in games no matter what the gender of the character is. Does that mean you subconsciously want to control people IRL? I don't want to that I'm aware of, but I enjoy games.

I hear people in MMOs play as females because they are more likely to get gifts. I don't play MMOs.

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brian_

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As someone who has no interest in inserting myself in a video games at all, when I create a character, it's usually not a white dude. There's enough white dudes in video games already. So I usually go with creating a woman.

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gornogorno

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I think theres just less default female protagonists in games, so playing as a female character ussualy makes story a little bit more interesting

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Jet-Bl4ck9

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@brian_: For me it’s the same. I also try to make my characters people of colour when that is possible. In a movie or a series it’s up to the production to add interesting and appropriate ethnicity to the cast. When I’m making a player character, that responsibility falls on me.

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Undeadpool

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A couple of reasons, but largely because it changes the dynamic of certain interactions in interesting, often unintended, ways.

Having Dedue telling a woman, "We shouldn't be seen together. People will be suspicious." has a COMPLETELY different impact/implication than when he tells a man that.

In some cases, like AC: Odysee or Mass Effect, the woman just does a better job.

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AtheistPreacher

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Funny to see a thread being bumped after six years. Why not?

I agree with the people saying I don't identify with my in-game avatars. I mean, if I'm playing in third-person, it's hard to identify with someone I'm staring at because it's clearly not me. Then in first-person... there's kinda no character there to identify with? Damned if you do, damned if you don't. Either way it doesn't really work that way for me, or maybe for anyone.

There's basically a three-step process I go through when picking/creating a character in a game that gives me the choice:

(1) Is it gameplay-relevant/Is there different voice performance? All other things being equal, I'll tend to play a dude, but these are both good reasons I'll play a gal. FemShep is an easy example for the voice acting part, which a bunch of people have cited already. And of course some games have character classes where the gender is part of the class, like Diablo or Dragon's Dogma, for instance, in which case the gameplay difference will always be the deciding factor.

(2) Can I make a convincing-looking old guy? My head canon for my character tends to be "old guy who was a legend and is now a little tired and washed up, but can still kick some ass when needed." I've always liked playing really old characters in games, so I'll try to do white hair and turn the age/wrinkles slider all the way up when I can. But the problem is that some games either don't allow you to create old characters, or they're just really unconvincing-looking in some way or other. Some games have no age slider, others won't allow white or grey hair, or some other thing like that.

(3) If neither of the above applies, I'll usually try to create an attractive-looking character. Which for me as a gay male is a dude. In these cases I find it simultaneously pleasing and frustrating that the vast majority of the time I can't create anything all that titillating even if I wanted to. Most games are made by straight dudes, and it shows in some of the ridiculous costumes that various female characters are made to wear (often by default), shit that just makes me roll my eyes and sigh. It's rare that male characters in games are sexually objectified the same way, even counting weird alternate costumes. But usually I'd prefer that none of my playable characters is running around in a swimsuit or a french maid outfit or some other ridiculous thing... I like to maintain a wee bit of suspension of disbelief by keeping my characters in clothing that seems sensible for the story and environment, not rocking that swimsuit in the snowy mountains of doom.

And of course sometimes it's impossible to make a character in a particular game all that attractive, in which case I might go for a non-human race if that's an option, or just create someone interesting-looking.

So I guess in short, no I don't identify with my avatars, and yeah I'll sometimes create a character who I like to stare at, but for me there are more important considerations than that.

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Topcyclist

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Cause mass effect femshep is better than male in acting, and anyone who says differently is just saying it cause they think its cool to play a macho low rate acting character, no offense to that voice actor.

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youeightit

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I am a white male and will always play as a woman of color. I’ve been a boring white dude my whole life and it’s fun to escape into somebody completely unlike me for a while. I’ve never had any desire to play as a heroic version of myself or anything like that. And just as a baseline, every female character I’ve ever played as has had a VASTLY superior voice actor in my opinion and that’s something that really matters regarding my enjoyment of a game (of in the case of the Mass Effect trilogy, my enjoyment of three games spread across hundreds of hours).

