Genders and Avatars

[Tatile]

Edit: As Stel pointed out below I posted this in the Video Games section! D'oh, I blame being sleepy and glossing over everything but 'games' and 'discussion'.

Curiously, this topic seems to have arisen once or twice on the generic WoW forums and, as one can expect, they have often devolved into name-calling, mud-slinging fests where either side refuses to even agree to disagree.

Now, the topic: playing with (or for RP, as) an avatar opposite to your gender. That is, guys with female avatars and girls with male avatars.

I personally don't care. It means nothing to me whether or not the person behind the giant Male Warrior is a bloke or not, or whether the manlipulative Sorceress really has a female controlling 'her'. Unless you are rolling in some strange, contrived (and almost archaic) system, gender is meaningless to mechanics. It doesn't affect how you play.

So why then the issue? What is your opinion on the subject, should you have one at all. Trust this isn't limited to MMO's, but also to pen & paper, generic console games and of course the text based RP's we have here. Are you turned off by a protagonist of the opposite gender or in character creation do you lean more toward one than the other?

My own tendencies have played out thus: in pen & paper I've had an even spread of male:female for my characters, whereas when I write I tend to write male (albeit quite fragile) characters; with games where I can choose my own model/avatar I tend to have females, mostly because they've got nicer designs and seem to have had more time and attention paid to them.

So, what say you?

 

[112% Elusive]

I, personally, don't really care, as long as the person is generally nice and whatnot.

For example, my forum avatar, is male. I'm not. =V

(that's all I have to say. >>)

 

[Blisk]

I don't really care. I have never tried RPing with a female character, but for games, I don't care. Metroid is one of my favorite series and the main protagonist is a female. I don't have a preference. I think there should be more Sami. Lolz. That's my plural for it. Anyway, there should be more protagonists that are female and aren't all about sex appeal. Samus is covered 99% of the time in the games. We need more Samus-like characters xP

 

[Magpie]

Hurr... never really given this much thought XD

Funnily enough, given the choice of choosing my character's gender I always opt for female without much thought. However, if the character's gender is pre-set, or the class I want to play in a game for example has to be male, then I don't really care either way. I actually find it amusing sometimes to have a male character running around called Ferne.

As for writing, I tend to lean towards writing male characters. No idea why, I just do. Maybe it's down to the fact that everyone has a little of the opposite gender in them, and writing is an easy medium to let all that loose in. Same would apply to gaming.

It's the same with games like Fable and Black and White - from what I've seen of my friends, given the choice of being good or evil most often results in a less than subtle fall into the clutches of the devil. Why? Because in games anything goes. There are no consequences in sacrificing defenseless village folk to some weird cult - therefore you get a chance to do something you'd never get a chance to do in real life, or would never even consider in the villager's case (hopefully). If being a male character in a game is the only way for me to express my love for over-sized swords, meed and manic game butchery then so be it

I'd find it a little weird if someone I believed to be male for years online turned out to be female. I happens on here sometimes with new members thinking certain members are different genders, so I can only imagine how it must be slightly more confusing to have a male avatar stood next to you in a quest who later turns out to be controlled by a girl - but that's only a mental identification issue. In my head I have pictures of what a lot of members here look like, and I'm fairly certain that if I met you all very few of you would match those images XD

So no, I don't have an issue with being male or female, or other people mixing up the genders a little. It all adds to the fun. Lets face it, ladies in male character's bodies kick ass.

 

[StellarWind Elsydeon]

Personally, I tend to have as many female characters as I do male characters, if not more. I'll start the discussion with video games, because, well - yeah, this thread is in the video game forum.

In games where you have a choice of the player's gender, I don't have a set trend - I generally go with whatever I feel like at the moment. If I feel like playing a female character, I create a female character. If I feel like playing a male character, I create a male character. All depends on my mood, generally - though I must admit, that sometimes aesthetics have a part to play in it.

For instance, Gen3 PokeMon-wise I repeatedly played the female character (because quite frankly I like the designs of May and Leaf much more than I do the ones of Brendan and Neo!Red) whilst in Gen4 I repeatedly played male characters (because I utterly loathe Dawn and Kotone/Whatever The Hell Her Name Is In The Translated Version Will Be).

In a similar vein, in The Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind, my main character was a male Argonian (because I like my lizard-people, lawl) and he was male because the males had facial features that appealed to me more (I love those crest-ears). On my second run-through of the game I played a female of a human species of some sort, can't remember which one. It's been far too long.

