f13.net

http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2014/05/13/world_of_warcraft_gender_switching_why_men_choose_female_avatars.html

(Sorry if this is the wrong forum, but it *is* about MMOs, so...)

STOP DOING THAT YOU CROSSDRESSING TWITS


edit: On the butt front, I totally play dudes way more often in SWTOR than I did in WOW ... and they have far better butts. But it's also because I am SUPER HARD on female voice actresses, and get tired of them way, way quicker.  :why_so_serious:

I am deeply offended at what this is suggesting and take issue with its validity.

Because it is also Boobs.  

Quote from the study (or rather, article about the study):
However, that goes out the window the second you introduce.... capes! :P

My preference in avatars often comes down to the production quality of the models/animations. I don't have a single human female character in WoW, for instance, because their animation quality is shite, pure and simple. Same goes for male nightelves.

Who the hell is staring at their character when playing anyway? You get almost no information about what is happening from watching your character in these games.

That depends on the mmo and role, was untrue in CoX, TSW, GW1&2, probably a few others.

Also dps in WoW/EQ clones have nothing at all to do except tap out a 5 key rotation, so it is either stare at their own butt or surf for porn on a second monitor.

I choose female avatars because prettier clothes and hair options.

(I am not referring to lingerie-armor, but normal clothes.)

If you're playing a dps warrior (with a 2-hander if Arms or two 2-handers if Fury) and it's not a female gnome, you're doing it wrong.

e: actually, looking back I've always had an even split between female/male characters in all MMOs I've played, usually depending on animation quality (seriously, if you play a GW2 guardian, it HAS to be a female asura) or if one of the models is terrible (there's no way in heck I'm going to play a male draenei or female worgen).

This article is  a huge wasted opportunity to really explore a topic. They scratched the surface of a deeper thing, and apparently only paid attention to numbers and statistics in a, literally, genderbinary way.

First of all, it's incredibly gender-normative and faithful to the binary. That makes it inherently conservative and quite useless for a contemporary analysis. It's not 1980 anymore.
 
Second, the deductions are biased that way, and because of that they aren't really saying anything interesting. The obvious reason is obvious about why lots of men choose female avatars to look at "something prettier", who didn't know that? But then there are much more complicated reasons that are deeply rooted in our society's issues at dealing with the concept of gender, notbaly the omnipresent and pervasive influence of the patriarchy in all sorts of social layers which artificially creates those differences that many men can choose to either enjoy as a privilege in real life or experience as a fantasy in a virtual world. To lots of guys the female avatar on screen isn't a representation of themselves, it's actually a doll they can boss around in their heteronormative abusive fantasy. Unsurprisingly many female avatars played by men have extremely "naughty" names. It's objectification at its best.

Finally, and to put it very simply because this topic would deserve pages and pages, to some other guys choosing a female avatar is a trick to explore their inner and very secret desire to drop the macho mask society has sewn on them and experience bits of a differently perceived sensitivity, as someone they actually happen to have a huge crush for but have been trained to look down on: women, girls, especially "hot" ones. Sometimes it is autogynephilia, sometimes it's something else completely. As I said, there's too much that can be said or explored about it, but once again the linked "study" simply ignores it.

So, while the article makes an effort in reading numbers in a very limited way, it completely fails to realize there is much much more that needs to be explored. For every five guys who choose a female avatar because it looks prettier and less boring than a male avatar, there's another five if not more who have very different reasons. And you can disagree with my analysis but that doesn't change the fact that the article is shallow, short-sighted, useless. I like the last paragraph but the content is still disappointingly narrowminded.

And please spare me the "I don't do it for any of those reasons!" because I agree and that's absolutely true. My point is that there are many reasons, and the article is stupid because it focuses on just one, which is the only one we all already knew about.

Another good question (but very bad for f13) could be: how come there's a huge market for sissification and feminization services/porn/erotica/fanfic/fanart, and little to none of the opposite? The answer isn't as obvious as you think.

It's interesting that we have numbers, but I don't know what kind of waves this study will make except as a tool in the argument for more female developers, more female perspectives, and more gender-balanced design. But that doesn't remove the fact that there are male-dominant development teams who will make games designed to appeal to stereotypical male interests, and these receive far more visibility than others.

Male / female demographics for gamers hovers around 50%, ya? Games that are designed primarily with women in mind or at least not for a specific gender come out looking completely different.


No doubt on objectification, and I think you nailed something with this. There are several potential reasons: female identification (the White Knight), or perhaps secretly wishing someone was the opposite sex (possible reasons including that they want to be their object of desire or for a hatred of one's own masculinity). The surface level for some is butts and boobs, but there's a population that does it for ulterior reasons that they wouldn't dare admit in public and certainly not to a research study.

