i don't see why not. all i have to do is dance around in my underwear and stupid people will give me money. i did that quite a bit in guild wars. that's the best way to make money. fuck selling items!
From a realistic or role-play perspective I simply play as whatever gender feels most akin to the class/profession I have chosen as well as what kind of person I want my character to be.
For instance... a lithe, deceptive ranger I might prefer to see as a female, but a raging, brutal warrior I associate with male.
Most of my characters are female, because I feel that I can relate more to someone that is my own gender, but that does not mean I would not or do not sometimes play male characters.
This discussions makes me think or what roleplaying was at a point in time not long ago. Some people seem to have forgotten what roleplaying is. It is playing a role. I know that sounds obvious, but people seem to be missing it. It is a game, and you are playing pretend. It is for fun. I know a man I play with on a regular basis, and have done in multiple games. He lives in America, and we met through a MMORPG. He is long married, and much older than I, so do not think this is a boy desperate to interact with a girl. However, we both have a main character, that we play, and both are female. Yes, his main roleplaying character is a female. The two characters have interacted with one another on multiple occasions in multiple games, but they are usually somewhat the same in more than just their name.
My point is that I know this man as a person. He is a male, and he never disguised that fact. But his character is a woman, and he plays her as a woman. They are two different people. He is in character when speaking as her. Actors take on different roles, sometimes of the opposite sex, and they behave as they believe this other person would, and that what roleplaying is. It is becoming someone else for a time. And if you are becoming a different person, it does not matter what gender that person is, because it is already a different person. The player and the character are not the same. And we should not be trying to imply or make others believe that when people play a roleplaying game they are being themselves, or acting in a manner even remotely like what they theme selves would do in the real world. Not my main character, but one of my prominent RPing alts, is a rogue/thief type. She would stab someone in the throat and take their money if she thought she could get away with it, but I certainly would never do such a thing. She is not me.
Of course, there are some people that do not roleplay in MMORPGs, and this is sad, to me, and I think they are missing half the point of the game. They log in, and they are themselves, and they log off. I think they may have a problem seeing their avatars as being something or someone different from themselves, but it is still escapism, and they are not behaving as they would, and they are certainly not what they really are, regardless. I mean, there are no elves, no vampires, no Norn, no Tauren. You cannot be what you really are in a game, because you, yourself, would probably be outright terrible at adventuring.
TLDR: You can never be what you pretend to be in a game, or what your avatar is in the game, and therefore trying to transfer yourself to that character, to make that character yourself, is both impossible and psychologically potentially dangerous.
"Gamers will no longer buy the argument that every MMO requires a subscription fee to offset server and bandwidth costs. It's not true you know it, and they know it." Jeff Strain, co-founder of ArenaNet, 2007
oh wow look at that computer graphics generated woman! right.. maybe u need to get one in real life
True but there is at least one post at everyone of the 24 pages saying the same thing.
"Hitting on female toons in game is sad",,,, I think most of the people doing it realizes as well even if they don't like to admit it. Learning to know people in a game is a different thing however, just don't expect them to be like in the game.
To expand on my earlier comment. I want to make the char that looks the way I want it to look. If it happens to be be female doesn't mean I put suspenders on on a Saturday night (I do). Just means it was the best looking character i could create- why not? I gotta play the bugger for many hours?
oh wow look at that computer graphics generated woman! right.. maybe u need to get one in real life
True but there is at least one post at everyone of the 24 pages saying the same thing.
"Hitting on female toons in game is sad",,,, I think most of the people doing it realizes as well even if they don't like to admit it. Learning to know people in a game is a different thing however, just don't expect them to be like in the game.
if u actually read all 24 pages, i pity u.
all i needed to read was the first page and i knew a bunch of horny teenager no-lifers would be all over this
oh wow look at that computer graphics generated woman! right.. maybe u need to get one in real life
True but there is at least one post at everyone of the 24 pages saying the same thing.
"Hitting on female toons in game is sad",,,, I think most of the people doing it realizes as well even if they don't like to admit it. Learning to know people in a game is a different thing however, just don't expect them to be like in the game.
if u actually read all 24 pages, i pity u.
all i needed to read was the first page and i knew a bunch of horny teenager no-lifers would be all over this
would put money on the geezer who started the thread trying to justify playing birds.
i really don't care about gender roles defining who you are, especiall in a game. I'm going to play both male and female characters. Personally i think its fun to have a big ass male warrior smashing shit up and then a small, nimble female assassin.
someone replied to this and said "do u rlly wanna stare at a guys ass for 40+ levels. blah blah blah bro bro bro"
-whats wrong with staring at a guys ass, if u have an immersion to that character as being yourself? also, how could you think not minding seeing a guys ass in a game makes you homosexual? thats your own insecurity, there is nothing wrong with being gay and nothing wrong with being straight or blurring those lines. I'm pretty sure the last time one of my friends found out i was born male the world did'nt explode.
I don't think its possible to quantify your game character wearing a dress as yourself wearing a dress IRL. I mean, most of us dont wear robes and wizard hats and scream made up languages while pointing a staff- so we are able to accept that doing so ingame, makes no connection to who or what you do IRL.
I play as both. I am a bloke in real life, but RPGs are not real life and this seems to be a strange concept to some people, especially 12-year-old noobs who post rubbish like "OMG, 24 pages iz tl;dr lol but ur all gay if u play female alts lol". FFS, grow up.