And I'm definitely pondering creating a female character in Dragon Age whenever I'll get the chance to play it. Although I might create a male. Depends on how I'll feel like at the moment. XP

As far as RPing goes, I definitely have more female characters than male characters - I seem to feel equally comfortable with writing males and females, but most of the designs my mind comes up with for characters tend to be female.

Mind you, most of my characters have similar personalities regardless of gender - and I find that the variations between them are much less gender inspired than past/experience-inspired.

Re: Males, for instance. Most of my male characters (that aren't one-shots that I rarely get to develop the personality of and often get killed in silly ways and/or appear to provide some plot development and trot off - they're usually very stereotypical anime characters, these one-shots) are variations of me with some traits enhanced or less pronounced. That said, three of my male-based characters started out very much based on me, but by now have rather different personality patterns - especially one specific variation who has gone through so many tragedies you'd think it's a career.

I have quite a few female characters who are adventurous, sarcastic types (Christine Evans and Willow Deschaine would be perfect examples) and then, on the complete opposite side of the spectrum, you have the under-confident childlike ones (like Michaela and Maya) and the very mature, philosophical, cold-ish types (like Emily Sylvanhart). I'm yet to create a 'girly-girl' type character (because I tend to loathe the type with a burning passion) - girls who can kick serious ass are faaaaaaaar more preferable for me as far as writing goes.

... Then I have the completely gender-neutral characters like Alt-Cyan, (whom no one is really sure if he/she/it's male or female, and that's just the way he/she/it wants it to be). And don't even get me started about Emerant Cirrus - She adopted a female gender role generally, but she's quite technically a sexless cloud of nano-machines surrounding a magical/technological core - and with all the different personas she can assume for whatever missions she may take, I'm sure she could pull off a male over easy. Em's actually my greatest writing challenge and I love her to bits for it. She gives me the chance to experiment with writing character types I never have before...

But I digress. XD

ANYWAY. I mostly went into this major RPing rant because RPs are what I do most. I think a lot of my characters are the way they are because I tend to have a lot of interactions with my characters in my mind - both in RP mode and in game mode, and as such I create the types of characters I'd enjoy actually hanging out with if I was in their world. As far as video games go I tend to tell myself little stories in my head about my characters, develop their histories and whatnot, give them their own personalities - it happens quite often that an in-game character inspires an RP character for that world - although the opposite has yet to happen. I'm yet to try to create one of my RP characters ingame. Hm. Interesting thought...

As for other people? I don't give a flying desu. XD I mean, just because your bioshell has a particular set of chromosomes doesn't mean that you MUST ABSOLUTELY play characters with the same set of them. Never really saw it as a very big deal.

 

[Rayn_Shyu]

I usually go for the girls. Cuz I am one. And a lot of the times, they look more aesthetically pleasing than their male counterparts (I'm looking at you WoW NE's!).
I'm sure it's probably just me, but I feel like it's actually me doing the actions in the game vs. some set of sprites, so I usually go for characters shaped more like me (female, tall and skinny :F) and don't do evil things like join the side of darkness; even though it doesn't have consequences or much to actually do with me, I feel like I can't do it because the sprite is an actual part of my person.
In real life, I can probably say that I'm a Lawful Good and that affects my characters. Even on tabletop RPGs; the only male character I've made for that was an elf paladin... Most of the time, I'm some sort of chick that may or may not be good, but at least isn't evil.
In summary... I'm a Goodie-Two-Shoe and/ chick that can't really wrap her mind around creating an evil person and/ dude. ...I feel like I just did a psychoanalysis on myself.

 

[StellarWind Elsydeon]

"(I'm looking at you WoW NE's!)"

Regardless of my personal feelings about WoW and MMORPGs in general (Which I'd rant about but not in this thread.) - You have to admit that in WoW at least something went horribly wrong with the females. Maybe it's the fact that whatever armor they wear gets instantly metamorphosed into a frigging bikini. >>; That's just EFFing wrong. SERIOUSLY. Put some god damn pants on, for the good of Dalmasca. X_X

Re: the good/evil thing, which I haven't mentioned in my last post. I do generally prefer to play good or neutral characters, but sometimes it is fun to take out your frustrations on innocent villagers in an evil way. (Ahh, Black and White. So hillarious to see giant cows eating people.)