I mean, shit, the internet does strange things to people. Looking at the porn angle, a subset of transgender fantasies invariably creates an avatar that is hot, fashionable and promiscuous -- in other words, their ideal of fuckable, and, more importantly, someone they'd want to fuck. In these fantasies, why is their object of desire almost never fat, ugly, and without make-up? Because it isn't a sufficient condition to be female, it's necessary they are a sex object.

Female bodies and clothing are generally more aesthetically pleasing. (Both in real life an in games)

A female avatar can wear male or female clothing and it's not weird - a male avatar can only wear male clothing without it looking odd. In games where the 2 sexes are animated differently the female character often has better animation as well. (This is why I played a Mithra Monk in FFXI)

Now, what's interesting here I think is if men are more likely to gender swap than women shouldn't that mean that more protagonists in games should be female? In an MMO your avatar is supposed to be you in a way a protagonist in another type of game may not be, so if men are willing to cast themselves as a woman in an MMO shouldn't they also be willing to in games like Uncharted?

If I'm totally honest, I don't give a shit why men play lady avatars (because ... why would I?), but I wish there had been more about how it changes the way they interact with other people. I'd also be interested in seeing how they're treated and such. This is in part because dudes will sometimes be like "I GET SO MUCH FREE SHIT AS A GIRL!!!!!111!!" but I've only ever gotten "free shit" when I was playing a dude. I am not "treated nicer" like a lot of dudes claim they are when they're playing a lady. And I have a sneaking suspicion it's because those particular men get really, really flirty and are willing to "work" their female avatar more than I ever, ever would be, but that's just a guess. They have an easy out, too ... someone gets super creepy on them, they have the "lol really a dude irl" escape.

And I'm not really casting stones, I'm a lot friendlier as a dude, because no one is going to think I secretly want them to send me raunchy tells because I'm not a raging bitch at them. I also vastly prefer playing a dude tank, because suddenly people don't feel the need to argue with me about how a dungeon I've run 348961283456236 times should REALLY be tanked. Do these dudes playing ladies experience that?

"The men moved backward more often" is kinda a "you don't say" if they chose the characters to stare at the butts in the first place :why_so_serious:

And I swear, excessive jumping should cost in-game money. Then you'd either see it limited to 1% or the games being able to skip any other kind of monetization. A win-win.

edit:

I literally never ever get free shit with female characters, but i also never bother with the stereotypical "girly" behaviours and/or flirting, so that sounds likely to me.

On the other hand i don't really see people trying to teach tanks how to tank based on the characters gender in TERA, but that may be because literally every other tank is elin who are technically female, but no one expects them to be actually played by real women  :why_so_serious:

Gnomes were always the worst in WoW. I admit I'm pretty jumpy when I play an asura, though. They're just so goddamn bouncy!

I found myself spamming the spacebar yesterday when they added new class that does flips when jumping. So I'm going to partially blame the jumping disease on that.

I haven't really played female tanks (my gnomb warrior mostly plays arms, and my DK is a wolfdude), but 2 of the women in my guild had the same experience you described -- it was REALLY ugly back during vanilla WOW when a startling number of people (random puggers as well as people from high-end raid guilds) just plain couldn't stand that "omg, a girl is tanking?!". In fact, one of them has switched to playing male characters for this reason.

e: re jumping, I'm also guilty of bouncing all over the place with my characters, but I consider that normal since most of my characters are gnomes / asura. In WOW jumping is actually beneficial in pvp and in high-latency situations, since you can turn and shoot while keeping your forward momentum. I also jump a lot on my worgen DK, since the 2h special attack animation is a heavy overhead chop that goes well with a jump!

Why don't more movies feature female leads? It's story / culture vs. aesthetics. Games and their visuals are more highly regarded especially in an MMO that is about numbers and how those numbers are represented. In stories, men take a leading role because there's this implicit "this is what men do" type thing to an adventure. Audience identification, heroic qualities embodied in a man over a woman.

Maybe I'm not homing in on the point very well and someone could explain it better, but something like "Men are more fitting in a lead role" paradigm is in play.

Not saying that's 'right' ....

Yeah, the reasons a man would recast his own character as a female aren't necessarily sufficient for appreciating someone else's female character as the lead in a story. Also, much as I'd love it if more games passed Bechdel, that would require the industry to be capable of writing compelling non-male characters.

I play a lot of female avatars but they're not generally attractive by any traditional standards (excepting the games that don't give me any other option), nor do they represent sexual objects for me. Trolls and tauren in WoW, charr in GW2, a creepy stabbing-obsessed girl with lab gear and rubber boots in CoV, a hardass soldier with full body armor and a shaved head in SWTOR, etc. Games that force my female avatars to be "sexy" usually just make me feel pervy and exploitative. I guess I do it because I know we need more strong female characters, and if we're being honest maybe a bit of what Falc said. Also a lot of dude models are just uggo, like the humans and night elves in WoW look like lumpy apes, what is up with that.

