Male in real life, mostly female in games.
I’m more interested in female characters than male characters. So given the choice between having a male character present in every part of a game’s story and having a female character present in every part of a game’s story, I pick the latter.
Female in life.
In games…It really depends. If there is a plot element that resides on being female, like a romance, I am almost always female. I’m also more likely to be female in games where the female version is treated fairly, like Mass Effect, etc. If I have to wear skimpy armor and look all sexy I probably won’t play as a female.
If gender has no real effect on your choices, like Skyrim, I generally play a man. Why? Because just like men I’d rather look at my gender of choice.
The biggest exception is Fallout; I always play a female.
Online? Almost always a man. I just don’t want to deal with being a female on the Interwebs; I can’t stand the reactions.
One thing I remember from my past was that, in the arcade side-scrolling beat 'em ups, the obligatory female character was always the one with the most agility and fast light or ranged attacks. Since I enjoyed that play style, I usually wound up playing the girl. If I play a game like Fallout 3 today, I’m likely to take a light build with ranged/sniper style game play over melee or explosives and so I probably still equate that to “female character”.
That and I have no qualms about it. If I could play the girl at the arcade in 1986, I can do it from my living room in 2015.
I don’t play MMOs or D&D games. I do play open world console games like Dragon Age. I always play a male and always take the good road. I tell myself I will go back and do it differently like be an evil female. I’ve started to do that at times and then got quickly bored with replaying the game.
Cis male IRL, usually play males in video games, except for fighting games (Unless it’s Mortal Kombat, because Kung Lao rules).
Talking about Bethesda Fallout games, though, I’ve generally played as my own gender (male) in the initial playthrough, but female in replay, just to be able to see how making gender-based or preference-based choices play out in game. (Canonical example: Fallout New Vegas has four different perks for male-female, male-male, female-male, and female-female “seduction” perks which give access to different quest or conversational choices.)
I am completionist; I want to see how all possible choices end.
This is also true with me. I’m reminded of Borderlands where I played as Maya, simply because her moveset favored me more than anything else
OUCH! I will not download anything over 200MB. No way.
Like me. It has been many years since I played as a male character in Tibia.
This for me too.
I don’t find it interesting unless the character is an extension of (my perception of) me. Therefore they are nearly always male and generally good.
In life I am very unsuccessful. In game I am an XVIII-th century Russian noble lady.
Please enter this into the Two Sentence Stories thread. I think you might win it. 
I do not want to be a clown in the world which is not a circus.
Well, you have a great turn of phrase. You should check out the Thread Games forum. 
Back on topic, when I played video games (which I don’t do so much these days, apart from chess), I’d also also customise the avatar’s physical appearance to look as much like myself as possible (in the games where this was a feature).
So the approach I took was to project my self in to the game, so my avatar was an alternative version of “me”; while others take the approach of playing the game as a character who could be very different from them. I was never one for choosing to be a lizard-man or cat-being over a human character!
As an aside, my favourite clothes/attire for my avatar was my GTA San Andreas look - Bermuda shirt, shorts and flip-flops. I looked pretty rad on my bicycle!
I’m a male and I am almost always a male in video games. Fighting games is my big exception. I have not used a male character in a fighting game since Sub-Zero and Raiden in the early Mortal Kombats.
Female, generally male in games.
When I play video/online games I tend to project myself or what I would wish to be myself. I also strongly dislike the half-nakedness of about 90% or the armour for females (the only exception to this rule is the Seraphim from Sacred). Though when I play D&D or anything similar, I am most often a female, rogue or sorcerer/wizard. I don’t really like to be up front, I like to assist from the sidelines so I don’t have as much risk of being bludgeoned to death. Although if the party is in need of a tank, I will gladly tank as well. Me like smashy-smashy!
Female IRL/Female (generally) in games that I have a choice, unless I want to romance a straight female character haha.
Female/Female.
I wonder if part of the reason why so many males like to play games as females is because it’s less acceptable for a male to act feminine in real life?
I’m male, and I guess I usually play males in games, but mostly because the games I play that offer a protagonist are often already male. I also will make myself in first person games–since I can’t see myself except in a mirror.
Third person, I go with whatever I think looks good, unless it actually matters gameplay-wise: then I do what Chronos does. Though, if there is a romantic aspect to the game, and I can play female/female, I prefer that. The romance just works better for me if there’s not a guy getting in the way.