Most males playing female characters aren’t playing them in a feminine way though. Based on myself and a few close (and so more likely to be truthful) gamer friends, males playing female character is mostly about the visual appeal.
I guess it’d have to be determined on a case by case basis but I don’t think most games give you a real option to “Act feminine”. I suppose that depends on the definition of “act feminine” though and what game we’re applying it to.
Borderlands I always play the Sniper or Axton. I love being a sniper and generally will pick that over any class, but the turret is awfully fun and Axton is fairly good looking for a video game character. I like to dress his paper doll in all of the different costumes and heads.
Male/Male, in general, but not absolute.
For games with little or no discernible difference between genders, I don’t really care. I only really play WoW, and I have made a few female toons, but those ended up being classes I didn’t have much interest in continuing. My main that has probably 99% of my play time is male, as is the toon I’ve played second most.
But a game like WoW or other MMOs seems like it has other influencing factors. I’ve heard guys say that if they’re gonna stare at an ass, they’d rather it be a female one. However, in my mind, if you’re staring at your toon’s ass, you’re playing the game wrong. I mean, I make sure I like how my character looks, but my investment in the character is a combination of what I based him on and the time I’ve invested playing him.
Instead, and perhaps this is just my experience, but there seems to be a small difference in the approach to the game for guys that primarily play women rather than either only play men or will play a mix. For instance, female characters will tend to get treated nicer, even with the knowledge that the real person is reasonably likely to be male. Some guys I’ve talked to definitely take advantage of this, some may just find they find the game more enjoyable when they’re treated better.
But I’ve also met some that definitely want to present themselves as female. I personally know one that has an entire online female persona, which included a blog where he posted entries from a female perspective, had pictures he’d taken from someone’s facebook, posted on various forums with that name posing as a woman. There was a rumor he’d used a voice modulator for another guild and pretended to be a woman there as well. I knew him, and other than his character, he never presented himself as anything other than male to me or my guild, though he did post fake pictures of himself and of a girlfriend he claimed to have. He did eventually fess up to all of this once he realized his facade wasn’t working. I believe this type of thing is fairly rare, but sadly, I think people assume a much larger number of female characters are played by guys like this. As an unfortunate aside, all of the people with whom I’ve played more than a couple times who refused to use voice chat all claimed to be female, with the exception of one who claimed to have a speech impediment. Honestly, I think several of those were probably guys, and the one I think was likely honest and claimed it was just that she couldn’t afford a mic refused to let anyone send her one, so who knows?
This doesn’t include games where either gender gives an advantage or the gender of a character is predetermined. I see several people mention fighting games but when it comes to those, I always try all the characters and pick the ones I like to play best. In other games, notably RPGs, I’ll make a party with the characters that have the abilities I like or fit a need for a particular encounter. Unfortunately, as the trope goes in traditional RPGs, female characters are much more likely to be healers or casters, and if they are melee, likely to be agile types, so female characters are chosen more because I need a healer rather than because they’re actually interesting.
I’m a Night Elf Mohawk.
Male in life and in multiplayer video games, female in single-player games.
It’s interesting that some men say that they play female characters in MMO games because they’re treated better whereas women say they play male characters in the same games to avoid harassment. It could be, I suppose, that men playing females experience many of the same comments however they don’t take it as personally or feel as threatened since they are, in fact, men.
City of Heroes was an interesting MMORPG from a gender studies standpoint. It had a sizable female player population and common gender tropes were easy to manipulate or ignore due to its genre. With superheroes, a 5’ woman picking up a car is “normal” and there’s no real limitations on who gets to shoot fireballs or be an acrobat or cause vines to grab the Nazi Death Robots. Hanging out in the costumes and art subforum of the COH boards was interesting as well – a lot of women were happy to look sexy in their costumes and often came up with creations that I think men wouldn’t have offered for fear of being branded a pervert. Of course, there were a lot of classic style costumes and “Street clothes” or androids, etc as well. I don’t want to imply that it was 100% sexy-times from the female players.
I think it’s a pretty small percentage. Gaming itself is generally seen as a masculine activity, especially when we’re talking about “kill people and take their stuff” kinds of games.