The "people are nicer to female avatars" thing feels foreign to me because even on the rare occasion that I both a) care what gender another user is and b) have bothered to see what visuals they chose for their avatar, I still pretty much just assume everyone is a dude (which is harmful, I know, I'm working on it), and also assume that everyone else assumes the same thing until somebody suggests otherwise. If I were going to pretend to be a girl in an attempt to get free stuff I would probably do it with a male avatar just for the novelty factor.

I tend to assume people match their avatars unless they're dressed like a stripper. Yes, I am sure there are plenty of ladies who like to dress that way for their own reasons, but nothing makes me go THAT'S A DUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUDE faster than seeing someone run by in a slave girl outfit (bonus if their female companion is also in one).

People seem to assume I am whatever I'm playing, most of the time. When I'm a dude, if I'm not ~roleplaying~, people seem to just think I'm gay.  :why_so_serious:

Slate

I got lots of free shit in DAOC and EQ playing women. I mean entire sets of equipment and things I would never have been able to acquire for the number of hours I had to put in to those games.  WoW I still got additional things and people passing on equipment if I asked vs. when I asked on the male characters, but it was a lot less. 

Part of this I attribute to the demographic change along that timeline (lonely internet geeks prior, and a more diverse and sociable crowd later) and part of it I attribute to the loot mechanics of the games.  Nobody gave things away in WoW because the good stuff was all soulbound or it was easy enough to throw it on the AH.  Folks who gave me things in prior games didn't want to bother with the trade channel/ shouting/ N. Ro Tunnel

I did work the flirtatious angle, though, knowing there would be no consequence.  I made liberal use of ignore and hey, I'm a guy, I don't have the hangups with it women do because I don't deal with it all my real life.

WoW was the only game I tanked in and I did see the "do it this way" problem but no more than the DK tank who was a guy. I viewed it differently than you, though. It wasn't someone telling me I couldn't do something because I was a girl, I just attributed it to the usual 'internet assholes know everything about everything' and let it slide.  If they got too obnoxious I ignored them and went on my way.  If the rest of the group didn't like it, I dropped and got the insta queue.

Y'all can take my jumping when you loosen the fuck up.

In both games and movies I think it's more tradition and evolution than anything else.

Games with female leads generally don't have huge marketing or development budgets and aren't in mainstream genres, so the conventional wisdom becomes that they don't sell because they have female leads, when the reality is more that they wouldn't sell well even with a male lead. In both these industries there is a lot of money at stake, so if something appears to be working it's seen as dangerous to deviate, and people are prone to develop conventional wisdoms that may or may not make sense.

Not MMO related, but when I played Mass Effect (just one playthrough like most sane people) my Shepherd was female and she was hard as fucking nails.  It worked extremely well, and I got to "know" her character so well and shape her so clearly that I still cannot look at a cover of one of those games with man-Shep and not think that it's totally wrong.  I don't even know what game that is.

So, it sure is shit can be done, but it helps a lot that Mass Effect was the kind of game, with the kind of combat, that having a female lead was totally plausible in just about every way.  I don't think that is always the case (and I hope that doesn't get taken the wrong way).

One of my problems with a lot of female avatars is the way they stand. I'm sorry game developers, women don't stand in that sideways way that cocks their butt in real life. It goes right back to KOTOR, and the ridiculous way they made the avatars stand and walk to be provocative. I much prefered STO where the females run and stand the same way as the men. In STO I have a few female characters, made for no other reason than a whim in character gen or I was playing around and thought this character looked good. Most of them are kitties anyway  :why_so_serious:

In GW2 I have 2 females right now, An asura Guardian and a female thief charr. I, out of curiosity rolled a norn female Mesmer, and then deleted it when after one roll I realized you could see her crotch with black underwear during a dodge roll and I got eyestrain from rolling my eyes.

And yeah an asura Guardian is jump city. From sumersaulting during dodges or jumping up and spinning during a hammer attack, she is a hammer whirling gremlin!  :grin:

Falc's definitely is onto something. For myself, I confess to playing female characters for multiple reasons; even from one character to another there were different motives. For my EQ character, I had paternal/protective feelings as I shepherded my brave dark elf shadowknight through Norrath. For Megan Hertz, my CoH energy blaster, it was definitely about those curves and her cute bob haircut. The way she wide-stanced that snipe shot was to DIE for. Other times, it was more complex than that. I channeled a semi-feminine persona already inside me. It wasn't the 'whole' me, but I can't deny that it was there and is perhaps closer to the heart of what Falconeer is trying to explore.

That's some mighy fine wankage. I think it's mostly bollocks. Here's my take.