RPGs are exactly what they're supposed to be: Role Playing Games - I.e. you take on a different persona to your own. I view MMOs as single-player RPGs with a multiplayer element and a community. Some games I'm on tend to have a lot of people who remain in-character at all times (LOTRO), whilst others tend to be more social (DOMO). On social MMOs like DOMO, I always play a male toon because it makes sense - people playing these games are playing it for the social aspect rather than the role-playing aspect, and I'm more comfortable in this context playing a character of the same gender as myself.On fantasy MMOs like Guild Wars and RoM I play either sex depending on how I want to approach my game. If I roll a Rogue or a Priest, it is usually female, but if I roll a Tank, I usually play a male - it's just my play style. RoM includes a bio page on the character sheet (I hope GW2 includes such a feature too), and I use this to make it clear to any potential 12-year-old noobs trying to hit on my female toons that they are, in fact, BEING PLAYED BY A BLOKE. I've never hidden the fact I am a male.
I've long grown out of being surprised that the army of male Tanks I've been partying with were actually under the control of female players in just as much a way that I'm no-longer surprised that most female characters have male players controlling them. These are just games. Games that are meant to be enjoyed. Most people I meet in-game don't seem to care anymore anyway.
I've been at the receiving end of disgusting PMs and pathetic cybering whispers when I'm using my female toons but thankfully, most modern MMOs include a functional ignore list, and I rarely have the time to listen to the immature drivel of a wet-behind-the-ears and can't-talk-to-real-girls 12-year-old anyway.
tl;dr version - Play whichever gender you're comfortable with and don't act like a noobish 12.
I always thought that this was an interesting subject. I have spoke with females and males on this subject.
1) My friend she plays male toons, cuase she got tired of "guys" telling her how to play and what to do. I tested this theory as a tank in WOW and it was true. I had every one in the group trying to tell me how to tank. Then I made a male toon...kept the same tanking style, same class, and the comments were far and few on how I was doing.
2) as a female you get a lot of "wispers" that are just anoying. I.E cybersex lines. As male toons I never had this prob.
coments about "oh i like to play female toons cause I get free money, and power leveling" that just kind of creeps me out >.<
3) I asked a few of my friends that were male why they played female toons. they said and I quote 'I don't want to look at a guys ass all day while I play." ok that was a good argument. Plus to their standing they let people know that they are male.
4) last and not least...stero type...if you are a female and you play the game very well then you are a g.i.r.l (guy in real life). I have got that comment thrown at me here and there. The things is I don't care, just on my game to kill some time.
It was a blast reading the posts on this and figure I would throw in my two cents.
It comes down to character customization for me. In most games I run only male characters, however, in games where there are a lot of character slots like AoC and WoW and where the character customization is limited, I generally have a mix of the two just so it looks different when I play different classes and not feel like im playing the same thing over and over.
Wow, really? I mean, I get that people have differing opinions on this, but some of the animosity is a little unsettling (a lot more unsettling than the idea of someone running a different sex avatar in a game).
Before I answer the question myself, let me just say a few things. Apologies; you're going to get several paragraphs of preface and an answer to the actual question at the end, so heads up.
First and most importantly: The answer to this question says nothing about your sexuality, psychological condition, religious disposition, ability to distinguish fantasy from reality, or any other stamp of judgment. Please. Are we really so juvenile as a subculture that we can't handle the fact that the disagreements on this subject are just disagreements? Some of us are in fact homophobic, some of us are misogynistic, and I'll even concede that there is something fundamental about human interaction that demands that our contact with other people have certain immediate characterizations in place, chiefest of them gender. But we're not all any of those things just because we have an opinion on this issue one way or another. Regardless of my personal disposition, or my comfort zone, etc., I am mature enough to realize that someone else might see it another way, and I don't think it's too much to ask from other people interested in this medium.
Second: Honesty is a good idea in general. It's also a good idea in this particular instance. Portraying yourself as a different gender than you are in a video game isn't really different from portraying yourself as a different anything than you are. If you appreciate the talent of a given game's art department and enjoy the aesthetics involved in the rendering of a female model, then--at least with certain games--I can absolutely appreciate that. Good art is good art, whether it's Rembrandt or Kekai Kotaki, and it doesn't have to be smut to appeal to our baser sentiments. But preying on another person's ignorance about your identity is at best a reckless disregard for their feelings, and at worst malice. If you're playing a female and you're a male, at least be up front about it with people who are going to get the wrong idea if you don't (and trust me, you should be able to tell who those people are). I have a feeling that a lot of the animosity in this conversation is more apparent than it is real: That is, what a lot of people hate about men playing female characters in a game is that the men are misrepresenting themselves, rather than the fact of the avatars themselves. And I have some sympathy for that.
Having said that, here's the exception: Sometimes it's a good idea to lie. Unfortunately this is gender-based, and there's no easy way to get around it. Plenty of female gamers out there run male avatars, and as someone who's not so old as to have forgotten his single-minded, drooling adolescence, I appreciate the fact that being part of the problem isn't something I had a monopoly on. It's anecdotal, I admit, but the cold fact is that at least some of the time, female gamers do get harrassed. I can't pretend to testify firsthand about that, but it's out there. I wish, very, very much, that I could find the link to a forum post made my a female gamer that basically captured the crux of this problem. It's actually a brilliant piece of discourse on its own, but the link is on my old comp, and I don't even know where to begin to look for it (I may have originally gotten the link from P-A or some other heavily trafficked site, but I can't be sure). In any event, there's plenty of conversation on this out there now, so anybody with any interest should be able to get an idea of where we are with sexism in this subculture, so I'll leave it at that.
I would also go so far as to say that, again anecdotally, so take it with a grain of salt: If you're a male running a female avatar just to get free stuff... well, you might be in for a surprise. Being female, at least for the older generations of gamers (that is, those of us who have, since the MMO genre started, grown up and gotten families--or those older than us), is not in and of itself a special accomplishment. Virtual prostitution, however, is a different issue, and I shouldn't have to spell anything out for anyone on that front.
