Wondering why men play female characters?

Dibdabs

This.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AvtC3RIbQlE#at=22

Why would I want to look at the ass of a male character?  

KyutaSyuko

I typically play female characters because they look cuter and typically have nicer looking armor.  So in other words I play female characters for the eye candy.

Yalexy

When staring at the screen for hours, lookin g at the backside of my character I'd rather watch a female backside.

Additionally, devs tend to spend more time designing females aswell. They generally look better in every game. Better faces, better armor, better animations, etc.

Ayulin

The 'main' character I play through all MMOs goes back to Neverwinter Nights (the Bioware/Atari version)

It was originally going to be a male Elven Warrior. However, not long after starting to play, I realized how horribly the male characters were animated. They ran, literally, like they had to take a dump. It was horrible. Females, on the other hand, were animated beautifully. So.. I switched over to a female character.

One of the PW's I played on in NwN was a RP server, and so I did a kind of "RP lite". I didn't try to full on RP a female character, but I injected personality to my character that were personality-based - certain quirks, etc - not gender based. I could have played either a male or female character and it wouldn't have made a difference.

I grew to really enjoy that character and created them on every NwN PW I played. So, when I made the jump to my first full-blown MMO (you could call NwN my "gateway drug"), I decided to bring that character with me. And so, on pretty much every MMO I play, I have the same character, same name, same race (Elven when available) and same class (Warrior, or similar), with black hair and, when an option, green eyes. I've only deviated from that when a given option wasn't available, or I didn't like a given MMO's incarnation of it.

That's the story in a nutshell for me. And that's literally all there is to it. It's amazing how many times people will try to put me on the defensive, though, about "why a dude is playing a female character". It simply doesn't matter to me, because my character on-screen is not representative of me as a person. I don't believe I'm a female Elven Warrior when I'm playing a MMO, any more than I believe I'm Lara Croft when playing Tomb Raider, or Samus Aran when playing Metroid, etc...

I think some people read way too much into it, personally.

 

 

 

Teh_Axi

Originally posted by Dibdabs

Why would I want to look at the ass of a male character?  

 

Why are you so distracted by a doods ass?

Alber_gamer

I find more disturbing why humans play orcs or elves, when they could be playing humans.

Arakazi

Originally posted by Alber_gamer
I find more disturbing why humans play orcs or elves, when they could be playing humans.

This is why I always go troll.

Doogiehowser

Nice video OP..lol!! 

Anthur

Originally posted by Alber_gamer
I find more disturbing why humans play orcs or elves, when they could be playing humans.

I find it more disturbing that humans play humans (which they are 24/7 anyway obviously) instead of trying something new.

@OP Thx for new screen saver. Who is chasing her ? ^^

Waterlily

Originally posted by Yalexy

Additionally, devs tend to spend more time designing females aswell. They generally look better in every game. Better faces, better armor, better animations, etc.

That's because most  designers are male and they have studied women from when they were 15 year old boys. They know what looks good on a woman, but they're not aware what a male needs to look good.

Jemcrystal

I'm a gay male who plays male chars.  Since this thread was to show off a youtube vid I'll back at you and show off my youtube vid.  It's a tasteful documentary nothing as fun.  The subject of this thread seems to have focused on how poorly male chars are created.  To that I would say I appreciate sims 2 with phallus mods and blur unrendered (non mmo) and Aion as top tributes to male rendering.

 

Quazal.A

I play both Male & Female in every mmo i have the following

 

Quazal < My Main male account/toon

Quazaline < My Main female account/toon, I have backstories created for them both, Basicalyl brother and sister, then the story fits around what ever game im playing

 

So for me little bit of role-play but role play out of game not ingame, 

Rzep

If a game has decent customisation I usually make my first character male, try to make him look similar to me. If the game has piss poor options I just go for female.

Dibdabs

Originally posted by Jemcrystal

I'm a gay male who plays male chars.  Since this thread was to show off a youtube vid I'll back at you and show off my youtube vid.  It's a tasteful documentary nothing as fun.  The subject of this thread seems to have focused on how poorly male chars are created.  To that I would say I appreciate sims 2 with phallus mods and blur unrendered (non mmo) and Aion as top tributes to male rendering. 

It does seem not a lot of thought goes into the models for male characters.  I thought WoW's were awful - all weird chunks and blocky angles.  Some other games make them weirdly androgynous. 

Dagon13

Originally posted by Jemcrystal

I'm a gay male who plays male chars.  Since this thread was to show off a youtube vid I'll back at you and show off my youtube vid.  It's a tasteful documentary nothing as fun.  The subject of this thread seems to have focused on how poorly male chars are created.  To that I would say I appreciate sims 2 with phallus mods and blur unrendered (non mmo) and Aion as top tributes to male rendering.

