Guys who play girl characters

[Diamondeye97]

I've read most of the thread but couldn't plow through all 63 pages. Nevertheless, here are my feelings on the matter.

 

1) I'm a bisexual male, with a nontrivial preference towards women over men. As such, I'd rather look at a female body than a make, although males can be attractive too. This is not because of any lack of female attention in real life. I'm married; I can see and touch a real naked woman pretty much whenever I want. When people say "but that's what porn is for" or "that's what real girls are for" they miss the point. If I want to have sex, I'll go have sex with my wife; if I want to look at porn, I'll look at porn. When I want to play Skyrim I want to play Skyrim; looking at female eye candy in the process is just part of the process. It's the same thing watching the olympics; I'd rather look at females playing beach volleyball than males (although looking at the men is quite plesant too) but the bottom line is that I'm watching the olympics, not porn. It's nice to admire attractive women, and men, doing things other than engaged in explicit sex.

 

2) I've also been in "traditional male occupations", namely the military and law enforcement for over 14 years now. Suffice to say, the portrayal of both genders, gender roles, and gender relations in both fictional and nonfictional media tends to be something left over from 1982, and ranges from merely uninformed to downright offensive in view of what things are really like. Men are portrayed as incompetent, sexist, testosterone-driven buffoons; females are portrayed as obnoxious, self-righteous snots, and both sexes treat the other with comical arrogance. Males are demonized and reverse sexism is treated as acceptable, even laudable, while women are condescendingly portrayed as successful not through their own skill or merit but through "empowerment" or "girl power" or some such nonsense, winning at "gender wars" that are 30 years out of date and in which their male opponents are total idiots anyhow.

 

I don't want to go deep into gender relations, but suffice to say that real women who succeed in law enforcement and the military do so because they're actually good at what they do. Thus, I much prefer fiction like the Honor Harrington series, where both men and women succeed or fail based on their individual skill and highly admirable and deeply loathsome individuals of both sexes can be seen.

 

In that respect, Skyrim is fantastic because it essentially dispenses with gender roles, and treats same-sex and opposite-sex romance as if it's all the same. No fanfair over gay relationships, no criticism of it either, and you see females in every role: thief, warrior, mage, and as Jarls and soldiers - and the female Jarls and soldiers just go about their business like adults, not constantly trying to one-up their male counterparts. This lets me envision my female characters in the fullness of their personalities, as complete people without everything revolving around their relationship with men in general.

 

3) My characters of both sexes I tend to think out completely, and not just in Skyrim. I never play a stereotyped hulking barbarian warrior; he's going to be a thinking human being no matter how hairy and stupid he might look. Similarly, while I've played slutty female characters before, they weren't just slutty for the sake of slutty; they got that way during the campaign and there were reasons. It's the same in Skyrim. My first character was a nord female that married Aela - not because ZOMG LEZBOS!! but because they were very very much alike, right down to both being werewolves.

 

4) It depends on race and character concept, too. Some concepts work with one or the other sex for me, others with both sexes. For example with mages, I would use a male for a conjurer or necromancer but a female for a blaster-type mage. With fighting characters, I'd use a male for a berzerker that used a warhammer and heavy armor, but a female for a greatsword who split her time with melee and archery. I don't exactly know why, but some archtypes I just feel go with one sex more than the other.

 

5) Like many have said, the females often get more dev and mod attention. I hate to let all that work go to waste.

[wxy6221219]

你们好

[Psiberzerker]

I've read most of the thread but couldn't plow through all 63 pages. Nevertheless, here are my feelings on the matter..:

Very well stated. I like to play female Cherry Tappers (Being badass with something typically considered weak) My Min/maxers tend to be male. I guess this subconsciously stems from my gender opinions.

[NAPALM13092]

 

Nope, I wouldn't call you a hypocrite....you debate...there's a big difference and much appreciated and thank you by the way....Hubby looks at 4chan, I think I will take another look at what his reading, I'm curious now.....The Duke Nukem, GOW, Conan, etc...genre, yep, I have passed on them myself...I do like the whole testosterone thing myself, but not to that extreme extent....My Dovahkin is a big man, but remains realistically proportioned bodily with realistically proportioned weapons and still vulnerable, is much to my preference....much more Jason Momoa than Arnold per se'....There was sh*t storm over Lara Croft huh...that's interesting....was she the first female game protagonist?

