A View From the Road: Confessions of a Virtual Transvestite

[VanBasten]

I'm a dude, I play Horde and all my characters are dudes, except for the one belf (guess which class) who's a chick. Interestingly enough most of my Guild Wars chars are female(6 out of 9), and both of my AoC chars were also female.

My motives in gender choice are strictly aesthetic. I always roll a dude to prevent confusion when encountering other players, unless a dude looks significantly more stupid than the female version of the character(belfs), or if the female version looks really really pretty(that would be GW and AoC).

 

[RollForInitiative]

To expand upon earlier comments, I think part of it is the desire to create something you find beautiful. A heterosexual male is more likely to create a female character in that case, logically.

 

[Milkman Dan]

"I want to be the little girl."

 

[KeyMaster45]

there's the idea that female characters get treated better by other players

I'm very sorry but I really had to laugh at this one because I show no mercy when it comes to gender when playing an online game.

Sorry ladies but you're dude until proven otherwise. Being a woman doesn't get you any slack in my book anyway, if you're doing a bad job playing your character I'm going to tell and try to help you like any other person. If you're playing your character like a brain dead monkey slapping keys then you're going to hear "You are the weakest......goodbye" and be booted from my group.

I'm sorry to come off as an insensitive bastard, but gender is a not a handicap, however, believing it is counts as a mental illness.

-EDIT-
Just wanted to add that I do play female characters from time to time, something about a woman carrying a large axe is attractive to me.

 

[DrTrevelyan]

I do this all the time. Aside from the "if I'm gonna stare at an ass all day..." argument, I have sort of an arbitrary reasoning of my own: Most game designers are geeky men, so therefore they make the female characters better so as to not seem sexist. Its a dumb reason, but hey...

 

[AceDiamond]

Judging by how I played Mass Effect I'll play through it as a male, then go back and play it differently as a female. In that case, I went paragon as male and slightly renegade as female. I also changed classes and origins.

Course if that option isn't quite available I'll just play as a guy.

 

[Lyri]

This is very interesting to me. I never play a male character if I have the option to play as a female. Perhaps that's because the option to play as a female is far more infrequent than being forced to play as a male.

In fact, maybe that's where this gender-swapping comes from -- in so many games, you have no choice but to be male. Maybe you're just playing as a girl because you can.

I can agree with this, I hate having to be forced into playing a male character in most games. Sometimes I'd like to kick ass as the fairer sex, yet when I played Mass Effect I never played a female, but in Fallout I did.

With myself I guess it's just a case of what I'd rather be at the time, I really don't have any preference.
It's just nice to have the choice.

Spoiler: My Aion Character

She was my choice this time.

 

[Berethond]

I've always wondered what it would be like to be a woman.
But maybe that's just a Berethond thing, and not a guy thing.

 

[Silk_Sk]

A nice article, but it's a classic case of over thinking something. You're on your way to the ridiculously simple answer but you don't quite get there. I'll provide the solution right now.

It's true that our online personas are idealized versions of ourselves. And of course we don't want to be women. What we want is to be good-looking. Hey lets face it, we men are butt-ugly. That's as true in the virtual world as in the real one. Whatever your preference, there is no denying that women are all around more aesthetically pleasing than men.

There's a reason God created women second. Men were just his trial run. An imperfect Beta. Women are the final product. There's no shame in aspiring to that.

 

[smallharmlesskitten]

Whats the betting that if funk rolls horde he'll go belf?

 

[Silvance]

I do the same thing, I dunno why. I think a lot of it has to do with female characters usually looking infinitely better than male characters in most games.

 

[Fearzone]

I think there are a lot of trannies in Champions--nearing the level cap it's not at all uncommon to end up in an all-female group for instances and arenas. For me, I assume all toons are male players until there is vent confirmation otherwise, though once I teamed with a female char, who made no effort to prove his/her femaleness, whose style of interaction was such that after we split up I wondered if it really was a woman.

In fantasy MMOs my female alts never progressed beyond early game and not without a little shame even at that. Champions has my first female toon as a main nearing level cap- a Barb Wire-type cyberpunk chick with a light saber- and I've barely given it a second thought.

Not once have I been hit on, unlike WoW where female toons get hit on a lot. When that happens, I like to play along just for the fun of it. Night elf males are always the total creepsters.

It is kind of sad though in Club Caprice to watch men badly rp'ing female toons, and other men believing it. Actually, no, it's rather entertaining.

 

[Slayer_2]

Personally, I've never played as a female in any game that allowed me to do otherwise. Something makes playing as huge guys with bulging muscles and deep gravelly voices endlessly entertaining. No I'm not gay

 

[cathou]

i always play female caracters when i can. Like susan said, maybe it's because half of the time i have to play a mal caracter (because it's the only one the game have)... so that i dont feel the need to do a gender swap in games...

 

[Nurb]

people read WAAAAY too much into games and how people play them

 

[mshcherbatskaya]

I'm a woman playing a female Undead in WoW and one of my guild mates is under the persistant misapprehension that I am a guy, even though I have corrected him more than once. My GM became chivalrous and flirtatious once he learned I am female, which could become awkward if it were to escalate.

Since my first play-through in any game is on a female character, my first was my Undead female. The next two were a female Belf warlock and a female Tauren druid named after characters in one of my RPs here. The fourth alt I made male because I didn't have any males yet.

Now, though, I base my choices more and more on other aesthetic considerations. Male Undead and female Trolls have some of the best dances on the Horde side, and the high-level female Tauren and Belf gear looks really good. It's a variant of the idea, "If I'm going to have to look at this for 80 levels..." that doesn't have to do with the shape of the character's backside.

 

[Phishfood]

I've started playing a few more female characters lately, I do agree with others that more than anything its a "sick of male leads" thing.

Of course, there is another factor - people seeing women as the weaker sex (at least in the context of wielding 10' swords and impaling people with them) makes it slightly more rewarding when said female kicks ass anyway. Just look at any Joss Whedon show and you will know what I'm talking about.

 

[KazNecro]

This is very interesting to me. I never play a male character if I have the option to play as a female. Perhaps that's because the option to play as a female is far more infrequent than being forced to play as a male.

In fact, maybe that's where this gender-swapping comes from -- in so many games, you have no choice but to be male. Maybe you're just playing as a girl because you can.

This is exactly why I play female characters 75-80% of the time. With so many games where the lead character is often male, its a nice change of pace to be given the option of putting a female into the lead role. I don't equate it as a refection of me as a person, just exploiting the choice given to me.

On a side note, I created a female character in Rock Band, and got chastised by my female friends for my ability to make the girl hotter than theirs. *laughs*