So, how many dudes here roll a female character? Also vice versa?

[Silence]

I basically always play a female character, because ... well, I could list a number of reasons, but 'I just feel like it' sums it up best.

 

[FillerDmon]

Hm.... good question. In MMOS and most games, depends on if outfits have variable effects that might be locked to a gender. Some do.

Otherwise, it mostly depends on the character being played. Sometimes I've roleplayed as girl characters, and otherwise I play as the dude I am. Just depends on the character.

 

[GestaltEsper]

I usually role the female character because they're more uniquely designed / stood out than the male character. You can basically give them any fashion to wear, and design them to your hearts content. Men for me are more restricted and harder to look cool in their own right. Sure I can make a dude look hardcore or cool but that's about it.

With women characters, I can make them mysterious, cute, beautiful, strong, powerful, funny looking, sinister, royal, and much more. I mean sure I could try these with the male, but it'd fall flat because again women have a better body physique and can look however you want them to be and it'd still pay off.

Also Skyrim's a good example. Men look quite generic and no matter how you try- they're going to be muscular with the macho face unless you try to make them purposely ugly. Women however, you can make them buff, skinny, ripped, chubby, beautiful, beautiful but with flaws to their looks as a scarred figurine, tough, baby faced, serious, mature, immature ... you name it. Far more variety and no armor or clothing will look bad on them (usually so).

Good point. I've sorta noticed something similar playing FFXIV. Guys tend to either try to look hardcore or run around in leopard print speedos (and it is always leopard printed), while girls are generally more varied in hair and outfits. Doesn't hurt that they tend to have more glamour options.

 

[RebornKusabi]

I go female in games for two reasons, specifically.

The first reason is simple and the true reason 9/10 times- did I write the game? No? Did I design the game? No? Plot? No? Character design? No? Then I mentally have a disconnect with the game and it's story and my character. In other words, I am not my character, I do not self-insert and I do not think my virtual avatar is me. It is a fictional set of pixels I control, not a neurological implant of my own psyche. It's why the Mass Effect 3 ending never bothered me- I didn't write the game or how my Shepard handled situations, I just controlled her and decided which pre-existing situations the writers put her in.

The second reason is more introspective in recent years- I want more strong female protagonists in games. One of my favorite games of all time was and still is Super Metroid. It stars a woman and it's one of the best games stilll in my opinion. Next favorite game series of mine? Parasite Eve 1 and 2. After that? Fatal Frame 1, 2 and 3. Could these have worked without women? Sure, but they're memorable to me because of this.

This is why Silent Hill 3 to this day is still my favorite SH game, over the second game easily. It preyed on literally something I never feared- unwanted teenage pregnancy and rape. I am a straight white man, well a straight white middle class teen in his mid-teens in 2004, and I never feared for my sexual sanctity/ purity. And while I could have made this connection in any other medium, gaming is my prefered medium, and seeing a female protagonist who isn't a walking sex joke but a teenage girl around my age, deal with these undertones was very illuminating to me. It made me confront an idea I found foreign and true it did it in a gamified way (survival horror meets abstract gore artwork), but it's something I still love seeing in games. That is, abstract thematic analysis of a still touchy subject.

 

[springheeljack]

I now usually play a woman in most of the games I play and they are usually based on characters I have in my head

 

[wings012]

I am a pervert and like to play attractive females.

But character creators can be hard and sometimes I lack the patience. If I cannot build the waifu of my dreams, I usually default to a black male whom I'll try to make resemble Morgan Freeman as much as possible but fail. Not sure where it started, maybe because my first Morrowind character is a Redguard. Who I ended up rolling with as a result of the quiz or whatever which generated a default base character.

 

[ThatJoelGuy]

I tend to choose characters based on what I feel fits the story, or what looks and animates better. A good example is WoW, where the male Draenei look awkward and animate poorly, while the females look great. Worgen are the opposite, the males look excellent, and the females just look weird. If I am going to be looking at a character model for many hours, I'd like it not to irritate me. I may also be influenced by things like voice actors for characters; I never liked Fem Sheps voice, so I always played as male Shepherd. However, it's a game with multiple story paths I will usually play through a few times and play as both.

Pretty much this, I also roll for lorewise fitting stuff, eg male Nelf druid, or for other reasons, female Belf hunter becuase I like sylavanis.

 

[Adeptus Aspartem]

Depends on what i see fit.

I played both Shepard genders, my Skyrim characters are mostly female but not exclusively, my various P&P RPG Characters be it D&D, Rogue Trader, Shadowrun or whatever we're currently playing has a pretty accurate 50/50 rate on F/M.

That probably comes from playin' roleplaying games from a very little age on. I played Das Schwarze Auge both on PC and as a Pen&Paper with probably.. 6 or 7? So havin' multiple cool kickass characters of various sizes, skin color and genders isn't really something special to me.

And i repeat the same thing someone already said: If the male characters are those strange cloud-like muscles on legs i tend to go for female models, because i don't care how often people try to tell me that this is my power fantasy - it isn't.
I'm friggin 5'5" (i'm not good with imperial so it could be 1 more or less) i can't relate to Kratos & co even a little bit.

 

[Burnouts3s3]

I'm a dude and I just rolled 3 female Toons on World of Warcraft after getting back into it.

It depends on the game; in World of Warcraft, it literally makes no difference whether I play a male or a female. If I play something like SWTOR on the other hand (yes, go ahead and laugh), there's a significant difference when I pursue romances.

 

[Gone Rampant]

I usually play games twice as both genders. But a lot of the time, I pick female over male for the simple reason of "There's a good chance the female VA emotes more than the male VA."

 

[Hieronymusgoa]

I like playing female characters which are "premade/named", so I tend to play females in games like MOBAs, Overwatch and I enjoy stuff like Beyond Good and Evil etc.
When it comes to classic roleplaying games I always play a male if I have to build "me" but again choose to play "premade/named" female characters if they are available.