 

Very funny and enlightening video, I didn't realize this was even a topic.

As for playing female characters, I used to use the butt argument but I never really understood why until I saw one of Bill Burr's stand up routines.  He sums it up nicely in the last minute or so. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=LJ4_qpMRPAc

 

KBishop

Who... cares?

Why do women play male characters?

aspekx

Originally posted by KBishop

Who... cares?

Why do women play male characters?

typically to avoid sexual harassment.

KBishop

Originally posted by aspekx

Originally posted by KBishop

Who... cares?

Why do women play male characters?

typically to avoid sexual harassment.

Thats really taking an eronious leap of faith. Where do you have any evidence to support this? That would also call into question why men play women as they realistically should be sexually harassed

aspekx

Originally posted by Jemcrystal

I'm a gay male who plays male chars.  Since this thread was to show off a youtube vid I'll back at you and show off my youtube vid.  It's a tasteful documentary nothing as fun.  The subject of this thread seems to have focused on how poorly male chars are created.  To that I would say I appreciate sims 2 with phallus mods and blur unrendered (non mmo) and Aion as top tributes to male rendering.

 

excellent vid, thanks for sharing that.

aspekx

Originally posted by KBishop

Originally posted by aspekx

Originally posted by KBishop

Who... cares?

Why do women play male characters?

typically to avoid sexual harassment.

Thats really taking an eronious leap of faith. Where do you have any evidence to support this? That would also call into question why men play women as they realistically should be sexually harassed

first of all, i will admit that my evidence is the kind being gathered here, anecdotal. so deny the evidence in this thread and deny my evidence at the same time, but for this particular argument it would be hard to pick and choose.

 

secondly, i fail to see how this calls into question why straight men playing female characters dont get sexually harassed. males ingame are almost never subjected to sexual jokes, rape jokes, male genital references, references to sexual acts performed on or against a woman. and all of this can be had in public chat channels as well as voip.

 

compare this to the experience of male characters who are almost never subjected to a barrage of /tells requesting sexual favors, complimenting their 'looks' (as odd as that may be), or their real name. and of course the list goes on. (this part i know from playing female toons.)

 

[sorry edited b/c i left out part of the first sentence of the second paragraph.]

KBishop

Originally posted by aspekx

Originally posted by KBishop

Originally posted by aspekx

Originally posted by KBishop

Who... cares?

Why do women play male characters?

typically to avoid sexual harassment.

Thats really taking an eronious leap of faith. Where do you have any evidence to support this? That would also call into question why men play women as they realistically should be sexually harassed

first of all, i will admit that my evidence is the kind being gathered here, anecdotal. so deny the evidence in this thread and deny my evidence at the same time, but for this particular argument it would be hard to pick and choose.

 

secondly, i fail to see how this calls into question why straight men play female characters dont get sexually harassed. males ingame are almost never subjected to sexual jokes, rape jokes, male genital references, references to sexual acts performed on or against a woman. and all of this can be had in public chat channels as well as voip.

 

compare this to the experience of male characters who are almost never subjected to a barrage of /tells requesting sexual favors, complimenting their 'looks' (as odd as that may be), or their real name. and of course the list goes on. (this part i know from playing female toons.)

Well, I guess we can take this thread in good faith, however at the same token, I have about 10 close female friends all of which who play female characters, and none of them have even so much as given a hint of having a problem for playing a female character and in some cases have actually gotten things because of it.

The point of that was the assumption that females play male characters to avoid sexual harassment. This infers that the problem is the female character. Unless you meant something else, that is what I am gathering. From that concept, I deduce that the problem is the female character, to which I ask why men aren't having that same problem.

Conversely, I've played female characters for many years and have never even come close to getting so much as a random tell from anyone, so while I don't doubt the validity of the statement, I do question the amount of it.

I don't disagree that women are subject to inappropriate behavior targeted specifically towards them though

Akulas

Random selection

Sanguinelust

You are already playing with electronic dolls, so why not make them girl dolls?

StonesDK

There will never be a unified answer to the question, since people do it for different reasons.

I've even met a guy who told me he had transgender fantasies as in wanting to be female himself, as the cause of why he played female toons. I also had a friend who pretended to be female in real life as well as in the game, which backfired when a guy developed a hard crush on him. My friend had to come clean at that point but the other guy left the game permanently. Fun stuff

 

djazzy

Originally posted by KingGator

Your character in game is your avatar,  it is a stylized projection of how you see yourself or how you'd like to see yourself,

lol

It is just a video game. some pixels on the screen, lets not turn this into some psychobabblebullshit

Shadowguy64

I play both just to mix things up. My casters are usually female. It usually just depends on how they look tho.