I tend to actually spend very little time in the create a character mode and don’t go out of my way to make a character whose ass I can stare at. I try to make somebody that I would hang out with in real life or somebody that I would want to interview on a podcast rather than somebody I would have sex with. If I want to see that I can see that literally anywhere I look with my human eyes, why waste the creative energy?

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iwanecky

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I often play as females because they are better voice acted. I noticed that often, even when reading same lines, male character is being acted as a generic asshole while female character has more depth. Streets are full of such dudes so it feels refreshing to play as someone who has IQ higher than a brick.

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The_Nubster

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Just responding to the thread title:

I play as a woman in games where I have a choice because the vast, vast majority of games with a fixed character are men. It is honestly incredibly boring. It's also refreshing that dialogue that was written for a man or as gender neutral embodies a lot of traits that male writers tend to forget women have when writing specifically for women: confidence, strength, intelligence, and attitude. I do it because games have been a man's game for a very long time and it's nice to play as a woman who isn't sexualized or written as annoying or who needs rescue.

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Efesell

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I have all the time in the world to be what I am. Games are a time to be someone else.

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Clubvodka

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For me, a straight mixed raced male, I am just so fatigued with playing as the unflappable, generic white dude. It’s just not a fantasy or escapism that does anything for me and arguably never did.

Given the choice in a character creator, I’ll also choose female just because they’re criminally still aren’t enough female leads, at least in the mainstream games I play. Even if you can’t create the character but choose a name, my wife will always insist we use hers.

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development

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I have a complicated degree of queerness so I’ll say it’s a little of columns A, B, and C.

Sometimes I’m just in the mood to play myself though, so I pick a dude. Some games give females ridiculous incel-animator-vibes standing/running animations like Dark Souls, so I usually pick a dude hollow when I play them.

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BaneFireLord

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I don’t exclusively play as either male or female characters when given the choice, but on balance I more often tend to play androgynous female characters (I am biologically male). I used to use the “lol i wanna look at a nice ass” reason, which never felt particularly true but sounded plausible. Then, whoops-a-doodle, turns out I’ve actually been genderqueer the whole time and games were clearly an outlet for those feelings before I figured my shit out. So I guess I’m exactly the sort of person the original post’s essay is contemplating.

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butterstick1

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I like pretty stuff. I like to look at pretty things and be pretty. I've played a thousand gruff bad boy characters, and at this point I'd rather play a cool bad-ass female that looks good while she's kicking ass instead of some huge beefcake generic action hero type. Female fashion is just more fun too. I'm not suggesting it has to be revealing or sexy, but women's clothes just have more variation and accessories most of the time. As a dude IRL that pretty much only chooses what shirt and pants combo I'm going to wear, it's refreshing to be able to wear things that I don't in real life.

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lapsariangiraff

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#237  Edited By lapsariangiraff

@banefirelord: Hey, I'll gladly own up to "identifying" over that study's proposed DOMINEERING alternative any time, ha.

Seriously, do guys ever actually play female characters to be hyper-controlling the way the study suggests? I'm reminded of Tim Rogers' anecdote about his "friend" (wasn't really his friend, but had the video games) performing fatalities on Sonya Blade in Mortal Kombat over and over. I'm sure some do but I hope it's a thin percent.

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Justin258

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I don't really like the idea of being psychoanalyzed because I happened to play a female in an RPG. Or because I do it rather more frequently than I pick male characters. I'm not queer, to start with. And it's mostly not because I prefer looking at a feminine form, but if I'm being totally honest sometimes it's easier on the eyes to always see a character I like looking at do stuff on screen. I'm a straight dude, OK?

