What gender do you play as in games?

[Kung Fu Ferret]

I usually play as a male, but if the female choice looks decent I give that one a chance every once in a while.

 

[ultraviolet]

I'll be a girl if I can. Might be partly because none of the games I play are too fanservice-heavy.



I think the reason why a lot of games force you to be a guy is to make it simple. They don't have to sprite a female Link, Mario or Donkey Kong... Or a female Tim (the main guy in Braid). Would she be saving a Princess or a Prince? And there are some even simpler games. If you want to make some kind of flash platformer, it's easier with just one main character sprite. Of course some have uncertain genders.

I agree that this probably is the case; what's annoying is that male characters are considered kind of default and that if there's gonna be one character, it's gonna be a dude. There aren't nearly as many games where you're a girl by default as there are where you're a guy by default.
That being said, the 'only having to make one sprite/character animation' kind of only applies to older games, or small indie games on a tight budget. Speaking as someone who's actually studied the industry, it just really isn't *that* hard to make extra playable characters. they don't make the game that much more difficult to develop, and girl characters aren't inherently complex or something. it's kind of a shame to see big-budget developers keep doing this, because they have the most resources to do so and could set a great example.

 

[M&F]

I agree that this probably is the case; what's annoying is that male characters are considered kind of default and that if there's gonna be one character, it's gonna be a dude. There aren't nearly as many games where you're a girl by default as there are where you're a guy by default.
That being said, the 'only having to make one sprite/character animation' kind of only applies to older games, or small indie games on a tight budget. Speaking as someone who's actually studied the industry, it just really isn't *that* hard to make extra playable characters. they don't make the game that much more difficult to develop, and girl characters aren't inherently complex or something. it's kind of a shame to see big-budget developers keep doing this, because they have the most resources to do so and could set a great example.

Bubububut! Adding a playable female character would totally double the workload!

There's also a lot of games where it simply isn't relevant to choose the playable character's gender -- mostly, games where the playable character is a full and self-contained character rather than a customizable one and/or a proxy for the player. Not that gender is necessarily a quintessential part of the character, but it simply doesn't make any sense to have more than one possible version of that character. And it's indeed profoundly annoying that these full and self-contained characters are also by vast majority male (although, at least, in this case, the exceptions tend to stand out even more).

(Then again, Fire Emblem: Sacred Stones comes to mind -- ultimately, you can choose to play as a guy or as a girl, but both are full and self-contained characters with their own different stories, and picking one or another gets you a partially different plot, some different maps, a different POV, and so on forth. Oh, and also, they make you play as the girl at first, although they also make you play as the guy in like two maps, and then after all that you make the choice.)

 

[Wargle]

If you can customize characters I play as both but play as the girl first.

Except for Pokemon, the only time I played a girl was in Ruby. I think the guys in Pokemon games always have better designs.

I like playing as girls so I can look at their butt because hey it's cool and I'm a girl and also not a lot of girl characters.

 

[Murkrow]

Bubububut! Adding a playable female character would totally double the workload!

Well, I mean, people who work on AAA games whose entire job it is is to animate the player characters' clothes it would.

Except for Pokemon, the only time I played a girl was in Ruby. I think the guys in Pokemon games always have better designs

All the male Pokémon player characters are so samey though. Brendan is the only one I think isn't that samey but then he's pretty meh.
One thing I always think to myself about the male characters being samey is that they all wear hats, but the female ones do too!
It doesn't bother me, I just wonder why that is. I mean even in XY where you had customisation, you couldn't not wear a hat without cheating. Is it just a tradition at this point or is it to make them more recognisable?



For games where the PC is just an avatar for the player and doesn't have a personality I don't see why gender choice isn't an option but for other games one of the reasons is probably the "why Guybrush can't be female" argument. If a male character has personality flaws and/or faces hardships it's a realistic character. If a female character has the same personality flaw/faces the same hardships, Anita Sarkeesian calls it sexist. Male characters are safer to write.

 

[Music Dragon]

If a male character has personality flaws and/or faces hardships it's a realistic character. If a female character has the same personality flaw/faces the same hardships, Anita Sarkeesian calls it sexist. Male characters are safer to write.