I think my most morally-ambiguous character was my Morrowind main. Joining House Telvanni does that - they are well respected mages amongst the other great houses, but they have a very amusing internal structure. In most factions you can join, if you steal from other members your reputation in the faction may drop and you may be kicked out. Telvanni fucking encourage it. The way they see it, if you saw it and no one else was looking, you're welcome to it. Their fault. xD

Amusing bastards, they are.

 

[Tatile]

In reference to female armour, I've only seen the bikini phenomena a few times with the characters I have and even then it's not been terribly revealing (yes there are a couple of pieces that are available that are simply plate bikinis, but I've only seen them on WowHead and not in game).

In Guild Wars I think this was far more noticable, especially if you rolled an Elementalist - they had barely anything on o.O I think that's why a lot of people also had Mesmers, though they did have armour combinations that made them look like a cheap burlesque dancer.

I would hope that gaming companies are realising that more women are playing games and that not all men want to see their female characters in completely pointless "armour" because someone thinks that it's attractive. If anything, not only is it an insult to women to have a female character in the plate-kini, but to men also as it implies that that's the only way they'd ever been interested in playing the game or having a certain type of character/class.

 

[charmander91]

I agree with you stel about getting to choose a character's gender and in the Pokemon games except in platinum I didn't like the how they made the male character look. And in Dragon Age you get more Achievements as a female character.


And Tatile plate-kini is the new word of the week

 

[Trop003]

I'm a bit torn either way, usually I just decide which character design looks better and roll with that. I do, however, use male characters when I'm playing something that feels like I should be in it, for example: Animal Crossing.

 

[Rayn_Shyu]

Plate-kinis aren't that bad in WoW ('Specially if you don't wear plate...). Tabards are sometimes the best gold spent for people who really don't want to stare at all that. And shirts that go under your armor as well. But it is sometimes strange to see something that looks entirely normal on a male character look like lingerie on a female character.
2Moons, a free Korean MMO, however, is very bad with this. The ranged class doesn't wear very much at all. Like, I don't even really want to play because I don't like the feeling that I'm staring at her cheeks the entire time. But it is free and fun...oh choices!
Kind-of-sort-of bringing this back to topic, I've kind of noticed that in video games that I just go for the ranged class. Hunters in WoW, Segitia Hunters in 2Moons, and some sort of sneaky Bow-user in Oblivion. One of my said sneaky Bow-users completed the Knights of the Nine quests... I'm wondering if personalities affect play style.

 

[Secad MS]

Recently, a friend tried to introduce me to Guild Wars. However, when I saw the female characters (which I normally go to as I am female, as long as there are no significant differences in stats), I yelled, "Bikinis are not armor!"

At least the assassin (the class I want to play) is decently dressed.

As stated before, I play female characters because I am one, but in text-based RPs like on ‘Charms, I occasionally play males just to see if I can do it. However, on games that have very sexist, provocative females, I would play a male character just to not stare at a half-clothed *insert race here* for the entire time. Even though games like Laura Croft: Tomb Raider can be seen as empowering females, her unnatural portrayal really ticks me off. Because of this, player characters such as Samus are win, as stated before by other people.

On a nearly unrelated note, in Pokemon, why the heck are the females wearing shorts and miniskirts when they are trekking through sandstorms and snow? Ridiculous! That is why I hated Dawn's winter outfit in Platinum. Wouldn't her knees be freezing?!

 

[Chadwyck]

Personally, I don't really care. I don't play MMOs, mostly because I do not wish to pay for them, nor sell my soul to them as a large number of people I know have done to WoW. No, I don't play MMOs, but in text based RPs and Fics, I try to see if I can RP as both, though yes, most of my characters are male. It's because I'm not very good at capturing the "girly side" as my friend stated, she was reading one of my fics and had to correct my main characters morning routine. But just because my characters are primarily male doesn't mean I don't enjoy RPing as female, not to mention some of my favorite characters are female. Rein's sister Alice in my fic Reformation is one of my favorite characters I've ever created, and so is Julia, the main character of another fic of mine. I keep on meaning to create/use females more, but I tend to use Rein because he is the protagonist of what I hope to be many adventures.

In games I'm not picky either, there are games that I wish had female protagonists and games where I feel a male is adequate. When given the choice, I usually go with what class I want a character to be before choosing a gender. In Dragon Age: Origins I had a male warrior, then started with a female mage. I'm also a big fan of Final Fantasy VI, and though it isn't the only reason, one of the reasons is that Terra is the main character and is a female and I think that FF should have more female lead characters. Which is one of the reasons I am excited for Final Fantasy XIII in another few weeks.