Male or Female PC? How come?

[DonkeyChainsaw]

I've always ran a female RPC, on literally any game I can remember. It started with Elder Scrolls: Oblivion and since then I've had not a single male character on any game I've played, not just because of my Real Life gender but for quite a few reasons, actually:

 

1: There always seems to be a lot more customisation options for female characters over males. Make-up, hairstyles, scars that tell a certain story for your character that you create when you've been pulled into it through the immersive experience.

 

2: Like many other have said, if I'm gonna spend hundreds of hours in a third person game staring at the rear-end of a character, it's gonna be a females rear-end. I mean come on, let's be serious.

 

3: Chicks are awesome! :D

[Nailcake]

Interesting topic you have here,

 

I never considered playing as a female when I was a teenager, even in the few games that had females back in the 90's. I always found daily life extremely boring and wanted to play the hero somewhere. The character had to be me. After graduating and going working that changed and for a while I cared less about the characters I played.

 

Initially started playing female because 'Why not?' I prefer to look at female shapes because I find the male body ugly. Then I began to give them a background and had them make decisions based upon whom they were. I rarely just went with whatever came along. I did not, for instance, do the Daedric quests very often even if there was good loot involved.

 

Nowadays I play mostly females. My only skyrim male character(and only male character in any game in the last ten years) was a Breton mage in that looked (and behaved) a lot like me. Loved the character, never joked and laughed so hard as I did with him but I dont feel like repeating it.

My last female character was a Dark Elf warrior that looked(and behaved) quite a lot like my wife, had to use beautification mods for that though. Dark elf females in native skyrim can be troublesome to make look like someone human and even with the mods the nosebridge still freaks me out, fortunatly only visible in profile.

With behaviour I specifically mean; Neither me nor my wife would never be/play an assassin so the Dark Brotherhood has to die.

 

Come to think of it; the redguard I before that also looked quite a bit like my wife.

 

Now as a former Hema enthusiast I know for a fact that anyone can be a swordfighter. I remember a girl at the club that made my pinkie look obese(and I have average hands at best), but she always paid attention and learnt quickly. As a result, sparring with her was always challenging, no matter how tall or strong the person going up against her. Swordfighting is just way more about technique than it is about strength.

Hollywood gets it soo wrong, the warrior is a tall male athlete who wields a huge twohanded sword like a log and smashes through armour while the sidekick is the skinny girl with the bow.

And well, it should be the other way around; bows require strength and swords require technique. Put a girl in a suit or armour, give her a sword and some basic training and it would be very hard indeed to see the difference with a male combatant.

Which is why the whole 'skinny fragile girl that wouldnt stand a chance' is not something that bothers me. Its perfectly acceptable. Shouldnt be bothering you either. In fact; there are some historical records, archeological finds and studies that record the existence of female warriors both in Scandinavia and the Eurasian steppe.

 

Btw, my wife plays Skyrim and Fo4, though she spends more time setting up jukeboxes and discoballs and she does building walls and turrets. And I have the impression that that isnt unusual at all.

[Signette]

 

Yeah it is like saying "mass effects ending didn't suck that much" :D

 

 

Actually i found out what kind of game ME actually is by bumping into posts about it on some forums and also one of my (male) friends was playing it and told me about it.

And strategy games, as i told before, are not considered gender neutral, even though some of them are not masculine at all.

About cRPGs, i am under the impression that they are mostly played by peope who played tabletop role playing games before (like dungeons and dragons), and those are mostly played by males and considered a bit "boyish" (at least that is my experience, any time i've tred to join a group, they were almost all boys).

But it didn't really suck that much, right? Oh, I see an incoming tomato! *dodge*

 

Can you elaborate why strategies where you can play as some wierd alien fungoid aren't considered gender neutral?...

 

And regarding cRPG, haven't played any tabletop games in my life, though I have played most of old classic RPGs and newer cRPGs too, loved every bit of them. And as I mentioned before, it's private business. Dunno about you, but I prefer singleplayer games, you can enjoy yourself without communicating or exposing yourself to anyone.