Men prefer women more than men. * Especially nowadays in our highly feminized society. I'm sure there's a bunch of guys who roll night elf female toons so they can dance naked on mailboxes, but a lot of guys simply roll a female toon for their "regular" gameplay. Shepard in ME is a great example, because most of the game is offline, and femShep doesn't spend a lot of time nekkid. She's usually armored up. Aside from a few sexytime cutscenes, she's mostly running around shooting shit.

* http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15491274

I just want to be a pretty princess.

If its a solo game or a game where the armor is really sexy and bikini-like I'm playing female. If its a group game esp one where I expect to play using voip a lot I'll go male. Examples:

-Vanilla WoW: male
-FF11: male
-TERA: would never ever play male  :heart: :heart: :heart:
-GW1: male
-DAOC: male
-Scarlet Blade: for sure female  :heart:
-ArcheAge: female for sure.
-Blade & Soul: female for sure.  :heart: :heart:
-WildStar: I made female mechari for obvious reasons but that game sucked because it looked like shit.

If I can play something hypersexualized I will unless I consider it more "serious" gaming where pvp or something will force me to use lots of voice comms then I have a tough decision on my hands.

For 100% sure though my Sheps were all male. In fact my SWTOR characters were all male too. If my character is going to be voice acted and its supposed to actually be me I'm going male.

The reality is though as WoW has become the dominant thing that people base their games off of male armor has gotten worse and worse. It starts boring and then becomes just boring with bigger and bigger shoulder skulls with spikes and shit. Cool is a lot harder to model and texture than sexy. So females are often a lot more fun and satisfying to dress up.

I'm pretty sure the girl-tank-instruction thing is real, because Sjofn and I were pretty much always grouped together and I saw it happen to her in PUGs on her tanks *way* more than it ever happened to me.

Introduce voice chat and it gets worse; even in our own raid group where everyone knew everyone, we had a couple guys who felt the need to re-explain the fight to new people right after Sjofn (or one of our other leaders who was also a woman, albeit not a tank) did it, and they basically never did that to me or the other dude tank.

The T in LGBT stands for Tumblr, right?

This topic is absurd.

Once again proving that "because DAT ASS" is a perfectly valid answer to almost any question.

I pretty much never got free stuff in WoW either, as either gender, but I rarely got free stuff in DAoC. Unless "r u rly a girl" tells count as free stuff. The one time I got a full suit of armor just because I was a delightful person, I was playing a dude. It was a highlander, though, maybe the lady liked my kilt!


I KNEW IT


The thing I've found about myself is that when there's voice acting, I am the opposite of Hoax. See, the voice actor already gives me a sense of separation from my character so it never feels much like "me." So I have basically the aural equivilent of DAT ASS. If I'm going to listen to someone yammer on and on and on for hours, I'd rather it be someone whose voice I find hot. I am extremely picky about female VAs. For example, I loved my Sally Shepard, she was a part of one of the most empowering gaming experiences I've had (rare is the game where I get to throw my boyfriend over my shoulder to rescue him, you see), but I got goddamn sick of listening to her, and her Creepy Cougar Flirt Voice was the worst.

Actually no, the female wizard in D3 is the actual worst. Which is baffling, because her voice actor is one of my favorites in basically anything else she has done.

Like all of you my experiences are purely anecdotal but I have noticed an interesting trend in males playing female avatars lately:

I've encountered a not insubstantial number of them that once I get to know them confess that they are pre-op trnasexuals who cannot afford the surgery and/or aren't getting it because their families aren't supportive. They're using MMOs to live out what they want in their RL. The first time it happened I was like "Hmmmm..." the second time I was like "two?" by the third time I just nodded. That said, I also hang out with RPers a lot in MMOs these days, so that might partially explain it as these people are using the games to live another life.

Also, I heard the best answer ever to "I assume all women characters are played by dudes." It was said by someone who I assume is a female but don't know for sure. Anyway she said "I don't give a shit what you think. I know what I am and I'm not here to flirt with you or get into some kind of internet romance. Think whatever you like. I'm not proving myself to you."

My response to anyone asking me "Are you a girl in real life?" is "Only on Tuesdays!"  :why_so_serious:

Yep, confirming this on both fronts. People were flabbergasted that our MT (and GM too?! blasphemy!) was a woman, but everyone was OK when she played a priest. "girls can't tank" became a sort of running joke in our guildchat.

That was back in 2004-5 though, maybe things got better since then (yeah, right.)

It's gotten a little better at least, in that women used to only be "allowed" to be healers or support, but now a lady DPSer doesn't really surprise anyone either. You'd think tanking would be natural for women! I'm a mama bear protecting my cubs! Except the really stupid cubs that insist on standing in the fire. Fuck those cubs.

It's a better explanation than "Men are like Dr. Doom, subconsiously acting out their inner patriarchal desire to control women. MUAHAHAHAH!"

I have primarily played female characters in games because they almost always look better than their male counterparts and the armor (not underwear armor) ALWAYS looks better on females. That and deep down I always liked the female heroine.

