Guys That Play Girls In Games. Why?

[ChipSandwich]

Because love interest female characters are boring, as are the subtly condescending "badass" or "extremely talented with no flaws whatsoever" characters.

I'm more a fan of Samus Aran type (pre Other M of course), "Lead character's/Team Leader a woman, deal with it" sort of thing.

 

[Random berk]

Hmm. Depends, really. In games like Fable or Fallout I always make a male and female character, mostly to see how it affected gameplay, dialogue etc. When I tried Guild Wars I made almost all female characters because, yes, I admit, they all had great tits, fine asses and minimal clothing, and Lord knows Guild Wars wouldn't have been any less crap if I had used a male character.

 

[WestMountain]

It just feels gay to have a male character somehow.....

 

[omega 616]

I have only played a female twice (on DA:O), I always made men 'cos I am one and I think it's just better to have females to be at the back firing arrows and spells at the enemy and the brick shit houses men at the front, getting caked in blood.

Don't know why, maybe it's a little bit of sexism seeping in there. I just can't imagine a female charging at darkspawn (or whatever), shrieking like a banshee, cutting a few dudes up, then walking out head to toe in blood and sweat.

Although I have created a female warrior dwarf on DA:O. My other woman is human mage.

 

[OneOfTheMichael's]

Well i do play as the opposite sex on a few games (including WoW and fallout), mostly becuase i always, ALWAYS go with my gender so i thought to just switch it up. On fallout i also use the perks that the female characters get such as cez' femme and blackwidow throughout the game to lessen the difficulty and play it through a new perspective.
On WoW i just that i noticed that all of my characters were male (about 8, 6 that i rarely use actually) so i made a female human mage (I also play horde so that was a turn a round for me).

 

[Ramare]

Why not? It seems awfully backwards to say that you can only play a game as your own assigned gender.

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Well...I was going to do a bunch of heavy thought, and hard explanation; but you pretty much summed it up for me. I don't make "me", I make characters. They're all different, and colorful. I don't just make myself, over and over again, or make myself, but evil version (Goatee included), or make myself, but female version, or make myself, but *insert race here* version; no, I make characters. Sure, they're all a bit like me at base level, since I made them; but they're all sure as hell not me.

Say I made a character that likes to wear long sleeved t-shirts, track pants, combat boots, and has short, scruffy black hair, and a 5 o' clock shadow. That isn't me at all, just with aesthetics. I like plain pants, t-shirts, sneakers, and have medium-short dark brown hair, and don't grow out my facial hair. Then there's personality, and that's where every character is unique. Perhaps this character likes to think he's a badass; but he really isn't cut out for it. If he got in any real danger, he'd crack like an egg. Perhaps he likes bolt-action rifles, and machine pistols. Those are all opposite of me, coincidentally. I don't think I'm a badass, but several situations have found me being one. I like scatter guns, and magnums. The polar opposites of the weapons this character supposedly likes.

Ironically, some of the female characters I've made act the most like me; but that's also a coincidence, and not intended.

On an unrelated note, I do not sexualize my female characters. What does that mean? Well, to me, that means I don't spend all day staring at her ass/breasts, even though I'm an average American male. I also don't dress her in bikinis, and trounce around like a sex symbol. I either wear what can be considered "normal", or what I'd wear if I was a woman: Casual. Effing. Clothes. No different than what I currently wear; bar maybe a slightly exposed midriff, shorter short sleeves, and shorter pants. I also don't condone comically large bust sizes, either. To me, the higher end of C is pushing it. Hell, a few of my characters have A cups, and don't even give a shit. That certainly doesn't make them less of a woman.

The only thing that my characters have in common with me, is a rather odd fondness for fingerless gloves. Weather they be standard cloth mittens, but mangled, made-from-scratch; work-style gloves that are made fingerless, for easier operation or something; and fingerless gloves made for sports/exercise. Oh, and those stereotypical Russian gloves. Y'know, fingerless, and with bare knuckles? You know what I mean.

Now, this is all in general. This doesn't necessarily mean I'll outright lie to people about my own sexuality; and I also don't condone leading on people in MMOs about your gender. Weather the reasons be free stuff, better treatment, or just the hilarity of how stupid some individuals act.

Well, at the supposed end of this post, turns out I still did do a lot of the aforementioned heavy thinking and hard explanations; but that still gave me a jumping-off point.

 

[Superior Mind]

In RPGs I find that having a female character makes me a bit more free about the decisions I make. Playing a bloke I just make the decisions that I would logically make. That's just a personal thing I guess, having a female character just means there's a more defined line between what I would do and what the character would do.

In Left 4 Dead I get some stick sometimes for having the preference of Zoey as my character. Fact is I just think she's an awesome character, gender doesn't really play a role in that one.

 

[Battenbergcake]

Well in Monster Hunter Male and Female armor is visually diferent, so it was cool to see a firmilar armor set looking different. Some cases the female version was far nicer looking than the male version I.E. Rathian Mail and vise verse I.E. Khezu.