 

4chan is just a series of image boards but being anonymous all conventions of social norms and basic human dignity go out the window. At the best of times the website can be hilarious and at the worse of times it can be a venture that, lets just say, will stick with you. There are more tame boards about travel and fitness and some like the videogame boards or "/b/" are the cesspool of the internet.

 

As for testosterone and actions heros, I love games like Halo or Battlefield. What I don't like the so called "mono gamers" that only play one specific franchise or game and feel entitled to s*** sling about anything that isn't their personal sliver of a multibillion dollar industry. This is really bad with Call of Duty gamers but all sides of the court are guilty from Elder Scrolls to Madden. It is fine to say "I like and feel comfortable with this game and don't like that one." but most people because of the anonymity of the internet start drawing battle lines even within "communities" (If the behavior here or on other forums constitutes as a community then the internet is about as civilized as Somalia.) like here on the Nexus, from MMO vs. FPS, Halo vs. CoD, Lore Skyrim Modders vs. Japanese Anime Modders, etc.

 

As for female gaming protagonist I am not sure what the first one was but I remember the original Metroid you didn't find out Samus was a chick till the end because of her power armor but after levels of blasting aliens like a champ she kinda got to prove herself before the cat was out of the bag. Lara Croft on the other hand was a big deal back then and the obvious sex appeal marketing didn't help but now people just accept that kinda thing like all aspects of our evolving culture. I also think in 10 years the whole "you play a girl?!" thing will go away especially as the demographic continues to get older, average gamer nowadays is 24 and rising last I checked.

[helloguy1232]

I switch between them depending on my current mood*

 

*sexchange console command :)

[zaxrider]

I play a heavily armored lizard and a fist-fighting cat man. Am I doomed?

 

On a serious note, mods. That's the main reason I have a female 'main'. All the body re-textures, models, armors, basically most of the content affecting one's character is either aimed at female characters or it just looks plain better on them. Look at the Armour category in Skyrim mods, pretty much only every 10th armor is for both sexes and you find hardly any male-exclusive armors. Character Enhancement? Coverwomen looks, CBBE, UNP, female models/skeletons edit etc etc...

 

Basically, I want my character to look as good as possible, which is heavily affected by mods and since most mods are aimed towards female chars, I play a female. If I had a console and played Skyrim there, I would probably play mostly males.

[ImJustAGamer]

I'm male but I often play females.

 

Well, I think it's just interesting that the world could be saved by an female. Especially in fantasy since in this genre most (not all but most) women are either just companions of the actual hero (a dude) or the damsel in distress.

 

I'm not that kind of person that just takes an elf lady and makes her awesome sexy. I prefer realistic female characters like a big strong orc girl with sexy but still fitting face (no uber sexy lips, no big bug eyes, no wavy hair). I've played Oblivion with an female orc barbarian (light armor and two handed) and it was a lot of fun. Would be nicer if the NPC would react more to the race and gender but it what are mods for?

[Moraevik]

I'm a guy and I play both male and female characters, although I prefer to play females. Don't ask me why, because I really don't know the answer to that, and, no, I'm not experiencing gender conflicts. IRL I'm quite happy with my plumbing, thank you.

 

With respect to Skyrim, I think one of the things that put me off about playing male characters is that the males tend to be uglier than the females. I know a lot of people think the NPCs look great in this game, but I think most of them are comparing Skyrim to Oblivion, where the faces tended to be absolutely horrid. I've played games besides Oblivion and compared to some of those the models and textures used in Skyrim seem very outdated ... almost primitive. They completely ruined elves. I spent a long, long time fiddling with the character creation process in Oblivion to get a cute Bosmer, and she really was cute, too. Forget cute/handsome in this game, though. Elves in general in Skyrim are absolutely hideous, at least to my eyes, and the males even more so than the females. From a perspective of nothing but esthetics, then, playing females is the lesser of the two evils for me.

 

I like to play as a Khajiit, and that's been my preference ever since Oblivion. The reason is that in both games the beginning special abilities suit my gaming style. They did to Khajiit the same thing they did to elves. The faces are blocky and unnatural. Some say they were modeled after real cats. Those cats must have been severely deformed, is all I can say. Male Khajiit are way behind the females in appearance, more so than any of the other races. Again, this is just my own personal preference. I'm sure some people would disagree, and that's fine, too.