I hear this a lot, and ... is it because you don't like playing big bricks of meat like the male character models tend to be? Because that's usually why I don't want to play a particular dude model. I'm just curious if that's the case for people not me.

And of course, if it's a "bestial" race, usually that only applies to the men as well. Do the female models look "better" because they're more human-like?

That is part of it yeah. Males tend to be way over-the-top in the bodybuilder body style. I stay away from bestial races as well just because the feral thing is not my style at all.

S'why I never played a male Dranei and refused to make a male caster in WoW.  If they character model doesn't fit my vision of the class concept I'm done with it.  IMO casters should be more agile, not slabs of meat.

Female beast characters are the same way. Worgen females bother me because they look fox-like, not wolf-like. Too small and lithe. Female Tauren look proportionally cows, so they're ok.  Female Dranei look like goats, so also ok. Female Iksar and Froglocks in EQ looked perfect for females of those types. No boobs on reptiles. If WoW added lizard-people they'd have boobs and it'd bug me.

I can attest that this was the norm in Second Life. There were a lot of female females, but in some of the communities there was a large number of pre-ops. The Dollification, Bimbofication, and Sissification communities were entirely pre-op men as far as I could tell.

I would think it strange that those communities centered around men wanting to be what is arguably a negative representation of women as literal sex objects, air head (sex objects who depend on their man for everything), or weak and helpless fem (sex objects).

The whole /b/ obsession with sissy stuff is basically just dudes wishing they could get sex the way they perceive women getting sex. Give out the right signals, get fucked when you need to be fucked. I'm no expert but I imagine most of that stuff has a hell of a lot less to do with dressing/acting like a woman and a lot more to do with just having someone take charge and fuck them for a change.

Can't fap to that.

(https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/829607/funny/fedorahenshin.gif)

That's a (pretty big) part of it for me, yeah, the males tend to be too ridiculous looking. All my male characters in TERA winded up to be high elves which avoid it, although there another part is how uncomfortable they make feel some dudes just by standing around :why_so_serious:

For the 'beast' races I don't think I have any real gender preference, though if the ladies are also solidly built in these as opposed to 'noooo must still be fappable, just take human female body and slap wolf head on it' nonsense then I'm more likely to pick female char, just because it seems frickin' rare.

Yeah if the beasty race has appropriately beasty ladies (lady taurens are about as non-beasty in relation to their dudes as I can accept), I pretty much only play the lady version, because it makes me a ~special snowflake~.

If I had room in my sig for another quote, that would be it.

Aw, thanks.  :heart:

Seriously, though, fuck those cubs. Tough love!

The Female Charr body is somewhat less muscular than the male, they have different horn choices i9n char gen and a slightly different head shape. But they are not much different otherwise and move exactly the same. The voice actress is a little weak for the role I think. I know that they had at least one husky voice actress as they had her play one of the other charr voices, so why not give the role of player charr to her? I'm not dissing the voice actress, its perfectly serviceable and I'm warming to her, but they could have shelled out for a woman with a deeper voice than they cast for the animal female. *shrug*

This thread is entertaining because it reads like an interesting conversation interspersed with occasional comments in an entirely different language.  :awesome_for_real:

However, just going back to the original Slate article and thread title, it doesn't actually say that the researchers researched the reasons for male players choosing female avatars. The paper is behind a paywall and the abstract reveals little about their methods, but in the Slate article they mention interviews. So it's entirely possible that all they know about the reasons for cross-gendering are what their subjects told them, which is a very different thing from the actual processes behind those choices.

As Falconeer said, gender and gender identity are far more complex than binary male/female. People's reasons for choosing a specific gender avatar may very well not be clear even to themselves, especially in societies with such strong gender normative pressures as the ones most of us live in.

It's a shame this research doesn't give us more information about the choices because without that all we're left with are opinions and anecdotes, which aren't that informative unfortunately.

Girls play games too? Really? Like this? (Naughty naughty image PG13)

For clarification, the areas I spent time in are NOT sexual RP focused. For example, in one of the games, it is basically a simulation of a military regiment. Yet, I've met two pre-op transexuals playing female avatars who opened up to me about it in this rp group. I think part of why they confided in me is I give off a very "I'm not here to judge you" vibe. I will say, that one of them plays a very...horny character. The other one does not and is in fact, more or less played a-sexual. Both of them go through intense periods of depression due to RL shit dealing with their families not accepting them and such.


I don't think that's a fair judgement at all. For some it is very much a fetish just like any other fetish people have. For some it is a legitimate expression of their female sides. That said, I am talking about that community in general and not about /b/ which I assume is a 4-chan style forum?

Anyway, sorry to digress. For some reason I've made contact with a lot of TG people lately and I've found they come in many flavors and sub-groups and I find myself feeling a bit defensive of them since they seem to be quite misunderstood.