Third: Don't wear your emotions on your sleeve. This is especially important if you are a young person (and by young I mean either a young adult or a teenager or younger), or even an older person who is in a position to be especially vulnerable with respect to relationships (e.g., recently divorced or widowed). To be perfectly frank, MMO's aren't the worst place to go looking for relationships; they're not the best, but gaming is a social medium, and if you can make friends in a game, you can make girlfriends or boyfriends, presuming the right amount of luck and favorable circumstances. There are in fact single people of both genders playing the game with you, some of them probably local. But that fact alone does not mean that all of them are interested in dating, or in dating you. And you certainly don't help your prospects by objectifying the other gender or making that the focus of any relationship with a person of the other gender. On rereading I realize this comes across as preachy or patronizing, so feel free to disregard it--after all, it's just free advice.
Now as to the question itself, as posited by the OP: No, I would not. In fact that's nearly a hard and fast rule for me. I won't even pick a female champion in LOL. Call me hung-up, call me weird, whatever. It's a question of taste, and that's my taste. To me, it's a question of immersion, and regardless of the story, or the graphical detail, or the genre, as a general rule I identify with male characters more than females, so if I'm going to be controlling one, it's going to be male. When I pretended to be something when I was a kid, it was always masculine, even if it was something horrible and inhuman (which it usually was), and so if gaming is an extension of my imagination (which I expect it to be), that trend continues naturally.
Edit: Oh, one more thing.
I am an evangelical Christian, so you heard it here first: No one is going to hell for playing furries in Final Fantasy.
Some people say that it's very bizzare to play as another sex in an online game, do you think it's simply fun and for the look, do people take this too seriously, or is it linked to an identity problem?
I don't do it often, but it is fun sometimes. And also, sometimes female chars look better than male chars and then it is obvious to choose a female I don't think it is bizzare and I'm sure it's not about identity problems, that's bullsh°t ^^
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Wow, really? I mean, I get that people have differing opinions on this, but some of the animosity is a little unsettling (a lot more unsettling than the idea of someone running a different sex avatar in a game).
Before I answer the question myself, let me just say a few things. Apologies; you're going to get several paragraphs of preface and an answer to the actual question at the end, so heads up.
First and most importantly: The answer to this question says nothing about your sexuality, psychological condition, religious disposition, ability to distinguish fantasy from reality, or any other stamp of judgment. Please. Are we really so juvenile as a subculture that we can't handle the fact that the disagreements on this subject are just disagreements? Some of us are in fact homophobic, some of us are misogynistic, and I'll even concede that there is something fundamental about human interaction that demands that our contact with other people have certain immediate characterizations in place, chiefest of them gender. But we're not all any of those things just because we have an opinion on this issue one way or another. Regardless of my personal disposition, or my comfort zone, etc., I am mature enough to realize that someone else might see it another way, and I don't think it's too much to ask from other people interested in this medium.
Second: Honesty is a good idea in general. It's also a good idea in this particular instance. Portraying yourself as a different gender than you are in a video game isn't really different from portraying yourself as a different anything than you are. If you appreciate the talent of a given game's art department and enjoy the aesthetics involved in the rendering of a female model, then--at least with certain games--I can absolutely appreciate that. Good art is good art, whether it's Rembrandt or Kekai Kotaki, and it doesn't have to be smut to appeal to our baser sentiments. But preying on another person's ignorance about your identity is at best a reckless disregard for their feelings, and at worst malice. If you're playing a female and you're a male, at least be up front about it with people who are going to get the wrong idea if you don't (and trust me, you should be able to tell who those people are). I have a feeling that a lot of the animosity in this conversation is more apparent than it is real: That is, what a lot of people hate about men playing female characters in a game is that the men are misrepresenting themselves, rather than the fact of the avatars themselves. And I have some sympathy for that.
Having said that, here's the exception: Sometimes it's a good idea to lie. Unfortunately this is gender-based, and there's no easy way to get around it. Plenty of female gamers out there run male avatars, and as someone who's not so old as to have forgotten his single-minded, drooling adolescence, I appreciate the fact that being part of the problem isn't something I had a monopoly on. It's anecdotal, I admit, but the cold fact is that at least some of the time, female gamers do get harrassed. I can't pretend to testify firsthand about that, but it's out there. I wish, very, very much, that I could find the link to a forum post made my a female gamer that basically captured the crux of this problem. It's actually a brilliant piece of discourse on its own, but the link is on my old comp, and I don't even know where to begin to look for it (I may have originally gotten the link from P-A or some other heavily trafficked site, but I can't be sure). In any event, there's plenty of conversation on this out there now, so anybody with any interest should be able to get an idea of where we are with sexism in this subculture, so I'll leave it at that.
I would also go so far as to say that, again anecdotally, so take it with a grain of salt: If you're a male running a female avatar just to get free stuff... well, you might be in for a surprise. Being female, at least for the older generations of gamers (that is, those of us who have, since the MMO genre started, grown up and gotten families--or those older than us), is not in and of itself a special accomplishment. Virtual prostitution, however, is a different issue, and I shouldn't have to spell anything out for anyone on that front.
Third: Don't wear your emotions on your sleeve. This is especially important if you are a young person (and by young I mean either a young adult or a teenager or younger), or even an older person who is in a position to be especially vulnerable with respect to relationships (e.g., recently divorced or widowed). To be perfectly frank, MMO's aren't the worst place to go looking for relationships; they're not the best, but gaming is a social medium, and if you can make friends in a game, you can make girlfriends or boyfriends, presuming the right amount of luck and favorable circumstances. There are in fact single people of both genders playing the game with you, some of them probably local. But that fact alone does not mean that all of them are interested in dating, or in dating you. And you certainly don't help your prospects by objectifying the other gender or making that the focus of any relationship with a person of the other gender. On rereading I realize this comes across as preachy or patronizing, so feel free to disregard it--after all, it's just free advice.
