Thursday, September 10, 2009

Rewind: I can't play female characters

Still can't and still being lazy with the rewinds :)

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I am a man in my late 20's and have been playing games for close to 20 years now. In all that time, I can't remember playing a female character (except for Metroid of course). In fact, I do not even read books when they are told from a female characters perspective. When creating a MMO character, I will always create a male character. If the class only offers female characters I will not play it.

Often times I will see guys posting things like "If I am going to look at this character all day, I want it to be a chick." That thought had never occurred to me as I do not think of my characters in a sexual way. So I have never really thought I was looking at a dude all the time and I still don't. If that sorta thing gets you going, more power to you :)

So why am I like this? Could I be sexist? Maybe... but I don't think that is the issue. When playing a game or reading a book I will try to put myself in the place of the character. If the character is a female I can't seem to do that. To support this idea, I used to have the same trouble creating non-human characters. I still will usually go with the Human option. In WAR I will likely be a Dwarf, which is really just a small human.

There is nothing right or wrong with the characters we chose. To each his (or her) own. Am I the only one like this?

5 comments:

It really is hard to roleplay being a woman.. a real one, because men just don't think like that. We're not wired to. I know I can pretend to be a woman but sooner or later someone will figure it out. It was fun for a while in City of Heroes until some dudes actually got too attracted to me (ugh) Then I gotta tell em I'm a guy in real life and then its awkward.. really awkward. Better to stick to male chars. Very few women play male chars (though some do), so its usually clear what my gender is then.

Your not alone Werit, I'm the same way. Until recently I forced myself to play a female toon until the bitter end. Though I think these day and ages it's getting better, most guys now assume your really a G.I.R.L or a guy in real life.

I always viewed the Avatar an extension of myself, thus why wouldn't my Avatar be male.

So you're a dwarf with goggles? :)

I'm much the same way. Add music on to that list. I generally can't appreciate what most female singers are singing about. There are some exceptions but those are really few.

Definitely not sexist, just personal preference. I'm pretty similar, but from a girl's perspective. I don't really connect as well when playing as a man, so all the characters I've played in WAR have been women. Or Greenskins, but they're fungi technically.

Related to what Rivs said, other players sometimes don't believe me when they ask if I'm a girl. Maybe it's the whole playing a Witch Elf thing.

Way back in the tabletop days, I had to RP female NPCs but that was the extent of it. I don't recall ever playing any type of female character (other than Samus. Who knew?) in any videogames until Tomb Raider came out on the PS1 and later Drakan on PS2. Two females who were very strong and basically played like action movie heroes. With T&A.

My first MMORPG was SWG and a friend and I both decided we would try out female characters. Coming from a tabletop RPG environment, you tell me this is an RPG and I'm going to RP. It was 3+ months before anyone ever figured out I was a guy because everything I did was in character. Not that I was maliciously trying to fool anyone, I just didn't know any better. I was RPing everything.

These days, I sit at the character creation screen, choose a class that appeals to me and flip back and forth between genders and all the other options until something feels right and I go with it, regardless of the gender. Once I have that first one, though, if I start doing alts my rule is 50/50 male/female.

Back in the SWG days, MMOs overall were still pretty new and for whatever reason players assumed character gender equated to player gender. Female characters got all kinds of freebies. I never see stuff like that anymore; I think everyone just assumes every character is a male player until proven otherwise.

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