Men who play as women in video games...

[8bitretroshit]

I'm sure there are quite a few ladies from the ol' shippers crowd who enjoy playing a dude in New Vegas with the Confirmed Bachelor perk

By the way Wildcat you have a pretty decent radio voice

[Wildcat]

Thanks, 8bit. I've heard that before.

My wife has tried to play as a male character in Morrowind and Skyrim before. She got pretty far in Morrowind, but had trouble with her choice in Skyrim. I think with Skyrim the playstyle she had designed for him clashed with her way of playing (she likes stealth over direct action, and she basically created a berserker). I'll have to ask her about Morrowind.

[Dances in Undergarments]

Jul 29, 2012 17:40:13 GMT -5 TV Eye said:

Jul 29, 2012 15:00:21 GMT -5 kirbychu said:

I do it too. I'll usually create other characters for other playthroughs, but for my first run through I generally play as... myself.

I'm glad to hear someone else does this. Y'know, I'm starting to believe that most gamers are just insecure about their looks. If I see a muscled guy as a playable character, I don't think he's "hideous" or whatever you other guys think. I just think "Oh, he looks pretty cool. This is someone I'd expect to see on an epic monster-slaying adventure."

But, yeah. I'm totally comfortable with how I look. Not to brag, but I'm not in the least bit unattractive. Unfortunately, my personality is shit and that's what girls are really into, but I digress. I can play as a male avatar and not be turned off by the game, but if I were to play as a female...the game would just seem off. Especially in something like Harvest Moon where you can get married. Flirting with a bunch of boys just seems childish ("Hurr hurr hurr, check it out, this guy thinks I'm hawt.").

I'm amazingly attractive too, obviously ( ), and yet I still don't play as 'myself' in any game. Maybe because I'm not a narcissistic arsehole, who knows . Not even my go-to Mii looks like me. Instead I'm more about creating dumb looking, generally old, unfit looking players. This amuses me. If I'm going to play a game for however many hours, I want to like the character I'm looking at to amuse me - the last game I played with character creation, Saints Row 3, I was a big fat guy in clown makeup and a posh British voice. Why? Because seeing him run around makes me laugh. I did then become a girl (because there was an achievement for playing as both genders), and tried to make her into a superhero looking woman because, again, I enjoyed watching her run around doing things in game.

I do name all my male characters my name (Josh), though this is mostly because I am not very creative.

[Deleted]

In Skyrim, I find that both male and female characters are unsettling most of the time, so I guess that's one way to fix the disparity here. In Mass Effect, Female Shepard's voice actor did a much better job, and it took until the third game for Male Shepard's actor to catch up. That's the most common reason I've heard for male preference of the female character in that series. It looks like the reasons depend on the game itself.

[parrothead]

Yurien in Daraku Tenshi - The Fallen Angels.

[Shrikeswind]

Let's talk about character customization for a sec. For me, my gender choice in these games is variable by game.

If the options for customization are particularly good, I find it common for me to pick male characters, on the grounds that there really isn't much point IMO of playing in drag. For example, Runescape (I know, I know.) For all of its shortcomings, Runescape has an absolutely amazing amount of options for customization. So I ended up with blonde dreads, a green tank top, and being a guy.

Compare it to WoW. When I played, I remember looking through all of my options. There were few. If it weren't for the Tauren, I'd have been an Elvish lass, because all the dudes across the game were butt-ugly. And this well-received game had, at the time I was playing, 10 races I could be! But because there wasn't much more customization beyond that, I was really that close to being a girl.

Now, first of all, theoretically, it's possible that a low-custom game might end up getting me to be a dude just because the girl is that ugly. In practice, however, character designers often make the girls look better, which leads to my tendency to be a girl in these games.

Second of all, what might happen if the options are limited, but I like both options? I'll be honest, it's the guy 9 times out of 10, since I see no reason why not. And what about when the customization literally boils down to "Are you a boy or a girl?" THAT depends on my idea of what's canon. Take Pokemon. I view May, Gold, Lucas, Hilda, Rosa, and Red as the canon trainers for their respective games, so they are the ones I play as. If I didn't, I'd feel like I was playing Luigi without Mario.

Thirdly is the important one. Many games feature armor which conceals your design. Let's haul back to Runescape, since it does a much better job of distinguishing armor models than WoW (in as much as Runescape's armor isn't fucking Spandex) and, again, allows you to customize your avatar. So why should it be that I even give a shit what I look like, if I'm going to pile on all that armor anyways? The answer is this: If, in the real world, I put on a coat over a tux, you will see the coat, but I'm still wearing a tux, and I know it. Likewise in game, I see my dragonhide shirt and snakeskin bandana, but I still know I have my green tank-top and blonde dreads beneath it. I still have a face. And in games where the options all suck, that face can still be hideously deformed, and no matter how much I mask it, I still know, "If I ever take off or lose that armor, I will have to see the tackily-dressed hideous monkey-fish-frog beneath it." So, to avoid that monster, I go with the best looking options, which, as stated earlier, will typically be the girl.

In conclusion, and while I only speak for myself, games with better customization are more apt to get a guy out of me, and I imagine this applies to a lot of guys out there as well.