Now as to the question itself, as posited by the OP: No, I would not. In fact that's nearly a hard and fast rule for me. I won't even pick a female champion in LOL. Call me hung-up, call me weird, whatever. It's a question of taste, and that's my taste. To me, it's a question of immersion, and regardless of the story, or the graphical detail, or the genre, as a general rule I identify with male characters more than females, so if I'm going to be controlling one, it's going to be male. When I pretended to be something when I was a kid, it was always masculine, even if it was something horrible and inhuman (which it usually was), and so if gaming is an extension of my imagination (which I expect it to be), that trend continues naturally.
Edit: Oh, one more thing.
I am an evangelical Christian, so you heard it here first: No one is going to hell for playing furries in Final Fantasy.
Good post, however I do disagree with a couple points.
You state that men playing women should be honest about their true sex, but women should be allowed to pretend they are men because some of them get harrassed. ( I know you stated that it's wrong but unavoidable) I think this is a sexist statement and if women are truly equal, then men get to be equal too. So in all fairness, there has to be a different solution.
That statement leads to my next disagreement. You state that MMO's aren't the worst place to go looking for relationships. And because of not knowing anything about who you are dealing with, I feel they are definately one of the worst. THAT is my biggest disagreement with your post.
When I create an avatar, am I supposed to be thinking" is this avatar a true representation of my current social self?" or " I think that a I want to make a female spellcaster or maybe a male fighter" I play a game for my entertainment, everyone else except my friends is just a circumstance. I don't care if Billy wants to dress in women's clothes or dance naked trying to sell some cyber. It doesn't affect me because I'm not buying. The people that bother me are the people that are trying to turn killing mobs into a dating club for gamers. I mean really, no matter how silly people might think it is for a guy to play a female toon, it's nowhere near as stupid as the guy asking "soo, are you a girl in real life?"
Other then that, I liked your post.
All of my posts are either intelligent, thought provoking, funny, satirical, sarcastic or intentionally disrespectful. Take your pick.
I get banned in the forums for games I love, so lets see if I do better in the forums for games I hate.
I enjoy the serenity of not caring what your opinion is.
Good post, however I do disagree with a couple points.
You state that men playing women should be honest about their true sex, but women should be allowed to pretend they are men because some of them get harrassed. ( I know you stated that it's wrong but unavoidable) I think this is a sexist statement and if women are truly equal, then men get to be equal too. So in all fairness, there has to be a different solution.
That statement leads to my next disagreement. You state that MMO's aren't the worst place to go looking for relationships. And because of not knowing anything about who you are dealing with, I feel they are definately one of the worst. THAT is my biggest disagreement with your post.
When I create an avatar, am I supposed to be thinking" is this avatar a true representation of my current social self?" or " I think that a I want to make a female spellcaster or maybe a male fighter" I play a game for my entertainment, everyone else except my friends is just a circumstance. I don't care if Billy wants to dress in women's clothes or dance naked trying to sell some cyber. It doesn't affect me because I'm not buying. The people that bother me are the people that are trying to turn killing mobs into a dating club for gamers. I mean really, no matter how silly people might think it is for a guy to play a female toon, it's nowhere near as stupid as the guy asking "soo, are you a girl in real life?"
Other then that, I liked your post.
I wouldn't suggest that men shouldn't be allowed to lie--some do, and I'm the last to get on board the gender police bandwagon. I just wouldn't recommend lying because it's potentially malicious, and I'm making certain assumptions about the environment that are perhaps more subtle than I anticipated--that is, that in most situations, it's the female-as-female getting harrassed, rather than the male-as-male. Certainly, I wouldn't advocate that a female gamer should get a pass on misleading other women who believe that she's a male gamer. Likewise I would advise any male gamer who feels like he needs to play a female avatar to avoid harrassment should certainly feel welcome to keep the curtain in place.
I would advocate the same behavior for members of both genders interacting with other people in the same circumstances. But I admit that the circumstances are different, and addressed the statistical majority. (I'm not going to cite something here; I googled it before posting to make sure there's plenty of information out there, so I'll let you decide for yourself if any of it's credible). Gender neutral pronouns are handy, but the only rationale for calling my argument sexist when taken as a whole (as opposed to paraphrased out of context) is that I used a female as the victim in one example and a male as the perpetrator in another. I'll gladly concede that that language doesn't put me on the forefront of feminist thought--and I'm fine with that--but my argument isn't sexist simply because it identifies sex any more than the late Rev. King's arguments were racist because they advocated for black Americans to sit-in instead of whites.
Secondly, I maintain that MMO's aren't the worst place to form relationships because I've formed one through them. The girlfriend I had before I married my wife was a gamer, and we met online and gamed together long before we met in person. It was far from the healthiest relationship, but that had nothing to do with the fact that we gamed together before we were a couple together, and I wouldn't give up that time.
Moreover, and more importantly, I do not presume to be able to anticipate what kinds of relationships other people are going to form in games, and I don't feel it's my place to attempt to restrict them. "Are you a girl in real life?" is not a stupid question in itself. It's very inappropriate in a lot of contexts, but men and women do not treat each other the same. I genuinely hope that they treat each other equally, but equal does not mean devoid of differences. I do not believe that women are entitled to special treatment by virtue of being women, but I also believe that courtesy is different between people of different sexes than between same sexes, and would be the last person to try to convince someone that a chivalrous outlook is always inappropriate. If that makes me sexist, then I'll wear the button for that one proudly.
If the MMO genre is going to live up to its potential, then it has to succeed as a social medium in addition to succeeding as entertainment. I don't have numbers to offer up here, but I would venture that at least a statistically (and financially) significant portion of WOW's subscriber base are playing WOW because they have friends that play WOW, as opposed to the fact that killing mobs in WOW is more fun than doing so in its competition. That doesn't make WOW a dating club for gamers, and certainly, it's your dime: you can play with as much or as little social interaction as you want.