 

 

I think it isn't the location, but the games they used as a base for the survey. i guess they took examples from every entertainment that is technically considered as a "game", which includes mobile apps or facebook games like candy crush, farmville angry birds etc., also more "family friendly" consoles, like Wii. That explains the high percent and average age of female gamers i think. But that is just a guess.

That may be true, but doing survey that way would be completely wrong. Considering people casually playing quick phone or facebook time-killer apps as gamers is complete BS...

[hagyjalbeken]

 

But it didn't really suck that much, right? Oh, I see an incoming tomato! *dodge*

 

Can you elaborate why strategies where you can play as some wierd alien fungoid aren't considered gender neutral?...

 

And regarding cRPG, haven't played any tabletop games in my life, though I have played most of old classic RPGs and newer cRPGs too, loved every bit of them. And as I mentioned before, it's private business. Dunno about you, but I prefer singleplayer games, you can enjoy yourself without communicating or exposing yourself to anyone.

 

 

With strategies its not the gender or the looks of who you play as, but the genre itself alienates girls , that "strategy=you lead a military". but that is only what i presume to be the reason for the low percent of fem players.

 

And playing is just as private as any other hobby. I've already menitoned that i am sure some men would love sewing or some woment would love renovating old cars for example, they dont even try them because of society and prejudices and stuff.

 

But according to online/offline gaming, privacy is much more an important factor. I prefer to play offline too, because when i play want to be away from frustration after a long day, so i want to do it free from idiots i dont even know (Also you can grab a snack take a phone call or use the damn toilet meanwhile, actually quitting whenever you want to is essential in enjoying any game for me, a big-big plus :) ). But some people prefer company and show off their skills and immediatley share their experience.

(Actually, with ME, i hated tha fact that you needed to play multiplayer in a singleplayer game to get the better endings much more than the "OMG worst ending ever")

 

 

 

That may be true, but doing survey that way would be completely wrong. Considering people casually playing quick phone or facebook time-killer apps as gamers is complete BS...

 

 

Most surveys about gaming in general are like that :D You need to be more specific to get some actual numbers.

BTW you mentioned that 94%-6% male-female nexus ratio earlier, i am pretty sure that it is wrong, its more like 70-30.

[Signette]

 

With strategies its not the gender or the looks of who you play as, but the genre itself alienates girls , that "strategy=you lead a military". but that is only what i presume to be the reason for the low percent of fem players.

 

And playing is just as private as any other hobby. I've already menitoned that i am sure some men would love sewing or some woment would love renovating old cars for example, they dont even try them because of society and prejudices and stuff.

 

But according to online/offline gaming, privacy is much more an important factor. I prefer to play offline too, because when i play want to be away from frustration after a long day, so i want to do it free from idiots i dont even know (Also you can grab a snack take a phone call or use the damn toilet meanwhile, actually quitting whenever you want to is essential in enjoying any game for me, a big-big plus :smile: ). But some people prefer company and show off their skills and immediatley share their experience.

(Actually, with ME, i hated tha fact that you needed to play multiplayer in a singleplayer game to get the better endings much more than the "OMG worst ending ever")

Still can't wrap my head around it... sounds like some seriously hardcoded stereotype. Can't say much about sewing, but renovating cars is rather hard labor and dirty work. My problem of understanding is that no matter what you play, you're sitting in front of monitor/TV, and both genders do the same thing - push buttons. And on the other hand: lying under the car for several hours with flashlight in your teeth, oil splashing in your face while screwing nuts, moving heavy hardware parts like engine, doors and etc... I think you get the idea. That's why I see real life hobbies and video gaming as completely different things.

 

And yeah, gotta agree on ending, tho ME3 wasn't definitaly my fav, but ME2 was brilliant.

 

 

Most surveys about gaming in general are like that :D You need to be more specific to get some actual numbers.

BTW you mentioned that 94%-6% male-female nexus ratio earlier, i am pretty sure that it is wrong, its more like 70-30.

Maybe, but a consider something like this:

First page on Nexus, LOADS of skimpy armors, half naked female companions, monsters with oversized breasts and hips along with awkward childish faces > poplarity > download numbers > epic win.

Can't really imagine any girls or women being interested in that kind of stuff, and mods like that are incredibly popular, hot files are full of them always. I could agree to 90/10, but really not sure about 70/30...

