Guys who play girl characters

[cybill]

i'm a male feminist and like havin a woman as a role model...its this roleplay element of games such as skyrim that draws me in so much. whenever i enter a dungeon and the bandit or "badguy" leader is a woman i always find myself thinkin..."good for you" - i kill them all the same but a part of me wants to join forces with them. sadly the game doesn't give me that option.

 

i've reread the above sentences a few times - i'm sure it comes out wrong...i don't have the language to express what i really mean.

Edited April 24, 2012 by cybill

[Papajack55]

Being a girl I can only guess here, but I think most guys (playing in third-person mode) prefer to look at a female's backside through hundreds of hours of gameplay rather than some beefy Nord guy's rump.

 

 

Herculine, what's up?(FNV,FO3,Oblivion)

 

Anyway, I play both sexes in different scenarios. Guys as heroes and women as the heroines. I also like to see my character as a guy who can play just as evil as he can be good, provided the mood he's in. That includes the female character depending on what she (meaning my character, of course) am up to doing. So far I have gone through 37 characters and it's been about half and half. One more female of course than a male.

 

"Gaming is not Sexist. Both characters are played."...Just a little fun there.

 

I will have to put up a few shots of my male character though. I made him young and believable if you can believe that. I don't know how I did it, but it worked out that way. Got almost 300+ hours in on Skyrim, and am always trying to think of new ways to improve my playing abilities and characters.

[Ejvo25]

I think this happen because in all the games the main character are males, so we are tired playing whit those and start playing whit females.

 

And other plays as females becouse loves his hidden "parts".

[dukethepcdr]

The only reason why I'd consider playing as a female in this game or any other game that gives me the option, would be to see if the NPC's treat the female character differently and/or say different things to her.

 

At least Bethesda is giving us gamers the Option to pick which gender we want to play. We've got to give them credit for that. Too many games don't give you the option and make you play a character that is one or the other.

 

I hate it when games make the PC a female as a publicity stunt or so they can cram feminist 'girl power' dialog at us. At least in RPGs where the game needs to work out with either a male or female player character, there usually isn't too much of that nonsense.

 

Now in the very, very few games where the storyline and plot actually requires a female main character in order for the story to make any sense and the game treats the female character with a bit of dignity without turning her into a spokesmodel for the National Organization of Women or something, I don't mind playing a female. A fairly good example of this was the Metroid game series. Once they revealed that Samus was a girl, it kinda changed the way many players felt about the character, but they still didn't make a big overblown deal about it in subsequent games after the reveal. Samus goes about her business of saving the universe without looking for opportunities to make fun of men nor dose she engage in any of those pointless 'battles of the sexes' with anyone.

[Modslave]

Again I just don't understand why this is even a topic of debate.

 

Suda51 is probably smarter than anyone asking this question, and you need look no further than Lollipop Chainsaw to see the evidence of that or all the games hes had his hand in designing in the past.

 

Simple facts are is when someone that is literally considered the gaming industry equivalent of Einstein pops out something like Lollipop Chainsaw, it completely invalidates the whole "guys playing as girls" question in total. Cause guys are going to play Lollipop Chainsaw...but heres the kicker..so will women.

 

Sure you can answer it with RP perspectives and all that, but the most simple answer is that sex and violence is incredibly compelling. The psychology behind why that is the case is available all over the internet if you bother to go look it up.

[Moraelin]

To be honest, what I understand even less than not looking it up, is the existence of the whole armchair shrink act that is, yes, all over the internet.

 

I mean, screw gender, but I suppose some people would be shocked -- shocked, I tell ya -- to find out that I'm not actually an anthro cat (Khajiit) like I played in some games. Or that I've played Forsaken (zombies) in WoW without actually being a zombie IRL, nor having a case of Cotard delusion.

 

I've played characters with an intelligence so low in games like Fallout 2 and a few other games, that they couldn't even talk right, and I hope it's clear that that's neither reflecting my RL self (I may not be a genius, but I fancy I can rub two braincells together;)) nor my secret fantasy.

 

Or that, despite being probably my most played characters in WoW, I'm not a hunter or a priest IRL. I mean, heck, I'm an atheist IRL. Not saying that to open a debate about religion, but, really, just pointing out the incompatibility between the character and my RL beliefs. Priest is possibly the job I want the least. Heck, I've ordered religious purges through the inquisition in Europa Universalis to bring people to the one true Catholic faith my monarch had in Europa Universalis, and now that's not something an atheist is dreaming about.

