I, similarly, have very little interest in sports. However, a few years ago I got into weightlifting and developed - to my astonishment - a newfound appreciation for girls with muscles (this extended from bodybuilders to UFC fighters). There are probably connections to the ‘Appreciation for girls who kick ass’ theory, as well as ‘Interest in anything which is unusual or against the norm’.
And in most games where you can pick your gender, the game play and options are essential the same whichever you pick. Playing Fallout 4 or Mass Effect as a woman is really no different from playing as a man. I would agree, I don’t get immersed in these games, especially WoW, but they’re more like reading a book.
When given the choice, I’ll play video-game or RPG characters as close to myself as I can make them. My Read Dead Online character is old and fat and grizzled, like me. And when given choices in which I can make the moral one or the immoral one, I make the moral one, as I would IRL. Similarly, all of my D&D characters have been male, and Chaotic Good (like me IRL).
I do this for the sake of simplicity. Makes making moral choices either, since the character acts as I would and I don’t have to think to myself, “How would a Lawful Evil character act in this situation?” and such.
If it is a game where I am creating a character, I will always create a male; and, like HeyHomie, it will often be a paunchy, bald/balding, middle-aged person that more-or-less reflects myself (these days).
Many of my male gaming companions always create female avatars; in fact, I can only think of two (male) people I game with regularly that generally stick with male avatars only. One of my old friends used to play MMOs strictly as females because… “People always give me free shit if they think I’m a girl!”
I was thinking this might happen. A lot of men are complete idiots when they think a woman might be interested in them. Even in a video game. Seriously, our brains can easily malfunction even around animated characters.
There’s an episode of Black Mirror that is sort of related to this:
Prior thread on this -
So no need to fully repeat myself, but if you don’t want to click the link, I’ll copy/paste:
I’m part of the group that uses the first excuse mentioned in the OP, but that’s not the only reason. As brought up in said post, the male avatars are generally built like meat mountains (yes, there are exceptions, but they are exceptions for a reason) - which is fine if you’re making a meaty tank or warrior style, but looks plain dumb if you’re playing a caster or rogue class.
Especially wizards/priest roles, where you are constantly looking at what is effectively a linebacker in a robe or dress. My rule from WoW onwards was that if it was a cloth wearing class (which is generally in 90% robes), I was making it female. It is just much more pleasing in proportions. Since I find the healing classes to be more fun in group play than dps (and I hate tanking), about 80% of my avatars ended up female.
There is a converse as well, and EverQuest and WoW are just as responsible for it. If I was making the rare (for me) plate wearing class, it was always male. Because those two games (much less so these days but still) had a very, VERY bad tendency to make the same armour on a female into a literal ‘breastplate’ or bikini. It was plain dumb and sucked me right out of any immersion just as a linebacker in a dress did.
The first excuse was, from back in the days when avatars ran everywhere, about the trope of wanting to stare at a poorly animated female rear for hours, as opposed to that of a guy if you’re a traditional heterosexual male. 
If there’s an option to pick, my first play through of a game is almost invariably with a female character. If I play through a second time, it will be with male character. Online games that let you have multiple characters tend to break down 50/50 in my “stable” of characters but my first will be female.
I think this is a big part of it for me. It’s worth saying that I don’t identify with any of my characters as myself. It’s never “me” running around in Skyrim or The Division or Fallout or Mass Effect, it’s just a story I’m making/telling via my character. And I probably find the story of a woman often more interesting than that of the usual male video game protagonist. Also, female characters tend to thematically blend with my playstyle most of the time (talker, sniper, stealth, etc) so it’s a natural choice. Back in my arcade days, I often picked the female character in beat 'em ups because the woman was always the high agility quick-attack character versus Beefy Slow-Punch and that mindset carried forward. I’m sure part of it too is that it’s just enjoyable to see a woman beating the odds and kicking ass even if, mechanically in-game, it’s no more odd-defeating than a male character doing it.
I tend to make my female characters “pretty” though not usually “sexy” and, in some games, it hardly matters anyway – everyone in The Division has a butt like a sack of potatoes. The whole “I wanna see a pretty girl” aspect was never a driving factor. I do like having extra cosmetic options though and being able to pick between pants and skirts and dresses and different hairstyles, etc is enjoyable versus the typically more limited options for men (or even in “anyone can wear anything” games, the male models aren’t really fitted for wearing that sundress
I don’t tend to play the sort of games this applies to, although I’ll happily cross-dress my Animal Crossing character just for the hell of it.