That and ofcouse, why not? Vairety's the spice of life, i do believe Ultima 3 let you play as a hermaphrodite.

 

[Udyrfrykte]

Because I'm a perv.
When faced with character selection I'm faced with "boobs or no boobs?", duh.

If the female character is rather non-attractive I won't roll female though.
After I got hit on in WoW for playing a female char, I've stopped playing them mostly. Damn disgusting.

 

[William Dickbringer]

I never really saw an interest myself to play mainly female(I play mainly guy characters because I seem to relate to them better and make more better choices as them(even if I still commit mass genocide)) but when I do play a girl it's for the difference dialogue options and a separation because nothing like being a snarky ***** to the npcs

In homage to a line that never made it into a film: Ninjas... Daaaaamn...

what that line never made it into the film I now don't want to see the movie...that much

 

[Zetsubou-Sama]

In FO3/NV I usually go for Females since it's way harder to make a male look good than a female.

Or in RPG's when it's so obvious the script is only written for a male part, I like to pick a female to see how bad it can go.

 

[Elivercury]

There are many reasons, both considered and not.

In some games different genders get different stats, so it might make the most sense to play a female to get that +2 to agility or something. There is of course the looking at opposite genders arse argument and along with it the option to pretend to be a woman for fun or to profit off desperate men online.

I play mostly female characters on MMOs and this is due to A) I mostly play magic/healer classes and rarely ever play the big burly tanks or 5 tonne hammer wielding warriors. Probably through years of RPG stereotyping it feels more natural that the woman do the healing/magic and the men do the punching and getting punched. B) It's amusing watching a 5 foot tall woman destroy a gigantic deathbeast of doom. C) Habit.

Although I know several women who play male characters online. This is usually more so that they don't get hit on while playing online as guys rarely assume male characters are women.

 

[Wapox]

it often looks a lot better

it's more pleasing to the eyes

 

[Pumpkinmancer]

People who ask the question: "Guys That Play Girls In Games. Why?", why?

Jeez, seriously, whats with people asking this question? There no big secret, no psycological trama hidden in the persons childhood. They like how they look, asteically or otherwise, or they like what abilities, powers, or skills they have.

More pressing is not the question of why guys play girl characters in games, but why are people unable to understand it? What does it say about you for asking this question?



Edit: spelling, grammer, erasing signs of the retard inside me.

 

[DocMcCray]

Awesome topic choice, FYI.

I play almost exclusively as females that run several reasons, some of which you mentioned including aesthetics and access to certain classes (FFXI and the Mithra race. I love cute kitties! Plus there were no male Mithra...)

After some thought I've come up with two major reasons. First is that, specific to online gaming, people seem to be more likely to treat female characters nicer with the exception of the occasional pervert.

The other more compelling reason is that it allows me to get inside the head of the character a bit better. Male warrior/characters tend to be meatheads with very little aside from killing in mind (see Gears of War.) Where as females still traditionally are not known for willingly or actively engaging in combat and tend to need a better back story or reason to do so. IMO that makes them more complex and thus more fulfilling to play. Plus I like to transfer that complexity over to my own stories. Very little has more drama than a female who was forced into combat by an overbearing, overprotective relative and then figure out whether to follow a destructive path set before her or try to reconcile her past with the ambitions of others and ultimately follow her path, destiny and family be damned.

Besides...if you are going to spend days/weeks/months looking at someone's ass...why not enjoy the view?

 

[mjc0961]

Well, there was that time I played Mass Effect as a female character because I wanted to see what it was like if Shepard was a monotone-voiced, emotionally void robot. Seriously, I don't get how people say fem-Shep is better, her voice put me to sleep 99% of the time because it was so dull and emotionless.

Beyond that, I dunno. Probably because I already played once as a guy, and if I want to play again why not try a girl and see what changes? Sometimes you get some funny stuff too, like this scene in Saints Row 2 where they were sitting at a table discussing their plans and the female character's breasts just keep clipping through the table every time she leaned forward.

 

[Frungy]

The entire point of gaming is that it's a fantasy. If I'm a male forensic accountant in life the entire point of gaming is that I DON'T have to play a male forensic accountant. I can be anyone I want... well, actually on computers I'm limited to the choices the game offers, but still, I don't think "male forensic accountant" is on the list in any games I know of.

Not playing the occassional female character would kindof defeat the exercise wouldn't it?

 

[Emily Boogades]

Wow, 22 pages...

I just wanted to say - I'm a girl, so it doesn't really fit, but when I used to play World of Warcraft, I'd stick to the female versions almost exclusively because the male models were bulky and weird.

In Dragon Age: Origins, I've played male and female characters; the differences aren't huge, but in a game where you collect romantic attachments like shiny pokemon, you usually wind up playing one or the other.

If there's no real difference, gameplay-wise or model-wise, I'll generally play my own gender, but as I tend to be pretty androgynous, personality-wise, it's rarely a conscious decision and it changes without real consideration.