Back to our talk about female avatar butts and the men who enjoy them!

I wonder if gay guys are more likely to play male characters.

I wonder why you don't babysit Alistair...

Psht, I'm on the emergency list!

The ones I played with (mind you, that is a whole three dudes) played dudes, and tended towards whatever race let them be the most ~beautiful man~. I know one of them would sometimes play a lady in SWTOR just to romance a dude he super wanted to romance, but he uh. Did not appreciate his lady's butt at all.

The gay dude players that I've played with have been roughly 50/50 in my recollection, whereas the lesbians have all played women I am pretty sure. Tthe sample sizes are not especially big enough to draw any conclusions.

I've never known a gay guy to not play a male character if given the option.

Surprisingly I haven't knowingly met enough lesbians in games to say where they fall besides my own anecdotal experience.  For me it's either female, androgynous, or non-gendered character (say a robot or non-dimorphic bestial type).

I imagine it's about both identification and attractiveness, to various degrees depending upon the person in question, but either way it means more likely to play the same way they identify.

I like playing whatever is the most under represented race/gender combination, and that often ends up being the female version of certain races. I loved playing a Dwarf Female in WoW just because I was rare. When I made the hop to the Horde, I ended up having a mix at the end of the day - Orc Female, Tauren Male, Troll Male, BElf Female, BElf Male, and so on.

A big selling point for me is whether the female races can be fully clothed and not running around in plate bikinis. I could not for the life of me ever play any of the female races in Tera for that reason. Instead I played a big chunky old guy and ran around in board shorts and flip flops. SWTOR I was a Lady Trooper because femshep and full armor.

Haha, yep. My main EQ character was a female erudite SK and I think I saw two others ever. Main in WoW is female undead DK and well, it might just be rarer than the erudite SK.

I just looked over my past and present avatars:
WoW: 2 Tauren Males (Shaman/Warrior), 1 BE hunter (was originally a Tauren) the other 6 classes are female BE/Tauren (druid)/Panda (fuck).
GW1: 50/50 split male/female (12 avatars)
GW2: Charr female/male (warrior/Ele) and Norn female/male are (Ranger/warrior) my favourite chars but the other 10 are mostly female asura or human except for the Charr and Human Engies
WAR: I played all male dwarf
TSW: female
EvE: 8 females 1 male
Aion: female
Rift: Male

I just find the login screens more aesthetically pleasing with female or furries I guess - once I'm in the game it doesn't matter.

In GW2 I had fun dressing the different genders/races up more than any other game and enjoyed it more than most other games - gender/race didn't matter. Not a fan of plate bikinis - as a male I just enjoy female aesthetics as much as I do a well-toned Charr :D

I play males almost exclusively. In WoW I had 2 male tauren, 2 undead male, 2 BE male, 2 orc males, 1 goblin male, and 1 BE female. All but one of my toons in EQ2 were male as well. I did have a few ladies in CoH, and I've got a demon male and loli female in Tera. My characters are more evenly split in POE, but that's because gender is tied to class.

Lessee, in order of /played...
WOW: female draenei shaman, male orc warlock, female gnome warrior, male worgen DK, male worgen druid, female dwarf hunter, male gnome monk, 3-4 alts lost to obscurity (mostly gnomes)
COH: male (heavy) defender, male controller, female warshade, female dominator, male scrapper, eleventy billion other characters
WAR: male ironbreaker, female engineer, male runepriest, female WH
GW1: female elementalist, male warrior, female mesmer, male ritualist
GW2: male asura elementalist, female asura warrior, female charr engineer, female asura guardian, female human mesmer (GW1 character)
SWTOR: male cyborg-human vanguard, female green-human sage, male human-human operative, female red-human marauder
TSW: male
LOTRO: male human loremaster, female hobbit warden, male human captain
Rift: male dwarf cleric, female dwarf warrior
Hellgate: lol

I will 100% of the time pick whichever character looks the most homeless. Homeless trumps boobs.

It's why my Diablo 3 wizard runs around in starter gear, handaxe, and book transmogs and my Demon's Souls characters looked like battered, run-down ex-heroes that found the bottom of the bottle and liked it there.

That's awesome.  This is why my fav character in WoW was undead and the scary faced Orc. I especially liked the one with her eyes covered.  There isn't anything homeless looking in Wildstar really.  I do like the horny one with the skeleton face (forget the name) but I've mostly played a human who looks a wee tiny bit like that crazy girl from Flight of the Concords and a very dominatrix-y looking gothy Mordesh.  Since I played exile in the beta I'll probably play Dom in release in which case I'll choose either a Mechari or the horny thing.  I still forget the name of that one.  All female.  All have butts.  All the butts look okay, I guess.  I guess I play female because I are one.  I like raggedy clothes when I can find them.  I dress rather homeless looking in rl, too, I suppose.  Or, at least, very odd.  Just about everything I own has holes, rips and tears.  Funny how that has become a bit trendy.  It's odd because I love looking at weird fashion.  I think fashion design can be an art form, especially the very avante garde and conceptual fashion.  Not to wear, or couse... like I could afford it... but to see. 