Along similar lines, there are games – such as Fallout 3+ – which play a bit different as a female than a male. I’m referring to the Black Widow / Lady Killer perk. There are more male mooks than female mooks so a Black Widow makes more sense; it also provides a unique way to handle Mr. Burke in 3.
Moved to the Game Room (from MPSIMS).
This. Oh so very much.
The default male hero in most VG is a gruff manly man, with a gruff voice that says manly platitudes. It’s off putting.
I find that when given the option, I generally use an avatar who is at least superficially similar to me in appearance. Sometimes as a black dude. Is that ok or is it considered a sort of digital “black face”?
I recently completed Horizon Zero Dawn where you play as the female protagonist, Aloy. The ass-kicking and robot stomping was fine. But truth be told, the interactions with the NPCs felt a little weird. Like it kind of felt like I was playing as if Aloy were a lesbian (or at least asexual or non-binary). Which I suppose makes sense as it she is literally a socially inexperienced female teenager with the mind of the adult hetero male playing her. I don’t know if it was by design, but most of the male NPCs seemed vaguely effeminate, creepy or weird, and most of the female NPCs seemed like they had an instant lady-boner for Aloy.
Why kind of weak-ass martial arts are you studying where they don’t teach a 110lb woman to Hurricanrana a 250lb SOCOM operative in tactical gear? Maybe your body suit isn’t tight enough? 
But otherwise, sure. From a standpoint of “performance art”, it’s fun watching Black Widow or Trinity or any number of other “action babes” kick the crap out of ten dudes while wearing outfits that are perhaps more suitable for waitstaff at an adult-themed chain restaurant.
AH! 
I often play females because I like support roles and my healer just has to be female. And a female tank? That is bad-ass. For DPS I’m about 50/50 … I may play a female with a 2 handed sword or a male dual-wielding or a male rogue or a female archer.
I play City of Heroes, and I’m never sure about the true gender of any toon I meet. I’ll flirt a little bit with female toons, because it’s roleplaying. I’ve flirted with ostensibly gay toons too. I’ve played a few female toons myself, but everybody knows who I am because they can see my global handle. No matter what kind of toon I play, my abrasive curmudgeon personality still prevails. As long as I can make people type LOL in chat, I consider that a win.
I just assume everybody I meet is nonbinary until proved otherwise.
Let’s see… Out of my 35 City of Heroes characters (highly customizable in appearance), I have 16 definitely-male characters, one that I think is male, but I’m not sure how sexuality works for either of his two species, 12 female characters, and 6 nonbinary of various sorts (four “it” and two “plural they”). In a few cases, gender is relevant: One of the males was based on myself (at least, to start with, though I kept making “improvements”), and of the females, two are based on existing female characters, one is a pun that depends on her being female, and one’s story was about fighting tooth and claw into acceptance in one of the male-dominated gangs in the game. For most of them, though, I could just as well have chosen either.
Back when I played Diablo III, some of my characters were male and some female, though I don’t remember exact numbers, because some classes just looked better as one or the other. There was very little customization there, though: Your options were just “male barbarian, female barbarian, male wizard, female wizard”, etc.
On the other hand, in D&D, I occasionally play a female character, but almost all of them are male.
So it might be that part of my reason for (sometimes) playing female characters online is the ability to customize my appearance (with a concrete representation of said appearance).
Didn’t one of the earlier Diablo games have genders/characters tied together? ISTR that the fighter and magic-user characters were female, and the others were male, and you couldn’t change it.
Yeah, Diablo I and II both had fixed-gender classes. My favorite Diablo II class was the sorceress, so I often played female, because sorceresses were all female. Diablo I had a choice of male warrior, female rogue, or male mage, and Diablo II had female amazon, female assassin, male barbarian, male druid, male necromancer, male paladin, or female sorceress.
Mass Effect did make a difference as female, which is what I(male) had played as. I heard the female voice actor was better and I felt the whole thing worked really well with a female in the lead. Her voice acting was really good.