But for those who do choose to interact with the other people who play the game on more than a superficial level, I would be quick to remind anyone that the other people playing the game are actual people, as opposed to just really smart AI. They do in fact have actual lives and identities beyond those of their avatars, and this is the single distinction between roleplay and non-roleplay (and I would go so far as to say that that line is blurry too). Your avatar may not be a representation of your actual social self--I tend not to think of mine as that either, far from it--but where you might consider everything outside of your actual, pre-existing real life (I'm assuming that's what you meant, since anything else would be a concession) to be circumstances surrounding your entertainment, plenty of other people, myself included, don't. Even in the periphery, they are people, and as technology improves, that fact is only going to become more, not less, apparent (see any given guild's vent or TS server for evidence). If that interferes with your entertainment, I assure you that I for one will gladly talk to someone else whenever I find myself confronted with the silent business-only attitude from other gamers in MMO's, and I can usually tell when someone is actually roleplaying a character instead of playing the game-as-game. But understand that your perspective, whether majority or minority, is still only one of many, and for at least some of us out here, dating is not out-of-the-question. Far be it from me to attempt to quash that.
EDIT: Something else came to mind on topic but outside of this particular discussion, and I didn't want to double post:
If you're a male attempting to roleplay a female, or a female attempting to roleplay a male, you might do some writing and then ask your opposite-gender friends to take a look at it and see if it sounds reasonable. "Teehee" doesn't sound female in itself: It sounds childish. On the same token, "Bro" doesn't sound male; it sounds ... well, it sounds like you're a damn moron (unless you're trolling someone, in which case, go nuts). So if you're actually roleplaying (which in this context really means writing), approach it with enough seriousness to give the writing value, unless you're playing it for comedy. Otherwise anybody who takes a look at your logs is going to see right through you, and the story you were trying to tell is as dead as if it were never told. [This also goes under the free friendly advice that you should take with a grain of salt heading.]
I don't, but probably would for fun if they actually made female characters a bit more 'real' instead of graphic 'artists' designing virtual girlfriends to compete with their inflatable ones. I'm a bit bored of seeing stick-thin, asian-build twigs run around with 200 lb swords. It really kills any sort of immersion, as I don't need videogames to get off.
This query has been around for years. Back in the days of the original Asherons Call, Ever Quest etc., there were not a lot of females playing (mmos were still a vastly male dominated and geek dominated culture) yet there was a disproportionate amount of female avatars running around. We mostly operated under the presumption the female we were teaming with was actually a fat hairy 35 year old male virgin living in his mommas basement. The skilled ones could actually make you believe they were female and could bilk you for lots of cash and items (remember this was long before Vent and similar programs caught on, there was no voice back then).
I still play under that premise, but it tends to be less true these days with more female players.
I myself tend to stick with the Superhero and Supernatural genres, and I play both male and female alts, depending on the character concept and what works better. For me it is all about the RPG and style aspects.
Comments
i don't see why not. all i have to do is dance around in my underwear and stupid people will give me money. i did that quite a bit in guild wars. that's the best way to make money. fuck selling items!
From a realistic or role-play perspective I simply play as whatever gender feels most akin to the class/profession I have chosen as well as what kind of person I want my character to be.
For instance... a lithe, deceptive ranger I might prefer to see as a female, but a raging, brutal warrior I associate with male.
Most of my characters are female, because I feel that I can relate more to someone that is my own gender, but that does not mean I would not or do not sometimes play male characters.
This discussions makes me think or what roleplaying was at a point in time not long ago. Some people seem to have forgotten what roleplaying is. It is playing a role. I know that sounds obvious, but people seem to be missing it. It is a game, and you are playing pretend. It is for fun. I know a man I play with on a regular basis, and have done in multiple games. He lives in America, and we met through a MMORPG. He is long married, and much older than I, so do not think this is a boy desperate to interact with a girl. However, we both have a main character, that we play, and both are female. Yes, his main roleplaying character is a female. The two characters have interacted with one another on multiple occasions in multiple games, but they are usually somewhat the same in more than just their name.
My point is that I know this man as a person. He is a male, and he never disguised that fact. But his character is a woman, and he plays her as a woman. They are two different people. He is in character when speaking as her. Actors take on different roles, sometimes of the opposite sex, and they behave as they believe this other person would, and that what roleplaying is. It is becoming someone else for a time. And if you are becoming a different person, it does not matter what gender that person is, because it is already a different person. The player and the character are not the same. And we should not be trying to imply or make others believe that when people play a roleplaying game they are being themselves, or acting in a manner even remotely like what they theme selves would do in the real world. Not my main character, but one of my prominent RPing alts, is a rogue/thief type. She would stab someone in the throat and take their money if she thought she could get away with it, but I certainly would never do such a thing. She is not me.
Of course, there are some people that do not roleplay in MMORPGs, and this is sad, to me, and I think they are missing half the point of the game. They log in, and they are themselves, and they log off. I think they may have a problem seeing their avatars as being something or someone different from themselves, but it is still escapism, and they are not behaving as they would, and they are certainly not what they really are, regardless. I mean, there are no elves, no vampires, no Norn, no Tauren. You cannot be what you really are in a game, because you, yourself, would probably be outright terrible at adventuring.
TLDR: You can never be what you pretend to be in a game, or what your avatar is in the game, and therefore trying to transfer yourself to that character, to make that character yourself, is both impossible and psychologically potentially dangerous.
"Gamers will no longer buy the argument that every MMO requires a subscription fee to offset server and bandwidth costs. It's not true you know it, and they know it." Jeff Strain, co-founder of ArenaNet, 2007
WTF? No subscription fee?
