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I have been playing MMOs since vanilla EQ and have made many, many characters over the years. If I had to venture a guess I would say that about 15-20% of them have been female. Some random some intentional. This bugs the shit out of one of my friends, who gets really annoyed when he sees a girl on my character creation screen. My position on the issue is that there's no functional difference, so who cares?
Other things that I have noticed/discussed with other players, is that guys do this more than girls. Also, tank classes tend to have more male players, while healer classes tend to have more girl players. So...

Are you a guy or girl?
Do you ever play characters of the opposite sex?
If so, what is wrong with you?
What class do you tend to play most often?

I'm sure there's more but it's really late, and I'm not thinking all that clearly at the moment.

I'm male-identified, and I played a mix of the genders. My main in WoW was female (belf afflock), my highest-leveled alt was male (belf protadin), but there were more male toons than females by...I dunno, 3:2 or so.

phred wrote:Are you a guy or girl?

Male

Do you ever play characters of the opposite sex?

Most of the time I do.

If so, what is wrong with you?

Since I will be looking at the character for a long period of time I pick the character I prefer to look at. Since I'm not gay, that's usually a female character.

phred wrote:Are you a guy or girl?

Male.

Do you ever play characters of the opposite sex?

Yes.

If so, what is wrong with you?

If the stats are the same, the only metric of importance is aesthetics. Male characters frequently combine both ugliness and being huge compared to the female option. Taking up valuable screen space and blocking my view of nearby targets is a big NO in my book. I tend to have a lot of male elf and dwarf type characters as a result.

What class do you tend to play most often?

I prefer ranged combat and the ability to be flexible in how I approach a situation. This often, but not always, means a wizard of some sort.

I'm a straight guy who plays female characters more often than not, both for CRPGs and tabletop RPGs. My best D&D character was a woman, and I think the fact I'm more interested in writing about women than men helped me flesh her out better. I tend to play Jack-of-all-Trades characters.

I'm make and on video games where I see my characters, I tend to play female ones. On pen and paper, I've only played male characters. Doesn't really bother me much to be honest, I'm normally paying more attention to where I'm going or what I'm doing.

Are you a guy or girl?
I'm a guy.
Do you ever play characters of the opposite sex?
Sure!
If so, what is wrong with you?
Well, I'm not an Elf or Draenei in real life either.
What class do you tend to play most often?
Melee classes. My main are a warrior a Paladin and a Rogue. I like to feel I'm smacking stuff in the face with a big sword. It's just more satisfying.

Your friend just has an irrational hangup.

there's been a shit ton of academic papers looking into this. My favourite (and free to read):
http://www.eludamos.org/index.php/eluda ... Article/27

Real Boys Carry Girly Epics: Normalising Gender Bending in Online Games

Esther MacCallum-Stewart

Abstract

Players in online games frequently choose the opposite gender when they select an avatar. Previously, this has been attributed to a player's unconscious sexual anxieties and the need to experiment through the anonymous location of the avatar. However, this paper argues that the development of choice in games, where players have frequently selected the female form for ludic reasons, means that this choice has become normalised through a historical process. The avatar is frequently considered as a tool, with gender regarded as a freely admitted aesthetic pleasure. The player does not see this as a site of tension, or seeks to absolve this tension publicly as an act of appropriation typical to Jenkins¹ textual poachers.
Overall, the act of gender switching is not considered deviant within gaming; more, it is embraced as a common practise with historical precedents to support it.

I'm a dude, and I generally play characters of either sex with no particular bias one way or the other. My Skyrim characters are often female, because of a combination of it better fitting the concept I have in mind, being more pleasing in an aesthetic sense, and because I tend to find the character more compelling and interesting if she's female - bland male HERO WARRIOR protagonists are often dull and over-done, whereas a valkyrie or plucky (female) bard make more compelling protagonists of the story, to me.

That said, some concepts make more sense in my mind as males - the old wizard, the veteran paladin, the grizzled soldier, etc.

I'm guy (last time I checked anyway) and I play mostly female chars, now it's mostly out of "tradition" but when started playing RPGs in the mid to late 90s and early 00s more often then not female chars looked better even if you ignored the sexual aspect of it as male chars tended to be this big muscular steroid abuser look taken up to 11 with weapons that looked like they were compensating for something, while female tended to have closer to realistic and generally better look, also when the gender of the character mattered storywise female "hero" characters tended to be better written with males more often then not being the big, dumb, muscular barbarian "hero" with no character beyond "generic warrior".

though as Gaius said sometimes it makes more sense to play male.