I highly doubt that any feminist gamer would have a problem with a female main character having personality flaws or facing hardships. When does that ever happen?

 

[Murkrow]

I highly doubt that any feminist gamer would have a problem with a female main character having personality flaws or facing hardships. When does that ever happen?

Tumblr, mostly.
Although Femfreq has said some pretty idiotic things in twitter as well.

 

[ultraviolet]

Well, I mean, people who work on AAA games whose entire job it is is to animate the player characters' clothes it would.

If we're just talking about making a female version of a male protagonist, first of all I wouldn't even say it would "double" the workload, because a lot of that stuff is rigging, setting up plugins, stuff like that. Making a character's coat blow in the wind isn't generally done by hand, it's usually emulated. A lot of the actual legwork is modelling - which would take more time, yeah - or setting up the physics engine and stuff like that, which needs to be done once. Even modelling probably wouldn't take twice as long - once you've made one 3D maquette it's actually kind of easier to make more, particularly if they're interchangeable gendered avatars. You would probably reuse the same texturing, lighting, render settings - if the topology isn't that different you could probably reuse and tweak the character rigging.
Secondly, AAA game developers can afford it the most; they sell the most circulated games and have the highest profit margins (and often the poorest working conditions). There isn't much excuse.
I think the only thing that would actually double in cost would be voice acting.

edit: actually, plugins and stuff could even be recycled from previous games (and often are), if the animators have to do something like animate a woman's long hair and there's nothing set up for it already. it's not *that* hard.

For games where the PC is just an avatar for the player and doesn't have a personality I don't see why gender choice isn't an option but for other games one of the reasons is probably the "why Guybrush can't be female" argument. If a male character has personality flaws and/or faces hardships it's a realistic character. If a female character has the same personality flaw/faces the same hardships, Anita Sarkeesian calls it sexist. Male characters are safer to write.

hey, do you have a source for this? I'm not a huge fan of Anita Sarkeesian - I think she generally has a pretty basic critique of gender in games but it's nothing like, groundbreaking - but this seems kind of an odd thing to say.

 

[Butterfree]

I haven't seen Anita Sarkeesian complain about female characters having personality flaws or facing hardships (that honestly sounds like the kind of thing anti-feminists say feminists do but they don't actually), but she does feel that female characters who act stereotypically masculine "don't count", so maybe that's what Murkrow means? It's definitely one of my biggest disagreements with her.

(She criticized both True Grit and The Hunger Games because their central female characters are tough, unemotional and like to solve their problems with violence, which she sees as less progressive because it's continuing to glorify traditional masculinity over traditional femininity. In general she seems a lot more invested in the "femininity is good" side of feminism than the "women don't have to be feminine and they're not bad women if they're not feminine enough" side, since she's personally a more traditionally feminine type who's put off by violence. I'm really not the more traditionally feminine type, so I'm a lot more personally invested in the other side, but I still think both sides are important. Anita sometimes seems to advance her side at the expense of the other one, though, and that really irks me, especially because the one she's sacrificing is the one I really personally care about.)

 

[Murkrow]

If we're just talking about making a female version of a male protagonist, first of all I wouldn't even say it would "double" the workload, because a lot of that stuff is rigging, setting up plugins, stuff like that. Making a character's coat blow in the wind isn't generally done by hand, it's usually emulated. A lot of the actual legwork is modelling - which would take more time, yeah - or setting up the physics engine and stuff like that, which needs to be done once. Even modelling probably wouldn't take twice as long - once you've made one 3D maquette it's actually kind of easier to make more, particularly if they're interchangeable gendered avatars. You would probably reuse the same texturing, lighting, render settings - if the topology isn't that different you could probably reuse and tweak the character rigging.
Secondly, AAA game developers can afford it the most; they sell the most circulated games and have the highest profit margins (and often the poorest working conditions). There isn't much excuse.
I think the only thing that would actually double in cost would be voice acting.