If I could get this in a game, I would be so happy!


Geez.  Can I ramble on or wot???

If I truly had super 100% cosmetic accessibility in some hypothetical perfect game, I'd end up as some sort of weird mix between steppe nomad and corsair captain

Can we not just write this off as soft-porn? It's ok to admit what kind of body you like to look at during your gaming session  :grin:

Usually I choose based on whatever racial ability aligns with class and then make a momentary aesthetic choice. That aesthetic choice is based mostly on the quality of the engine and the art. I played males in WoW because that engine was almost Minecraft levels of low-res. But I played females in Aion and Lineage 2 and others because the art style and rendered the female form rather well and I'm a heterosexual guy. In GW2 I went male human and then I-could-care-less/don't-remember for Asuran and Charr.

I love me some butts, but I don't look at game characters in that way I think. Given the option, I will always play a male character over female. I typically like to make what most would call ugly looking characters, but not in the 'Let's see what crazy shit I can come up with using this character customization' sense. Bonus points if being fat is an option.

I tend to roll more female toons in games.  The study is true.  And what the hell, I'll say it, it's fun to put myself in the shoes of others, the opposite sex included. 

WOW:  Alliance: Male Dwarf.  Horde:  Female Orc
GW2:  Human or Norn Females
SWGemu:  Male Wookiee, Rodian Female

When I play these games I immerse myself in some way, probably not a true "RP" though.  It's not really "me" that i think I'm looking at, but more like my partner in crime.  It's cool to have a cute girl for that.  When I'm playing the Wookiee or Dwarf, I guess I am emulating the image of myself that I'd like to be.  Not hairy or short, but a hardy Scottish warrior with a good sense of humor or a tall strong person who is laid back and friendly.  (I'm not exactly tall or strong)

Mostly male.  Most memorable female char was a black skin/white tribal tats brawler in CoX.  Holy crap CoX did asses and run animations well.  It was distracting to try to play that char (and you had to pay attention with the brawler).

Now what about the males that play females in pen and paper RPG's?   :awesome_for_real:

Do people commonly do that? Because I can not imagine ever thinking of doing that.

THey draw their character's butt to stare at on the char sheet, obv.

In my ~15 years of playing and running P&P RPGs, that's only happened once as a joke and was handled in an immature fashion by all involved.

In my brother in law's D&D game everyone who's a man stays a man but some of the women play characters of indeterminate gender or genderless altogether.  What bothers me about his game is that he runs it and when he's doing a woman he doesn't do the right voice and his is pretty deep.  For some reason, that just bothers me.  A lot.  If I'm in the room or if I can hear him anywhere, I have to go upstairs, close the door and put on headphones.  Even posting about it is making me grind my teeth. 

Heh, I'd suggest either or:

- text to speech with a female voice
- microphone and voice changer software
- a (female) voice actor (just somebody who can say his lines)

I usually play males, but in SWTOR I played whichever voice actors sounded better.  And I couldn't always tell by the character creation screen, so I ended up re-rolling at level 10 or so, a few times.

I prefer my DM not try to do a "female" voice when he's being a female NPC, I rather he just ... be in character. It's less distracting that way.

I've only had one guy play a lady character as his PC in our games, and the reason was "I felt like it." Ain't nothin' wrong with that. I think he also just really liked the mini he wound up using. He didn't do anything creepy playing her (I've ... I've heard stories), she could've just as easily been a dude. She just wasn't! I've thought about playing a dude once in a while, just for a change of pace (and also because I almost always have a hell of a time finding a mini I don't hate for my characters), but given my current group is such a sausagefest, I feel obligated to be the Girl in our parties.

Yeah, I've only ever seen this setup once before (a guy playing a stabby decker girl in Shadowrun; it was actually suggested by his wife who also played in our group!), and it worked out fine. We also had a woman play a tough ex-yakuza boat captain dude in the same campaign, so it went both ways.

As for the GM playing female NPCs, that totally doesn't count! Besides, is a mantis spirit a "she" or an "it"? :awesome_for_real:

Really?  In my long term p&P gaming group men play ladies and ladies play men all the time (and all of them are married heteronormative family types).  Currently I am playing a female wookie bounty hunter and my wife is playing a psychotic protocol droid in a Savage worlds campaign set in the star wars universe and me playing a female was never an issue.

Do you do the voice? 

It's not something I'd ever really consider doing in a face-to-face game - it's not something that particularly interests me, nor something I feel I could do any real justice - but it's common in some groups. I know James Jacobs at Paizo plays female characters all the time (and then puts them in all his published adventures and I have to run them as NPCs...)