 

I*ve played thieves and assassins, and I won't even bother listing all the games that have those, although neither reflects my RL self. In the same vein: I've played dictators (e.g., in Tropico.) Or a terrorist by any other name in State Of Emergency. I've tormented a rape victim, not to mention an extermination camp survivor, in I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream. (Yeah, nasty game that one.) I've burned, murdered, kidnapped and helped experiment on homeless people in City Of Villains, and administered the most horribly repugnant kinds of self-appointed vigilante justice in City Of Heroes. And then come the missions to switch between the two, and somehow the vigilante missions in that transition manage to be more psychopathic than the actual full-tilt villain missions. I've pimped my wife in Fallout 2, just to see what happens. I took and sold slaves. I pissed on people and set them on fire in Postal 2. (Now that's a game that took "it burns when I pee" literally;)) Not to mention shoving a shotgun into a cat's ass in the same game, to use it as a makeshift silencer. I ordered cities massacred or enslaved wholesale in Rome Total War.

 

Mind you, actually most of the time I played good characters, but the nasty ones are in there too, and will serve to make the point I'm trying to make.

 

And that point is: somehow nobody has a problem with those. Most gamers are perfectly willing to accept, and even argue, that games are that-a-way, reality is in the opposite direction, and just because you play some FPS doesn't mean you want to shoot the school up. In fact that it's stupid to even try to find deeper armchair-shrink meanings in someone's playing GTA.

 

EXCEPT when it comes to gender. Then the same people who aren't even fazed by a video where someone used my lightsabers to kill every single innocent in Megaton (yep, it's an actual video), and quite rightfully so, or by a screenshot where someone tied up the guy who saved him in Goodsprings and shoved a stick of dynamite in his mouth, or someone's doing their own slave auction, suddenly need some deeper psychological explanation if that character is a woman. The fact that that character is just doing an atrocity? Meh, that's just normal. Playing as a zombie or some anthro-furry moogle? Absolutely not a problem. But having breasts? Don't be silly, that can't be normal, there must be some deeper psychological issue ;)

 

Heh :P

[Charlinho]

Fascinating topic. Browsing aimlessly I came across it. And....it cannot possibly be "flogging a dead horse"...ever. I rather get the impression that those who want it silenced are worried about something.

Depending on how much a player allows it a role-play game can be a great discovery of oneself and that should never be something to worry about

[RedRavyn]

Moraelin, you're spot-on, if a little wordy about it -- no worries, I tend to be that way, myself (wordy, although not always spot-on). I'll sum it up with a paraphrase of Leonard Nimoy who has gone as record saying "I am not Spock" (the title of his 1975 autobiography).

 

I am not my character!

 

That's final enough, isn't it? Sure I play female characters -- lots of them. In face-to-face table-top games I probably have about a hundred characters, total, played at various times since I started playing in such games about a half-decade before Gary Gygax released Dungeons and Dragons on the world. Of those, about 65% or so have been females. Does that make me 65% female and 45% male, even though I have quite recognizable male anatomy? Of course it doesn't. Nor does it make me a "closet homosexual", like I'm sure a lot of people who learn that some guys can play believable female characters in games would accuse us of being.

 

I am a role-player!

 

There, that says it all. The trouble is, I doubt a lot of people who play these games even know what "role-playing" is, so I'll define it the way we old-timers use the term. A "role-player" is someone who assumes the role of a person who is not himself. This doesn't mean pushing a "toon" around in a world using a keyboard, joystick, or game controller. It means adopting a background and personality that is not your own and playing to those parameters faithfully.

[mrminty]

This is going to be a rant so sorry in advance..

 

OMG I cannot believe people are going down the sexist line with this. The OP asked a normal question or is there no longer longer any freedom of speech? I remember a song from Ice-T The older people here will know how he is. It was one of his really early songs and it had "WE HAVE FREEDOM OF SPEECH BUT WATCH WHAT YOU SAY".

 

Anyway this is the question I have always wondered myself. I'm sorry if this comes of sexist etc but 99.9% of warriors in the past had been male (yes I know Skyrim is fantasy) . And myself I study history etc and cannot bring myself to use a female character. A female against a male in a close weapon fight... I know who my $$ would be on. Females have their own strengths and weakness just like males so why not celebrate these instead of trying to make out that females can do everything that males can etc.

 

Anyway sorry for the rant just soo over this PC c$#p.

[RedRavyn]

Well, mrminty, I hate to rain on your parade, but you're right that the vast majority of warriors have been men, but you're wrong in the implication that women cannot be just as capable in combat as can men. I personally used to know a woman who could beat any guy I knew in one-on-one combat, unarmed or even with bladed weapons, and could out-shoot most guys at the range with weapons up to .357 Magnum. She was also trained in small group tactics and could hold her own in military-style maneuvers. She was not a large or powerful woman, either. She knew her strengths and weaknesses and her combat style was based upon those.

 

Was she the exception to the rule? Sure, but the heroes we play in-game, whether male or female, are supposed to be a cut above the general population. Several cuts, in fact. They're supposed to made of stronger stuff than the "common rabble", as Skyrim jarls are so fond of saying, so it's not unexpected that there are female warriors.

 

Are there too many in Skyrim? Yes, I think so. There were too many in Oblivion, too. Borderlands almost got it right, but went the other route. All the bandits in that game were men. However, this isn't about that "common rabble". It's about the rare person who stands up and advances and saves the world. Why not a woman?