Hell yeah! Shake that booty in my face as you are running, girl!
to u guys that get off to female avatars -
its pixels.
oh wow look at that computer graphics generated woman! right.. maybe u need to get one in real life
All the time if they look better. Is a bunch of pixels either way.
Chins
True but there is at least one post at everyone of the 24 pages saying the same thing.
"Hitting on female toons in game is sad",,,, I think most of the people doing it realizes as well even if they don't like to admit it. Learning to know people in a game is a different thing however, just don't expect them to be like in the game.
To expand on my earlier comment. I want to make the char that looks the way I want it to look. If it happens to be be female doesn't mean I put suspenders on on a Saturday night (I do). Just means it was the best looking character i could create- why not? I gotta play the bugger for many hours?
Chins
if u actually read all 24 pages, i pity u.
all i needed to read was the first page and i knew a bunch of horny teenager no-lifers would be all over this
would put money on the geezer who started the thread trying to justify playing birds.
Chins
Nope.
I'm a transgender girl.
i really don't care about gender roles defining who you are, especiall in a game. I'm going to play both male and female characters. Personally i think its fun to have a big ass male warrior smashing shit up and then a small, nimble female assassin.
someone replied to this and said "do u rlly wanna stare at a guys ass for 40+ levels. blah blah blah bro bro bro"
-whats wrong with staring at a guys ass, if u have an immersion to that character as being yourself? also, how could you think not minding seeing a guys ass in a game makes you homosexual? thats your own insecurity, there is nothing wrong with being gay and nothing wrong with being straight or blurring those lines. I'm pretty sure the last time one of my friends found out i was born male the world did'nt explode.
I don't think its possible to quantify your game character wearing a dress as yourself wearing a dress IRL. I mean, most of us dont wear robes and wizard hats and scream made up languages while pointing a staff- so we are able to accept that doing so ingame, makes no connection to who or what you do IRL.
Have you people noticed that in most games the decision to play male or female character is purely cosmetic?
No difference in strenght, brain function and so on and forth.
Also there is no sex in mmos and, you don't have to worry about your female character becoming unfit for duty for the next 9 months.
I could comment on how progressive mmos are from the viewpoint of feminism. Women=Men with mammaries.
To answer the original question, oh yes as a guy I'd play a female character, they look HOT (at least sometimes).
I play as both. I am a bloke in real life, but RPGs are not real life and this seems to be a strange concept to some people, especially 12-year-old noobs who post rubbish like "OMG, 24 pages iz tl;dr lol but ur all gay if u play female alts lol". FFS, grow up.
RPGs are exactly what they're supposed to be: Role Playing Games - I.e. you take on a different persona to your own. I view MMOs as single-player RPGs with a multiplayer element and a community. Some games I'm on tend to have a lot of people who remain in-character at all times (LOTRO), whilst others tend to be more social (DOMO). On social MMOs like DOMO, I always play a male toon because it makes sense - people playing these games are playing it for the social aspect rather than the role-playing aspect, and I'm more comfortable in this context playing a character of the same gender as myself.On fantasy MMOs like Guild Wars and RoM I play either sex depending on how I want to approach my game. If I roll a Rogue or a Priest, it is usually female, but if I roll a Tank, I usually play a male - it's just my play style. RoM includes a bio page on the character sheet (I hope GW2 includes such a feature too), and I use this to make it clear to any potential 12-year-old noobs trying to hit on my female toons that they are, in fact, BEING PLAYED BY A BLOKE. I've never hidden the fact I am a male.
I've long grown out of being surprised that the army of male Tanks I've been partying with were actually under the control of female players in just as much a way that I'm no-longer surprised that most female characters have male players controlling them. These are just games. Games that are meant to be enjoyed. Most people I meet in-game don't seem to care anymore anyway.
I've been at the receiving end of disgusting PMs and pathetic cybering whispers when I'm using my female toons but thankfully, most modern MMOs include a functional ignore list, and I rarely have the time to listen to the immature drivel of a wet-behind-the-ears and can't-talk-to-real-girls 12-year-old anyway.
tl;dr version - Play whichever gender you're comfortable with and don't act like a noobish 12.
I always thought that this was an interesting subject. I have spoke with females and males on this subject.
1) My friend she plays male toons, cuase she got tired of "guys" telling her how to play and what to do. I tested this theory as a tank in WOW and it was true. I had every one in the group trying to tell me how to tank. Then I made a male toon...kept the same tanking style, same class, and the comments were far and few on how I was doing.
2) as a female you get a lot of "wispers" that are just anoying. I.E cybersex lines. As male toons I never had this prob.
coments about "oh i like to play female toons cause I get free money, and power leveling" that just kind of creeps me out >.<
3) I asked a few of my friends that were male why they played female toons. they said and I quote 'I don't want to look at a guys ass all day while I play." ok that was a good argument. Plus to their standing they let people know that they are male.
4) last and not least...stero type...if you are a female and you play the game very well then you are a g.i.r.l (guy in real life). I have got that comment thrown at me here and there. The things is I don't care, just on my game to kill some time.
It was a blast reading the posts on this and figure I would throw in my two cents.
It comes down to character customization for me. In most games I run only male characters, however, in games where there are a lot of character slots like AoC and WoW and where the character customization is limited, I generally have a mix of the two just so it looks different when I play different classes and not feel like im playing the same thing over and over.
My Guild Wars 2 Vids
Wow, really? I mean, I get that people have differing opinions on this, but some of the animosity is a little unsettling (a lot more unsettling than the idea of someone running a different sex avatar in a game).
Before I answer the question myself, let me just say a few things. Apologies; you're going to get several paragraphs of preface and an answer to the actual question at the end, so heads up.