But really it's because so, so, so many games and media in general star a generic white male. I don't necessarily have a problem with choosing a generic white male as your protagonist, but... you know... everyone does that and sometimes it's nice to have a bit of variation.

More importantly than that, it's nice to see female characters that don't feel like they're boiled down to simple character traits. Sure, Jennifer Hale's voice acting is better than Mark Meer's, but also FemShep is no more or less complex than MaleShep. Female characters, in all forms of media, so often feel sidelined or they're simpler characters than men or they're just there for another character's motivation or so on and so forth. If you're going to make a character creator and you want players to pick their character's sex and you want players to have roughly the same experience regardless of what sex they chose, then you have to write a character first and change up whatever's necessary to reflect the character players designed. Which forces writers to make complex characters that happen to be male or female.

This results in characters that are more ungendered than anything (besides physical appearance), except when they need to be gendered for dialog to make sense or for those cheesy romance quests to play out, which means we still have a ways to go in getting the mostly-male writers of... well, any industry to get better about writing female characters. But, hey, it's a start.

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LosDub

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I have always played male characters except for Fallout 3/4 cuz female characters got dmg bonus vs male enemies and I was min/maxxing in game cuz its like 99%male enemies.

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vallian88

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I usually like the way female avatars look better than male ones. If I play a game long enough, I will certainly try both. I don't really feel a need to identify with my avatar, it's sorta like roleplaying for me - I can play anyone, so why stick to what I am/look like.

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wmoyer83

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#242  Edited By wmoyer83

I am never consistent with my choice of gender. Usually I will just swap when I do a second playthrough. I played a female Nord on my first playthrough of Skyrim, then I played as male imperial.

I played as male shep in ME, and I just started a new playthrough as fem Shep.

I play as a male character in the Shadowrun games, I sort of just stuck with the same dude to sort of feel like the games are all direct sequels.

I never play as 'myself' in games, so it boils down to whatever I randomly decide when I start the game.

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LyndBako

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I don't, and never will

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theonewhoplays

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#244  Edited By theonewhoplays

I just play any character I like, but I guess I generally gravitate towards female characters since they stand out in the sea of similar male characters. I never see myself as a character. Even in games with character creation I just see them as "a character", not an extension of myself. I'll never understand why some people make a big deal out of this. Like, do they get weirded out when reading books with a 1st person narrative if the main character is female? I have trouble wrapping my head around the reasoning.

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krulon87

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If I play as a female I usually end up creating my wife..My wife is a true bad ass and I like to see her go on these bad ass adventures. She will usually sit in the same room as me and finds it funny if she's not off reading a book.

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Edens_Heel

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Bluntly, because my outside doesn't match my inside, and games have always afforded me the opportunity to express that safely.

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UranalTruce

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Very simple. Girls pretty. Boys not. Unless they are Venti or Okino from 13 Sentinels.

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AshuSP

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The conversation definitely makes me think more thoughtfully about why I make my choice. The times I play as a woman in games I’m thinking I want for a different perspective than smarmy white dude. But how well is the character is represented matters greatly too. If I have troubles relating to the voice or dialog, it’ll easily influence my choice. I’ll probably think on this more in the next game I get the choice.

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Mikebill1

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It really depends on the character selection, what the characters look like im general, or what I'm feeling like playing as. In something like a Saints Row, i can go either. Normally I choose Male, but im happy to play Female. In Destiny I made my Warlock a Female just because I felt like it at the time. In something like Remnant I chose Female because I thought the Male options sucked. Similarly I chose Female in Cyberpunk because i hated Male V's voice. But then in GTA Online i made my character Male just cus i wanted to. Same with stuff like Skate. Its really a time, place, and what options do I have situation for me personally

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cyberbloke

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The last couple of games I have played where there has been a choice were the last two Assassins' Creed games.

I chose to play as a female in both, simply because the reviews said it was a better choice due to the voice acting.

For the most part, I don't really care about the sex of the avatar.