[hagyjalbeken]

 

Still can't wrap my head around it... sounds like some seriously hardcoded stereotype. Can't say much about sewing, but renovating cars is rather hard labor and dirty work. My problem of understanding is that no matter what you play, you're sitting in front of monitor/TV, and both genders do the same thing - push buttons. And on the other hand: lying under the car for several hours with flashlight in your teeth, oil splashing in your face while screwing nuts, moving heavy hardware parts like engine, doors and etc... I think you get the idea. That's why I see real life hobbies and video gaming as completely different things.

 

And yeah, gotta agree on ending, tho ME3 wasn't definitaly my fav, but ME2 was brilliant.

 

 

Both Train Simulator and Doom are basically "just pushing buttons" but i dont think there are many people who have both games on their favourite games list. Female brain is usually differently "wired" than the male one, asides the social stereotype stuff. I personally find pushing around military forces on a map uninteresting, and being a military leader unappealing. They are also a bit slow-paced for me, and require a lot of "logical" and "mathemathical" thinking (like chess etc.), and however females are not dumber than males of course, we enjoy this kind of raw problem solving a lot less. And you have to admit most strategy games are placing military-like forces and resources around in some war-like scenario.

 

And neither of the ME games were much brilliant with the ending, but yeah, ME2 had the best story and the best DLCs. Although not many games have a well written ending, just look at bethesda games, morrowind was ok but the others, meh... (fnv is obsidian doesn't count).

 

 

 

Maybe, but a consider something like this:

First page on Nexus, LOADS of skimpy armors, half naked female companions, monsters with oversized breasts and hips along with awkward childish faces > poplarity > download numbers > epic win.

Can't really imagine any girls or women being interested in that kind of stuff, and mods like that are incredibly popular, hot files are full of them always. I could agree to 90/10, but really not sure about 70/30...

 

Those "sexy" mods are always over-represented. 80% of guys will download those along the regular mods (mostly just to look at them for 10 minutes and then don't play it), while females don't have anything so specifically made for their insincts, so they just download the regular stuff.

I don't mind them though, just ignore them, unless they are clearly underage sex-child-girls, that pisses me off. ("Oooh but she is a 1000 year old wizard who makes hersef look young with a spell". Bad news, you are a pedo.)

What i don't understand is the popularity of those shiny doll-faced plastic anime racemenu presets. All you need is ks haidos f.e., a decent race or skin and face model replacer, maybe some other popular texture tweaks, and racemenu to create them. You don't even need any knowledge of modeling, scripting, or the CK. I can do something like that with the racemenu plugin in 20 minutes, probably anyone can. (I'm not talking about new races face meshes textures or armors, those need much work, just those presets that simply use other mods and the racemenu plugin).

[RattleAndGrind]

To return to the original question, my machine is Gender Neutral. I normally refer to the machine in scatological terms. That is when I'm not referring to its parentage or its sexual preferences or its relationship to its mother or its lack of gender delineation or threatening to replace it with an abacus. :laugh:

Edited June 20, 2016 by RattleAndGrind

[diggydug]

It depends entirely on the game and how I intend to play. I always make a character that represents me on a first playthrough, so male first. Beyond that I usually go through again as a female and different build.

 

With Skyrim I'm usually a female character now since more mods tend to cater to females and attire is more fun for me in RPGs than it should be. I've never enjoyed the skimpy mods, though and male mods are usually not much better. In Fallout however I feel everything is more oriented toward male characters and most female mods aim for revealing or otherwise sexual attire right now which doesn't quite fit the theme of post-apocalyptia so I avoid it there. This goes for Fallout 3, NV and 4.

[Rethrain]

To return to the original question, my machine is Gender Neutral. I normally refer to the machine in scatological terms. That is when I'm not referring to its parentage or its sexual preferences or its relationship to its mother or its lack of gender delineation or threatening to replace it with an abacus. :laugh:

 

Yeah, I see what you mean, I get angry at the PC too, but abacuses intimidate me more.

 

Er, I mean...nvm.

[Syco21]

Male, because I'm male. But I like to do at least one female run aswell just to see what, if anything, changes/