Beyond that, I think it’s very interesting that the world tends to assume that guys who play female characters must be revealing some inner desire to be gay/feminine themselves. For me, a choice to be a female character says no more about my inner desires than a choice to be an orc, a tentacled alien or a robot. It’s just a game, and I’m all about having fun, experiencing some variety and getting away from reality.
[QUOTE=BluenoseGamer]
Female, generally male in games.
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Thanks – that is a rare combination.
[QUOTE=BluenoseGamer]
I also strongly dislike the half-nakedness of about 90% or the armour for females.
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I also have decent clothing/armor on my main female character. Like a noble lady from XVIIIth century.
In Runescape there is no romance – lots of skills but no romance.
I guess so.
I did once run into somebody who told me he was male iRL but loved playing female in City of Heroes because he felt like he was the wrong gender in real life. He was asking me if I had similiar reasons to play a female and despite me saying that I didn’t he started talking about his reasons. I wasn’t doing anything in the game at the time so I listened for a bit. Of course, the reason that one occasion has stuck to my memory is because it was so unique - in my 13 years of playing MMOs I can’t remember anybody else claiming anything similiar.
I think this is where the question gets interesting, because it gets down to how you perceive your game avatar. Is it you, a different character with aspects like you, or just an unrelated character? Edit: Another option; is it who you’d like to be?
If I were to create my own character as a female on the basis that I’d rather stare at a cute female bum than a male one for hours, it would almost feel to me like I’m putting a dress on and admiring myself in a mirror. In other words, characters that I have created are typically me. Not totally me, but me enough that it feels a bit weird to change my sex. This isn’t an absolute and it only relates to characters I design myself. My character in Fable 2 was female. If I’m playing a game where the player character is fully defined by the game then I have no problem if that character is female. I also think I can more easily do things that are out of character for me, such as killing innocents, or otherwise acting evil, if the character is predefined.
I guess most of the time when I play an RPG I am mentally inserting myself into a fantasy world. Other people seem to be inserting themselves into a fantasy character in a fantasy world, i.e., they are taking the role playing a step further. In that sense I don’t really role play. I’m a bit like Sean Connery, it doesn’t matter what fantasy world I’m in, I still just act like me.
Edit 2: I don’t even look at my character, they may as well not be there. I’m looking at the scenery, NPCs, monsters etc. The appearance of my own character fades like the sound of a clock ticking in a room.
For me it really depends on how close to a real storytelling RPG the game is and how much my in-game sex matters. If I’m just shooting things in Borderlands it doesn’t matter at all. Even in Skyrim whether you are female or male doesn’t really matter all that much. But in Bioware games where there’s romance and people start to react a bit to your race and what you do and your sex, it feels more like roleplaying and then it can start feeling a bit weird to be female. Most games don’t really react all that well to you and that makes me at least fairly detached from my character.
I remember how hilarious some of the Black Widow -perk dialogue was in Fallout: NV but if the whole game had been full of that sort of reminders that I’m playing a female character I’m not sure if I had enjoyed it. It’s an interesting question to be sure.
I’ve never played Tomb Raider, but I don’t think I’d generally perceive myself as Lara Croft. More like some perv following along behind her.
Well, even among people who project themselves as their avatar, I assume there’s a difference between creating a blank slate character in an RPG versus playing a predefined character such as in Tomb Raider, Hitman, Remember Me, etc.
Creepy…
Starting with Mariokart… I liked the “light” characters… but I didn’t like being Toad or Yoshi… so I played Peach or Daisy… after awhile they became my default “Nintendo” characters… and now being a female character in general is just sort of a habit.
Female playing mostly females. I’ve been playing MMOs since 1996, and never had problems with guys. I’m not flirty or attention seeking or young or single, so even if they believe I’m female, it doesn’t seem to matter.
I have had a couple of male characters for game-specific reasons, and when I play them I seem to come across as creepy.
I started using a particular female skin (under this pseudonym, oddly enough) in Unreal Tournament because it was smaller and harder to hit, and the skin’s clothing blended in nicely with my favourite map. It became a habit. And it was funny to have a bunch of teenagers hit on me in WoW years later. They were disappointed when I told them I wasn’t really a girl, and acted all out of sorts when I informed them that I wasn’t really an elf either.