I'm a guy. I typically come up with a character concept I want to play, and then construct the character to match. I do this in both tabletop and computer RPGs. When I played in a Mage: The Ascension campaign as an over-the-top (to the point of parody) insufferable otaku nerd stereotype, I naturally made the character male. When I decided to create a rogue alt in World of Warcraft, I chose Night Elf as the race, and then made the character female since the front-line fighters in Night Elf society have traditionally been female. I play male characters more often than female characters, but gender is usually one of the last decisions I make when creating the character.

I prefer playing melee damage dealers, especially ones that are able to soak a few hits. I tend to avoid playing glass cannons. If I'm making someone who's not a front-line fighter, it's usually someone who gets by with trickery as opposed to dealing damage directly (though that's more applicable to tabletop games).

Forgot to say what mind of characters I play, I tend to generally play stealthy ranged characters though they are normally tanky enough to take a beating, either by the armour they wear plus skills or by just being stupidly tough, high HP/END. In sci-fi settings anyway, I tend to play tanks on fantasy settings, dwarf one where possible.

phred wrote:Are you a guy or girl?

Girl

Do you ever play characters of the opposite sex?

I have, but not so much anymore.

If so, what is wrong with you?

Ha-ha-ha - actually, the original question was "you're a girl - why are you playing guy games?" I've been playing RPG's since the mid-1970's, that is, before we had computers involved. Typically, male characters had better stats. Some groups didn't want female characters (hell, they didn't want female players in some instances though most seemed indifferent and a few liked the notion) deeming it "unrealistic" in the milieu. In D&D I was about 50/50 on the gender, on virtually ever other game, and all of the early computer games, I just didn't have a choice. If I played I played male.

The first time I played a female character in a computer game was in one of the later Myst games, where I could not only play a female, I could modify her to look like me. It was... odd at first and I definitely identified more strongly with her than prior characters I'd played in-game.

In WoW I've played almost nothing but female characters, often for the reasons others have stated: I like their looks better, they take up less valuable screen space, I'm not a Tauren or Belf or Dranei in real life, either. (I do have two Human characters - one does somewhat resemble me, the other is about as far from real-life appearance as WoW allows). Basically, the only time I play a male toon there is when I take one of my spouse's out for a bit, and even there, he's running about 50/50 male to female.

In Guild Wars it was all females characters.

Fallen Earth I played just girls.

I've only one character in Numenera, she's a girl.

What class do you tend to play most often?

Hybrids.

In D&D I usually played multi-class characters when I wasn't drafted to DM. In WoW I play a lot of the hybrid classes, with emphasis on damage-dealing. The only time I play a healer is when she's a hybrid and spends a lot of the rest of the time doing other stuff. I've tried tanking, it's not that appealing to me. Mostly, I like to explore, break things, and assist others. Oddly enough, my Numeran character is the healer for her current group, but then, they desperately needed one and since that game isn't as combat focused as some others she does do a lot of other things. Basically, I play generalists and jacks of all trades more than specialists.

I don't object to playing male characters, it's probably that after a decade or two of little to no choice I've been enjoying playing females.

It's nice to be a girl sometimes. Like others say, if the stats are the same, why bother being the same thing you are in real life? I've had a mix of genders, but interestingly, I don't think I've ever played anything like a female dorf. In Age of Conan I pretty much deliberately chose a female because I wanted to see digital boobies That only lasted like 4 or 5 levels though, so take that as you please.

Male
I play male or female characters. My "Main" always named some version of FeniX is always male because I'm that unimaginative. After that, all bets are off. For PnP RPGs, I almost always stick with male characters because it's easier. I've played a few females. A Phoenix Shaman in Shadowrun (go figure, right?) and a Human Ranger back in DnD 2.0.

I tried a Male Mageblade type character in Skyrim that didn't work because the magic in Skyrim was gutted to Hell and back. He got the axe quick. My next two characters were both females, my favorite being Belladonna, a 6'4" (or around there) Nord killing machine. Playing a female in Skyrim is generally better than Male because the modding community dumps WAY more fucking time into female everything, so even if there's loads of stripper gear out there, there's an even better selection on non-stripper gear (you just have to find it). Besides, since my character is a Red Sonya rip-off, some of the stripper gear fits quite well.

Even professional developers tend to spend a lot more time developing female models and animation for those types of games, so I can understand my gaming buddy's insistence on only playing female characters.

It's funny because in PnP RPGs, I generally prefer some form of caster because physical characters are usually filled by the less experienced in our groups. Mages in DnD 2.0 weren't that big of a deal, but Magic in Shadowrun is a lot more complex and character builds are everything. But in MMOs, I vastly prefer melee, with an emphasis on Tanking. I will never roll a first character in a game that can only DPS. Ranged DPS doesn't appeal to me all that much, mainly due to animation stagnation. Even WoW has different animations for different type of attacks, in FFXIV the melee characters do all kinds of crazy shit while the ranged just cycles the same animation over and over.

