Male or female in character creators?

[Jaicee]

All else being equal, my aesthetic preference is for female avatars. Just easier for my brain to readily connect with and feel most natural and comfortable using.

That said, in the span of my life, all else has often been less than equal. Growing up, for example, I didn't always choose Princess Toadstool (as she was known back then) when playing the original Super Mario Kart just because she was the female option. There were seven other characters available to me to experiment with, all with different stat balances, some of whom also looked better to me than my one female option. Many games, in fact, offer an uneven, heavily male-skewing character roster of avatar options (like the Super Smash Bros. games) and I like to experiment with all my options. Many (especially older) games are programmed to give male characters strength advantages and female characters speed or defense or healing power advantages, stuff like that, and I choose strategically in those cases. On the other hand, if I have a choice and the sex/gender of my avatar makes a narrative difference that I'm aware of, I will reliably choose the female option first because I want to be able to relate to them as well as I can.

That said, if the gender of my character doesn't matter at all, I will always choose/build a female avatar. When I'm creating a game character, I don't confine myself to options that might resemble me (not in skin color or anything necessarily), but rather tend to go with whatever I think looks cooler or especially cute or most ideally both. I have an expressionist approach to character creation more than impressionist one. I'm looking to express something about my personality through the avatar that I create more than to be realistic.

All of this said, my general preference is to play as a preset character with a definite personality of their own that I get to discover rather than having to create one myself. I'm open-minded about that character's sex or gender, but have a strong preference. If a game doesn't use a female protagonist by default, it automatically drops about 50% in the realm of my purchasing consideration and if there's no female player option at all then the drop is even steeper.

Last edited by Jaicee - on 09 October 2024