First and most importantly: The answer to this question says nothing about your sexuality, psychological condition, religious disposition, ability to distinguish fantasy from reality, or any other stamp of judgment. Please. Are we really so juvenile as a subculture that we can't handle the fact that the disagreements on this subject are just disagreements? Some of us are in fact homophobic, some of us are misogynistic, and I'll even concede that there is something fundamental about human interaction that demands that our contact with other people have certain immediate characterizations in place, chiefest of them gender. But we're not all any of those things just because we have an opinion on this issue one way or another. Regardless of my personal disposition, or my comfort zone, etc., I am mature enough to realize that someone else might see it another way, and I don't think it's too much to ask from other people interested in this medium.
Second: Honesty is a good idea in general. It's also a good idea in this particular instance. Portraying yourself as a different gender than you are in a video game isn't really different from portraying yourself as a different anything than you are. If you appreciate the talent of a given game's art department and enjoy the aesthetics involved in the rendering of a female model, then--at least with certain games--I can absolutely appreciate that. Good art is good art, whether it's Rembrandt or Kekai Kotaki, and it doesn't have to be smut to appeal to our baser sentiments. But preying on another person's ignorance about your identity is at best a reckless disregard for their feelings, and at worst malice. If you're playing a female and you're a male, at least be up front about it with people who are going to get the wrong idea if you don't (and trust me, you should be able to tell who those people are). I have a feeling that a lot of the animosity in this conversation is more apparent than it is real: That is, what a lot of people hate about men playing female characters in a game is that the men are misrepresenting themselves, rather than the fact of the avatars themselves. And I have some sympathy for that.
Having said that, here's the exception: Sometimes it's a good idea to lie. Unfortunately this is gender-based, and there's no easy way to get around it. Plenty of female gamers out there run male avatars, and as someone who's not so old as to have forgotten his single-minded, drooling adolescence, I appreciate the fact that being part of the problem isn't something I had a monopoly on. It's anecdotal, I admit, but the cold fact is that at least some of the time, female gamers do get harrassed. I can't pretend to testify firsthand about that, but it's out there. I wish, very, very much, that I could find the link to a forum post made my a female gamer that basically captured the crux of this problem. It's actually a brilliant piece of discourse on its own, but the link is on my old comp, and I don't even know where to begin to look for it (I may have originally gotten the link from P-A or some other heavily trafficked site, but I can't be sure). In any event, there's plenty of conversation on this out there now, so anybody with any interest should be able to get an idea of where we are with sexism in this subculture, so I'll leave it at that.
I would also go so far as to say that, again anecdotally, so take it with a grain of salt: If you're a male running a female avatar just to get free stuff... well, you might be in for a surprise. Being female, at least for the older generations of gamers (that is, those of us who have, since the MMO genre started, grown up and gotten families--or those older than us), is not in and of itself a special accomplishment. Virtual prostitution, however, is a different issue, and I shouldn't have to spell anything out for anyone on that front.
Third: Don't wear your emotions on your sleeve. This is especially important if you are a young person (and by young I mean either a young adult or a teenager or younger), or even an older person who is in a position to be especially vulnerable with respect to relationships (e.g., recently divorced or widowed). To be perfectly frank, MMO's aren't the worst place to go looking for relationships; they're not the best, but gaming is a social medium, and if you can make friends in a game, you can make girlfriends or boyfriends, presuming the right amount of luck and favorable circumstances. There are in fact single people of both genders playing the game with you, some of them probably local. But that fact alone does not mean that all of them are interested in dating, or in dating you. And you certainly don't help your prospects by objectifying the other gender or making that the focus of any relationship with a person of the other gender. On rereading I realize this comes across as preachy or patronizing, so feel free to disregard it--after all, it's just free advice.
Now as to the question itself, as posited by the OP: No, I would not. In fact that's nearly a hard and fast rule for me. I won't even pick a female champion in LOL. Call me hung-up, call me weird, whatever. It's a question of taste, and that's my taste. To me, it's a question of immersion, and regardless of the story, or the graphical detail, or the genre, as a general rule I identify with male characters more than females, so if I'm going to be controlling one, it's going to be male. When I pretended to be something when I was a kid, it was always masculine, even if it was something horrible and inhuman (which it usually was), and so if gaming is an extension of my imagination (which I expect it to be), that trend continues naturally.
Edit: Oh, one more thing.
I am an evangelical Christian, so you heard it here first: No one is going to hell for playing furries in Final Fantasy.
Peace and safety.
I would. If you have a problem with it, just come over and tell me to my face, otherwise shut up about it.
Talking shit online is like winning the special olympics. Your still a retard, get over it.
To the caterpillar it is the end of the world, to the master, it is a butterfly.
I don't do it often, but it is fun sometimes. And also, sometimes female chars look better than male chars and then it is obvious to choose a female
I don't think it is bizzare and I'm sure it's not about identity problems, that's bullsh°t ^^
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Good post, however I do disagree with a couple points.
You state that men playing women should be honest about their true sex, but women should be allowed to pretend they are men because some of them get harrassed. ( I know you stated that it's wrong but unavoidable) I think this is a sexist statement and if women are truly equal, then men get to be equal too. So in all fairness, there has to be a different solution.
That statement leads to my next disagreement. You state that MMO's aren't the worst place to go looking for relationships. And because of not knowing anything about who you are dealing with, I feel they are definately one of the worst. THAT is my biggest disagreement with your post.
When I create an avatar, am I supposed to be thinking" is this avatar a true representation of my current social self?" or " I think that a I want to make a female spellcaster or maybe a male fighter" I play a game for my entertainment, everyone else except my friends is just a circumstance. I don't care if Billy wants to dress in women's clothes or dance naked trying to sell some cyber. It doesn't affect me because I'm not buying. The people that bother me are the people that are trying to turn killing mobs into a dating club for gamers. I mean really, no matter how silly people might think it is for a guy to play a female toon, it's nowhere near as stupid as the guy asking "soo, are you a girl in real life?"