I don't have a problem running female NPCs as the DM, but I'd probably disturb Signe with the mahogany tones of my deep, manly voice playing a 11 year old street urchin informer, or whatever.

1 in 4 of my characters in PnP are female. I've been GMing and playing PnP for years (since the dying days of dicso!) as a result I start with the character concept first and then flush out the numbers later. Sometimes the character (wither PC or NPC) works better as a woman. Who am I to judge when writing? The pen demands!

And no, I don't try to talk in a feminine voice. Cannot do voice acting. It would just come off as absurd.

I don't do the p&p thing, but I imagine guys playing girls and speaking in deep voices wouldn't be difficult to roll with given that routinely happens in MMOs too -- on my screen there's group of ladies stabbing stuff, on the teamspeak 4 out of 5 of them are actually dudes talking and joking around normally.

Though that said, I have preference for lower pitch voice in general, so maybe that's helping :why_so_serious:

I assume those guys aren't ~roleplaying~ though.

I have a deepish voice, personally, but I haven't been mistaken for a dude on Vent in years! I'm apparently in the zone where if you assume I'm a dude as your starting point, I sound like one.

But doing the voice would amuse me.  If you're just watching or listening and everyone is using their regular voice... well, you know, it's kind of tedious.  If people are using voices that go with the character, it's fun to watch.  Well, for me, anyway.  Then, again, I enjoy uncomfortable humour. 

I'll do voices sometimes, but more often I try to just give characters a kind of conversational 'hook' - this person talks fast, this one always addresses the person he's talking to by name every time he speaks, this one always talks in the third person, etc. Me trying to sound like a girl would be so bad that I think it would be more distracting/annoying than fun. People who aren't playing being around a game always makes me really self-conscious about it anyway.

When he RPs a baby owlbear, he makes his eyes really big and hoots pathetically and makes me and the other woman in the game immediately threaten the other people in the party to NOT LAY A DAMN FINGER ON THAT ADORABLE BABY WE JUST ORPHANED.

Not really.  Most of us are min maxers who are in it for the killing.  Also wookies can't really speak except in loud howls. which i do do on occasion.

I'm not going to be playing a girl in a pen and paper RPG unless I only say things like "I've always depended on the kindness of strangers"

I also took a look back at my gaming history and it seems to be that my preference is entirely based on model and animation quality.

exa: world of warcraft, wanted to be an alliance shaman so had to be draenei. Draenei women's models and run animation were both amazingly superior so no choice there

dragon age 2: lady hawke had this extremely weird sissy-girl stylized walk, like the animators didn't think a woman would run like anything other than a stereotypical fleeing damsel. so, male it is.

etc etc

(https://fbcdn-sphotos-f-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-xpa1/t1.0-9/10417658_10152467136979802_5984080144313949736_n.png)

heh when I first got into D&D I made a paladin. The DM wanted me to roll a few companions and for whatever reason one of them I created to be the paladin's sister, herself a paladin. I gave her a backstory and after awhile she seemed more interesting than my original character.

Was your first character basically "you" or whatever? I find whenever I make a character that's "me" they tend to be more blank slates then anything, since they are me.

It's hard to remember tbh. I tried to model him after some character in a fantasy novel I read at the time but during that stage of my life I was also really into the ideal of the paladin. So I probably attempted to make him separate from myself, but failed miserably.  :grin:

At this stage I find its easy to pick out the females playing female characters in GW2. They are the ones that are actually wearing clothes.  :grin:

Nah, they're all playing the beautiful men instead  :why_so_serious:

Orlando Fabuloso isn't beautiful, just pretty.  :why_so_serious:

I am not comfortable being hit upon by men, hence I don't play female chars.
>:( faggots.

I generally end up playing female characters in games where there's a choice, and while the obvious reason is part of it, it mostly boils down to animation preferences and how bad a lot of male characters look. In WoW (vanilla) I played a NE female hunter because the other choices were dwarves (never) or male NE.. and the latter just looked so utterly ridiculous. When I swapped to Shaman it was the female draenei for the same reason.

Another reason I tend to go for the female characters is I just find it immensely easier to create a character I like the look of (whether pretty or otherwise). In Mass Effect, for example, I almost always used the default male-Shep model because I could never customize one in a way I liked; whereas I easily made varying fem-Sheps that I liked the look of.

Also, as others have said, female characters often just look better, even in the massive armours, than their male counterparts. Voice acting is also a big reason I tend to prefer female characters; I just naturally prefer my characters to have a female voice if the voice acting is of equal quality (and I usually find male voice actors to be lower quality, in my opinion). Of course, if the female voice actor sucks, or the male version is just notably superior.. I won't play a female character.

Besides, strong and/or bad-ass female characters just interest me a whole lot more than their male counterparts.