I definitely know all this. In fact, the most recent example I can think of where a AAA game got backlash was Assassin's Creed Unity which had four playable characters in its multiplayer so whatever their genders are wouldn't have mattered anyway.
(it would have mattered even less because when I first saw the footage at E3 I personally thought all four models were the same person, maybe it was the hoods but I think it's just Ubisoft running out of creativity)

So yeah my point was that just because it isn't super hard, doesn't necessarily mean it's super easy either. I definitely don't disagree with you :P

hey, do you have a source for this? I'm not a huge fan of Anita Sarkeesian - I think she generally has a pretty basic critique of gender in games but it's nothing like, groundbreaking - but this seems kind of an odd thing to say.

She does occasionally border on saying things like that, though she hasn't gone that far. Like in the second damsel in distress video she says how damsels are sometimes well written and likable but that makes their "disempowerment" more frustrating. But the thing is, is that I can understand pointing at characters like Princess Peach and saying the main motivation you're meant to have for saving her is because she's a woman (except Mario 64 when it's because cake) but when a character is actually a character, why is that a bad thing? It happens to male characters too but the only difference is, is that when it's a male character, the character is almost always an actual character, as opposed to "save him because he's a man".

Then she goes on about "women in refrigerators" which I can understand, but it doesn't only happen to women. Like, Assassin's Creed 2 starts off establishing that Ezio has a close relationship with his brother. Then the male members of his family get executed. What if his brother and sisters' roles were reversed? Wouldn't that count as "woman in a refrigerator"?

(Of course, I don't think the trope is okay even when the character is male either. But that's only because it's becoming overused)

I understand that her point is that some of these tropes use women a lot more than men, but -and I guess I should start backpedalling now even though I've already a couple of paragraphs into my post- my real problem with her isn't her, it's her fanclub. They pick on individual examples of games that use these tropes, as if no game ever should. The problem arises when the trope is overused, not when it's used at all.
It's like the Bechdel test. It should be used as a statistic "only 7 out of the last 50 movies to come out have passed the test, maybe there's a problem", but some people seem to think it can be used like "Don't watch Star Wars, it doesn't pass the test"

When E3 is on for example, I often follow whatever hashtag is being used to discuss it and there's a lot of people who only seem to be there to complain about trailers for games that have male leads in them. I'm all for more female player characters but actively shunning games that don't isn't the right way to go (unless they have multiple like AC Unity). One example I remember is someone saying how they're disappointed with Nintendo because of Captain Toad's new game, despite the fact that he was an already established character, and you actually play as Toadette in some of the levels.

 

[Vholvek]

In some RPG's, I play as male, because the females always have extremely exaggerated female features. Other than that, the females usually seem more detailed, so I like them better.

 

[fresh fruit for Adol]

honestly, the gender i choose depends what i really feel like at the time and what races are available. i don't put much thought into it, just as long as my character doesn't look stupid considering i'm with them for the long haul

if i can play as a cat person of some sort, or put cat features onto them, i'm 200% guaranteed to be a catgirl in my games though. very occasionally a cat guy, but it depends on my options and overall design of the game. in PSO2, i play a female newman (elf), but that's because i've always liked Phantasy Star's elves. PS Universe gave us beastfolk though, and for both PSP games i actually ran one of each gender, and a male android

both Final Fantasy MMOs give me catgirls, so that's obvious. but honestly, what i pick depends on my options. i lightly consider things for the future, but i don't really care as long as i don't look like a truck, or don't look ridiculous

 

[Gevaisa]

I tend to give some consideration to both, but I usually end up playing as female. Male hairstyles usually all look so similar that it's bewildering that they even bother making more than one. It's often the same with clothing, although female characters aren't usually that much better off in that department.

 

[LadyJirachu]

I'm usually my own gender^^ Espesally since i like cute girly type clothes XD

 

[ozzi9816]

Most of the time female, since as Dar pointed out, most males are all one stereotype (burly, manly, etc.) but females in games represent a wider range of attitudes and personality types. Also, I think most designers put more thought into their female characters. What they wear, other details like hair and makeup, etc. whereas men in games are pretty much all cut from a cookie cutter template.