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Forums - Gaming Discussion - Male or female in character creators?

 

I choose...

Only male 9 18.37%
 
Only female 3 6.12%
 
An even mix of both 14 28.57%
 
Ainly male, sometimes female 15 30.61%
 
Mainly female, sometimes male 7 14.29%
 
Whatever the default is, ... 1 2.04%
 
Total:49
SvennoJ said:
LegitHyperbole said:

It'd be cool if the game got the WOW classic treatment and let people experience it again, maybe with upgraded graphics. I bet there'd be a market for that. 

https://www.project1999.com/ ;)

https://www.pcgamer.com/why-the-original-1999-version-of-everquest-is-still-one-of-the-best-mmos-to-play-today/


And this is what created the magic

Stuff takes forever: I know, I know, this isn't really upside. But Brad McQuaid (rest well, Aradune) famously said he wanted meditating for health and mana to take a long time to foster social relationships between players, and it works. You can go get a cup of coffee, answer an email, or have a chat with your Warrior about their cat. You just don't get this kind of lull in modern games, and I can't tell you how many real conversations I've had with real humans because we had to wait a minute or two on a mana bar. 

Oh cool. I guess it would need upgraded graphics to catch the eye of FF14 and WOW players. 



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I do both, but I play with the female created-character first because, like Curl said, if I’m gonna be starring at character proportions for hours on end, I’d rather be looking at the female form.

Fortnite is a whole other story, I play with more male characters than female ones, but that’s because I usually buy licensed characters from the item shop and the number of intriguing male characters is much higher. I have Deadpool, Batman, Goku, Dr. Doom, Venom (Spider-Man 2 PS5 version), Optimus Prime, Solid Snake, etc. in my character presets and why on God’s green earth wouldn’t I want to play as them? I do have a pretty cool female Tron Legacy skin, though.



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

Both, but also depends on the game, the voice acting if there and role etc. I've played equal male and female in Mass Effect but Jennifer Hale's voice in the role is in my view better than Mark Meer, of course I only found this out by playing both. Dragon Age, only playing male or female limits your romances, in DA:I however female english voice actor is the best one, male voice actor sounds like an american doing an exaggerated english accent... which is weird as he is engish. Yet in say a souls game, half the time it doesn't matter as there are not gender stats, so just mess around with the default.

EDIT: I will admit in DA series, my first characters are all dual wield red heads females, even us the same name. So when fans of the game talk about 'canon' story, I have to have different ones as if all the heroes in the series are basically the same character it gets weird. :P

Last edited by The Fury - on 05 October 2024

Hmm, pie.

If there’s an option to create a character, I typically make a male avatar with red hair and green eyes — since that’s what I look like

If there are preset characters I typically go with the one with statistics and attributes that suit my play style, regardless of sex.



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Male if it's an RPG sort of game usually. Otherwise, more likely to go female.



Varies, although I can admit I've sometimes created mainly female characters if the male characters have looked atrocious. I don't think I created many male characters in Titan Quest, because they just looked so bad to me. Luckily bad-looking characters aren't much of an issue anymore in most games, so that's not a deciding factor. I guess I just create whatever I feel like, so it varies.



Both, although Elf characters always have to be female, lol.



curl-6 said:

I usually choose female, as I have a thing for sexy badass women and I'm going to be looking at a character for dozens of hours, I'd rather look at a woman.

Same here.

But if I want to feel more immersed at the plot, then I pick male character. If not, then mostly female.



If it's just a cosmetic sort of thing always male. If the two characters are at least somewhat distinct and the choice impacts the story then it's more up in the air though in those cases I might play one and then the other.