 

I like to play in third person, except in combat, although I'm starting to learn to do that. The reason is the relatively tiny field of view. I can't push it much beyond 100 degrees or the fisheye effect is so distracting that I just can't live with it. This means I have to look at my character most of the time. If I'm going to do that I'd prefer looking at an attractive body/face, rather than one that looks like it spent the last 20 years being a prize fighter and just crawled out of the sewer. And, no, I don't use any of the body mods. I'm not into huge breasts and huge butts, and that's what most of the body mods for females are slanted toward. Besides, I don't think any of the creators of those mods have a clue where nipples are supposed to be, but that's a different matter, I suppose. The only body mod I've seen for males turns them into hunks. I like normal proportions in both genders. Now, if someone would create a body mod that improves upon vanilla without making female characters look like they have installed several thousand dollars worth of silicone into certain places, or makes males look like they've invested ten years into intensive body-building, I'd download it in an instant. I loved Oblivion for the modding community, and Robert's body replacements were the best. I just wish he'd do the same for Skyrim and I could really enjoy playing a female character who looks like a normal person and not something out of a nightmare or a porn magazine.

[GnatGoSplat]

I regret choosing a male character for Skyrim. I had figured since I use 1st person view, I would never see my character, and there is marriage in the game, so I could have him hook up with a woman. However, now that I've pretty much completed the game, it just leaves me feeling like the story was boring, cliche. So he is the hero, saved Skyrim from dragons (although I still see them all over the place), he's united all of Skyrim under one rule, become leader of many factions, etc. In the end, he is just another over-the-top male action hero, same as in 99% of every legend, myth, story, TV show, or movie. I feel like had I chosen a female character instead, the accomplishments and her story would have been so much more satisfying and unique. I took a break from Skyrim and played DA:O, DA2, ME1, ME2, and ME3, all choosing instead to use a female hero. I found myself much more interested and attached to my female character, and more interested to see her succeed and become an underdog hero. I found my petite little female elf in DA:O to be particularly charming, and even even found myself enamored by FemShep. When I returned to my old Skyrim game to visit Dawnguard, I found I still felt indifferent about my male character and that his accomplishments are pretty much par for the course. Still a typical, forgettable male hero story, same type as has been told since the dawn of time.

 

I enjoy the story of a female character growing into a hero so much more, that despite hearing good things about other RPGs like Assassin's Creed or The Witcher series, I don't get the urge to buy them because the fact there is no option of a female hero is a big turn off.

[StayFrosty05]

I regret choosing a male character for Skyrim. I had figured since I use 1st person view, I would never see my character, and there is marriage in the game, so I could have him hook up with a woman. However, now that I've pretty much completed the game, it just leaves me feeling like the story was boring, cliche. So he is the hero, saved Skyrim from dragons (although I still see them all over the place), he's united all of Skyrim under one rule, become leader of many factions, etc. In the end, he is just another over-the-top male action hero, same as in 99% of every legend, myth, story, TV show, or movie. I feel like had I chosen a female character instead, the accomplishments and her story would have been so much more satisfying and unique. I took a break from Skyrim and played DA:O, DA2, ME1, ME2, and ME3, all choosing instead to use a female hero. I found myself much more interested and attached to my female character, and more interested to see her succeed and become an underdog hero. I found my petite little female elf in DA:O to be particularly charming, and even even found myself enamored by FemShep. When I returned to my old Skyrim game to visit Dawnguard, I found I still felt indifferent about my male character and that his accomplishments are pretty much par for the course. Still a typical, forgettable male hero story, same type as has been told since the dawn of time.

 

I enjoy the story of a female character growing into a hero so much more, that despite hearing good things about other RPGs like Assassin's Creed or The Witcher series, I don't get the urge to buy them because the fact there is no option of a female hero is a big turn off.

 

What you say here is rather interesting GnatGoSplat....Are you male or female IRL? As a female myself, I can't connect to and feel indifferent to female characters I make....I just don't enjoy them at all...I only really enjoy playing male characters myself and feel a lot more involved with them....and I make my males large men....my Skyrim character is a Nord with a Race height Adjustor Mod, plus he is consoled to Altmer height and is at max weight slider....Seems quite similar to your reactions, opposing sexes and views, but so similar somehow for some reason.....opposite spectrum's I guess.