A View From the Road: Confessions of a Virtual Transvestite

[Fwee]

Oh yeah plus I chose a female character on Fable II because I've played through the first one seven times and I thought it was time for a change.

 

[UnravThreads]

This article was well written And I really identify with it, too.

In as many games as I can rememeber, and for a long time, I've always preferred to use a female character in a game, but I have no objections to playing male characters. Partially it's the attraction, partially it's the simple "I want something to look at".

But my advice to anyone who does play females in MMOs, make it clear you're not one if you're a guy. Start to lie about it and it could just bite you in the arse...

 

[Pimppeter2]

I've never have made a female character in a game. I dunno why, I guess I just can't role play with one.

I'm not gonna lie, its a little sexist on my part, more chauvinistic to be exact, but I cannot roleplay as a woman who battles.

 

[GreyWolf257]

I made my character a female once, didn't really change the game for me, but that little nagging voice in the back of my head kept calling me dirty names. I told him "Shut up, if you wear armor as a girl in this game it looks better! Don't you dare call me a homosexual!" Then the guy at Wal-Mart asked me to leave because I was scaring the children.

Of course, none of this is real besides the first half of it.

 

[Obrien Xp]

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.

That is quite an interesting point.
I'd have to agree with it on most points, but games like velvet assassin and wet seem to be more and more common. In resident evil, your ally is usually female with you being the male.

In GW my main is a male but most of my other chars are female, this is usually due to armor design. OFC if gw physics were replaced by real physics then female characters would have a far higher mortality rate then males due to the theory that less armor on a female is stronger, and more armor on a male is stronger.

 

[Karloff]

I have known one woman who played male avatars hoping to avoid unwelcome attention. She even invested in electronic voice changers to disguise her on Skype. She used her husband's photo for the forums. So long as she avoided face to face, all was well.

As a ploy, it worked, but there was a problem. The gay guys on the server started to gravitate to h(er). Some of them even confessed to having feelings for h(er). It was uncanny; she became male to avoid sexual attention, yet got it anyway - and still didn't know what to do about it when she had it!

 

[Fasckira]

If I ever play a female character its because I cant muffle out the demands of the attention whore in me. You may as well literally do a handstand on a beach in a bikini while shouting, "Look at me!".

 

[DanDeFool]

"John Funk also thinks male Night Elves look really, really stupid."

This is a problem I have when games don't give me enough customization.
All of the men are HUGE BULKY BADASSES.
...Even the casters.

Agreed on that point about the male Night Elves. I've never much been a fan of WOW's visual aesthetic to begin with, though I do kind of like the Tauren.

Seems like Korean style MMO's have less the problem of all the men being unfeasibly burly bodybuilder-types. Of course, they trade that problem in for the problem of all the men being unfeasibly slender Calvin Klein models with equivalently unfeasible hairstyles.

OT: In MMO's, I usually play as a male character. Not to knock other people's preferences, but I figure if I'm going to be interacting with a lot of other people I should make an effort to represent myself as authentically as possible, gender included.

Still, I've often been tempted to play as a female character; I think I fall into the category of "wants a nice ass to stare at for 60 levels." Particularly in Guild Wars, which has probably the best character customization I've seen in an MMO.

 

[vxicepickxv]

It's amusing to me, because most of my MMO days were spent on RP servers. I find role playing to be one of my favorite aspects of the gaming, as it seems to be the majority of my social life. One of these days I may actually get back to Pencil and paper.

 

[NearNRiver]

I useally go with a female characther, from pen&paper to MMOs, I dont really know why in the MMOs, but I do know why in the paper ones.
Its more fun to roleplay as a female, for some reason...

This was an interesting point for me, because I almost always play as female in RPGs, both online and offline, and I do RP pretty hard and think up a lot of character depth and express it. But in table top games I am almost always male.

 

[feycreature]

I have tried so many damn times to make more male characters in WoW because I want to get as much content out of the game as possible. However, I can't bring myself to hit "accept," because they're just so UGLY. I find lots of men of varying appearances beautiful or hot in real life. I know boys who are prettier than me. Yet somehow in Azeroth that translates into either 'grandpa' or 'lumpy beast-thing'.

Night elves have their canteloupe arms on weirdly tapering bodies, gnarled faces and hideous facial hair, forsaken males look like frogs, troll male tusks extend so far they look more goofy than fearsome, humans look like cavemen with no wrists, and orcs look like humans except with extra caveman in mossy green. The best you can say of gnomes is you can make them look endearingly funny, and dwarves tend to end up looking like a homicidal Santa Claus. Taurens are inhuman enough to avoid being actively ugly, but it's still essentially a cow, and Belf males look ok if rather irritatingly smug because they're almost identical to females except slightly larger and with a bit more jaw and cheekbone. And even then, looking now their shoulders are so broad their arms don't seem properly attached.

So yeah. I don't mind playing male characters nor do I feel I've ever missed out on an opportunity to play female ones. I can relate across genders, it might even be neat for what roleplaying exists in the game. I'd just like the character I'm staring at for countless hours to not look like a gargoyle.

edit: oops, forgot draenei: they're not quite as bad as humans. their proportions are weird but at least they fit together and their face-tentacle things can be arranged so they don't obscure the face itself, that just leaves the issue of giant ape-hands and the recurring issue of having no wrists.

 

[masticina]

I find it to be freeing really

I mean it is so much nicer to put your "feminine" side into a female character. Yes I am male and yes I have a caring side. In a social MMO I play, furcadia, for instance I have a female character working behind a bar. It is so much nicer to put warmth into your character that way. And in those confinds there it seems that about 50% of the females are ran by male players anyway. So its a given! Hell being a male behind a bar and you will be treated different.

So for me it is the social thing.

I don't really do other MMO's. And in single player rpg's like skyrim well.. both sexes are equally able and equally ugly anyway. And it isn't as if anybody treats you different .. you are just the PC. Guess in those games it really doesn't matter what you choose.

You know weird isn't it how your sexe really does nothing in single player rpg's. Nothing at all.. actually that is good! Kinda awesome!

And yes I know about the whoring night elfes in WoW. Or that those korean F2P MMO's tend to have a love of the chainmail bikini combined with the dressing doll aetheistics. I have seen those mods for Skyrim and have to laugh.. really..what next Nude mods, ooooh!