[Spud]

I normally play dudes (Old Dudes mostly) But in games like skyrim I sometimes like having multiple characters to allow for wildly different playstyles and alignments (since it is a role playing game to be exact). I sometimes play females in part to prevent my roster from turning into a sausage fest or because for certain races I prefer the design of one gender over the other. (I like male argonians way more than female, but I prefer female orcs over male ones)

[Deleted]

May 15, 2013 21:40:56 GMT -5 Spud said:

I normally play dudes (Old Dudes mostly) But in games like skyrim I sometimes like having multiple characters to allow for wildly different playstyles and alignments (since it is a role playing game to be exact). I sometimes play females in part to prevent my roster from turning into a sausage fest or because for certain races I prefer the design of one gender over the other. (I like male argonians way more than female, but I prefer female orcs over male ones)

Male orcs are butt-ugly. I agree that male Argonians look much nicer, and I think that applies to Khajiit, too. Unless they have hair on the top of their head, despite having fur... which I will never understand.

I usually don't care how my own character looks because the first-person perspective and lack of mirrors usually means you don't see yourself very often. You could use third-person, but I have yet to find anybody that likes to use it...

[Nester the Lark]

Bump!

I've recently become a contributor over at The Punk Effect, and one of my fellow contributors is a psychologist who writes articles about psychological aspects of video games. A few weeks ago, he was looking for suggestions on what kinds of topics to cover, and remembering this thread, I suggested people who create avatars of the opposite gender. He thought it was a good idea, and he's actually writing a three-part article on the topic! The first part went up today, if you're interested in taking a look.

Avatars of the Opposite Sex. Part 1 of 3: Everybody does it!

[nocturnal YL]

Ah, interesting.

A while ago, I was having a school project that involves making a game for those who aren't digitally competent. I remembered this topic, and was about to use Teev's point to support my design decision to not include visible player characters (first-person view, in other words), only to find that most people aren't Teev and do instead want to play as both genders just to see what the game offers for both options, or play as the opposite gender to differentiate from the traditioal "role". I ended up giving up discussing about this altogether.

[Nester the Lark]

Here's part 2. It gets into more interesting details as to why people pick avatars of the opposite gender.

Avatars of the Opposite Sex. Part 2 of 3: Better, Stronger, Faster.

To be honest, I've thought about signing up to a forum somewhere as a female just to see how I would be treated. The problem is that I don't like the idea of actively deceiving people. Plus, if I ended up making friends with anyone, it would eventually come to that awkward moment of having to say, "By the way, I'm actually a thirty-something guy," and that would come off being pretty creepy.

[Nester the Lark]

Here's the third and final part:

Avatars of the Opposite Sex. Part 3 of 3: Take Control of Yourself!

It mainly talks about how an avatar's appearance affects the player's behavior.

[Spud]

Very interesting articles, Nester.

I'm getting rather curious about my habit of playing as a character who is visibly 50/60+ years old.

[Kriven]

I often play female characters in games with statistical or style differences (Tekken, for example) because I feel more comfortable with their playstyle than with most of the dudes, who are usually clumsy feeling. Sometimes there's a guy character I'm competent with or who doesn't feel crappy to use (Siegfried in Soul Calibur), but as a general rule I am more competitive with the ladies. They also tend to have more fleshed out personalities and motivations, whereas most guys are all: "I must prove I am the strongest and beat up everybody else."

How boring.

And also as mentioned by a few posters upthread, a lot of guys aren't designed very well. Even the ones that don't have horrendous fashion sense tend to be really cookie cutter and generic... nothing interesting there.

I mean, I play Non-Human characters as frequently as female characters when they're available. They just tend not to be.

Usually with Avatar-Based games (make your character, make your name, etc.) I play as myself or a guy, because I'm given the opportunity to create a guy character who isn't ugly and generic and with motivations I can usually relate to... because they're mine. I'd say the only exception to this rule, so far, is Pokemon, which I don't view as a strict avatar experience. I chose the female trainer in Crystal because I'd already played through both Gold & Silver with male sprites, so I wanted to put a spin on it. With games after that I picked a male in one version ad a female in the other.

But like I mentioned, I don't view Pokemon as an avatar game anymore than I view Zelda as one. When I'm playing Pokemon, I'm not playing as avatars... I'm playing as Red or Green or Krys.

JRPGs are a mixed bag... it depends on the combat, I suppose. I mean, I do tend to resonate more with the female characters because it's obvious more care goes into them, but the good ones also have complex male characters as well who are appealing. In the end it usually always comes down to strategy for me. I typically need at least one healer, which is almost always a girl, and one fighter to assist the protagonist (who I usually always control). In games like Paper Mario I might prefer the female allies to the male allies (but Paper Mario is one of those games where I love all of them), but they all have specific uses.

Then there are games where stats don't matter all that much, and I usually still play as a female character. That tends to go back to personality and design though. If it's a bunch of chibi people playing tennis, I'm going to play the chibi tennis person who is the cutest and says the most uplifting thing. If it's a puzzle game and I have to choose a participant that otherwise doesn't impact the game, I'm picking the one who looks the most interesting. Usually it's the girls.

But everyone IRL tells me I have a lot of feminine characteristics anyways, so maybe that plays into it?

[TV Eye]

Jan 30, 2014 11:29:58 GMT -5 Kriven said:

I often play female characters in games with statistical or style differences (Tekken, for example) because I feel more comfortable with their playstyle than with most of the dudes, who are usually clumsy feeling. Sometimes there's a guy character I'm competent with or who doesn't feel crappy to use (Siegfried in Soul Calibur), but as a general rule I am more competitive with the ladies. They also tend to have more fleshed out personalities and motivations, whereas most guys are all: "I must prove I am the strongest and beat up everybody else."

I can understand Soul Calibur, but Tekken? The men are much better designed than the woman! And their stories are hilarious! I can never not play as Law. Poor guy is just trying to keep his restaurant in business.