Male, yes, for several reasons, and usually melee.

Sometimes (rarely, but they exist) a game will actually play out slightly differently for a female character than a male one (the Fallouts come to mind) so replaying with a female lets me see aspects of the game I otherwise would have missed.
And, as others have noted, most of the time it makes no functional difference so why not play a female character? Both my Drakensang and Drakensang: River of Time characters were female for the simple reason that I didn't like any of the male avatars.
My primary STO character is female for the same reason and because while 'USS Batman' is a patently silly name for a warship (yes, sorry, tactical track, it's a warship, and the damned thing is called an assault cruiser afterall) 'USS Huntress' sounds just fine.
As for why I usually play melee characters where applicable, I like swords?

Generally, male if the game is first-person or immersive enough to strongly identify with my character (e.g. Mass Effect, Skyrim, Fallout), female if it is 3rd person and/or not very immersive (Saints Row, Mercenaries 2 etc). Some people (usually non gamers) read far too much into this though. That said if there is a choice of characters to play that goes beyond a different model / voice set, I will pick the ones with the abilities or backstory I like more regardless (e.g. I tag-team female Whirlwind and male Sunburn when I play Skylanders with my wife; she prefers to swap between female Twilight Flashwing and male Zap).

I'm a guy, and play almost exclusively guys, though sometimes androids/robots if allowed that have no gender.
i also play human or human like whenever possible, or something that passes for it, though sometimes, depending on the game, might play an elf.

i think its because i use the character as an avatar for myself and such, that i dont feel comfortable playing as a woman. i dont identify as one, and so i dont really see the character, which is usually an fantasy aspect of myself, as female. or non humanoid for that matter.

nothing against those who can, of course, but for me i guess my imagination or personalty when looking at myself has that in it.

I flipped a coin when creating characters in WoW, so one of the three was female. By level 2 I was awash in gold and guild invites, which was needlessly creepy.

I'm male, and I nearly always play female characters. First time was because I was a hormonal teenager and aesthetic reasons, and after that I realized I identified more with a female character than a not-me male character. Playing a female character avoids an uncanny valley sort of thing where I expect a male character to be me and it's not me that messes with everything. I can easily play different female characters with different motivations, while guys tended to devolve into playing as me. Recently rolled up a character for a 40k game that's male and it seems to be going fine without that trick though, so I might run more varied characters.

I generally play extra tough characters with thick armor if I can get it these days.

I'm a male and almost always play male characters unless there are options a female character has that can't be done with a male character.

Starglider wrote:Generally, male if the game is first-person or immersive enough to strongly identify with my character (e.g. Mass Effect, Skyrim, Fallout), female if it is 3rd person and/or not very immersive (Saints Row, Mercenaries 2 etc).

On this note: the voice actor is definitely a factor for me. I play a female in Saint's Row 3 and 4 specifically due to Laura Bailey's VA work. I've found she skirts a fine line between hilarious and sultry. There's also the VA for Shepard in Mass Effect 1. I found her work much better than a Male Sheppard, same with Vegas 2.

Broomstick wrote:In WoW I've played almost nothing but female characters, often for the reasons others have stated: I like their looks better, they take up less valuable screen space, I'm not a Tauren or Belf or Dranei in real life, either. (I do have two Human characters - one does somewhat resemble me, the other is about as far from real-life appearance as WoW allows). Basically, the only time I play a male toon there is when I take one of my spouse's out for a bit, and even there, he's running about 50/50 male to female.

WoW is nice because there's so many women playing it, a lot of the "OMG a gurl!" doesn't exist. Any decent guild is going to stomp that shit out immediately. I like the female raiders in our group because their smack-talk and other shenanigans is just generally different than with guys and offers a distinct type of hilarity to break up the monotony.

I think might have problem with the directions he was given but Mark Meer (the VA for male Shep) doesn't emote anywhere as much as Jennifer Hale (VA for Fem Shep) it kind of makes Male Shep seem like the generic "though hero", while fem Shep seems to more dimension to her character even though the scrip is mostly the same.

I doubt anyone could outperform Jennifer Hale. Her tenure in voice acting is so long, it's not even fair. John DiMaggio might be up there, but you can almost always pick out his voice.

Hale will always have a special place in my heart for her uptight, yet soul-crushingly sexy, portrayal of Bastila Shan in Knights of the Old Republic. The sad part is she had done all the voice (read: grunting) work for Samus in previous Metroid games, but they passed on her for Other M. What a fucking waste. Instead we got some unknown reading dialog at gunpoint.