Other then that, I liked your post.
All of my posts are either intelligent, thought provoking, funny, satirical, sarcastic or intentionally disrespectful. Take your pick.
I get banned in the forums for games I love, so lets see if I do better in the forums for games I hate.
I enjoy the serenity of not caring what your opinion is.
I don't hate much, but I hate Apple© with a passion. If Steve Jobs was alive, I would punch him in the face.
I wouldn't suggest that men shouldn't be allowed to lie--some do, and I'm the last to get on board the gender police bandwagon. I just wouldn't recommend lying because it's potentially malicious, and I'm making certain assumptions about the environment that are perhaps more subtle than I anticipated--that is, that in most situations, it's the female-as-female getting harrassed, rather than the male-as-male. Certainly, I wouldn't advocate that a female gamer should get a pass on misleading other women who believe that she's a male gamer. Likewise I would advise any male gamer who feels like he needs to play a female avatar to avoid harrassment should certainly feel welcome to keep the curtain in place.
I would advocate the same behavior for members of both genders interacting with other people in the same circumstances. But I admit that the circumstances are different, and addressed the statistical majority. (I'm not going to cite something here; I googled it before posting to make sure there's plenty of information out there, so I'll let you decide for yourself if any of it's credible). Gender neutral pronouns are handy, but the only rationale for calling my argument sexist when taken as a whole (as opposed to paraphrased out of context) is that I used a female as the victim in one example and a male as the perpetrator in another. I'll gladly concede that that language doesn't put me on the forefront of feminist thought--and I'm fine with that--but my argument isn't sexist simply because it identifies sex any more than the late Rev. King's arguments were racist because they advocated for black Americans to sit-in instead of whites.
Secondly, I maintain that MMO's aren't the worst place to form relationships because I've formed one through them. The girlfriend I had before I married my wife was a gamer, and we met online and gamed together long before we met in person. It was far from the healthiest relationship, but that had nothing to do with the fact that we gamed together before we were a couple together, and I wouldn't give up that time.
Moreover, and more importantly, I do not presume to be able to anticipate what kinds of relationships other people are going to form in games, and I don't feel it's my place to attempt to restrict them. "Are you a girl in real life?" is not a stupid question in itself. It's very inappropriate in a lot of contexts, but men and women do not treat each other the same. I genuinely hope that they treat each other equally, but equal does not mean devoid of differences. I do not believe that women are entitled to special treatment by virtue of being women, but I also believe that courtesy is different between people of different sexes than between same sexes, and would be the last person to try to convince someone that a chivalrous outlook is always inappropriate. If that makes me sexist, then I'll wear the button for that one proudly.
If the MMO genre is going to live up to its potential, then it has to succeed as a social medium in addition to succeeding as entertainment. I don't have numbers to offer up here, but I would venture that at least a statistically (and financially) significant portion of WOW's subscriber base are playing WOW because they have friends that play WOW, as opposed to the fact that killing mobs in WOW is more fun than doing so in its competition. That doesn't make WOW a dating club for gamers, and certainly, it's your dime: you can play with as much or as little social interaction as you want.
But for those who do choose to interact with the other people who play the game on more than a superficial level, I would be quick to remind anyone that the other people playing the game are actual people, as opposed to just really smart AI. They do in fact have actual lives and identities beyond those of their avatars, and this is the single distinction between roleplay and non-roleplay (and I would go so far as to say that that line is blurry too). Your avatar may not be a representation of your actual social self--I tend not to think of mine as that either, far from it--but where you might consider everything outside of your actual, pre-existing real life (I'm assuming that's what you meant, since anything else would be a concession) to be circumstances surrounding your entertainment, plenty of other people, myself included, don't. Even in the periphery, they are people, and as technology improves, that fact is only going to become more, not less, apparent (see any given guild's vent or TS server for evidence). If that interferes with your entertainment, I assure you that I for one will gladly talk to someone else whenever I find myself confronted with the silent business-only attitude from other gamers in MMO's, and I can usually tell when someone is actually roleplaying a character instead of playing the game-as-game. But understand that your perspective, whether majority or minority, is still only one of many, and for at least some of us out here, dating is not out-of-the-question. Far be it from me to attempt to quash that.
EDIT: Something else came to mind on topic but outside of this particular discussion, and I didn't want to double post:
If you're a male attempting to roleplay a female, or a female attempting to roleplay a male, you might do some writing and then ask your opposite-gender friends to take a look at it and see if it sounds reasonable. "Teehee" doesn't sound female in itself: It sounds childish. On the same token, "Bro" doesn't sound male; it sounds ... well, it sounds like you're a damn moron (unless you're trolling someone, in which case, go nuts). So if you're actually roleplaying (which in this context really means writing), approach it with enough seriousness to give the writing value, unless you're playing it for comedy. Otherwise anybody who takes a look at your logs is going to see right through you, and the story you were trying to tell is as dead as if it were never told. [This also goes under the free friendly advice that you should take with a grain of salt heading.]
Peace and safety.
Geez! This is still going on??
We get it guys..
1) Guys play as girls more often than girls..
2) Hello kitty online is probably full of guys..
Only if my character is hot. No one wants to play as an ugly girl.
I don't, but probably would for fun if they actually made female characters a bit more 'real' instead of graphic 'artists' designing virtual girlfriends to compete with their inflatable ones. I'm a bit bored of seeing stick-thin, asian-build twigs run around with 200 lb swords. It really kills any sort of immersion, as I don't need videogames to get off.
This query has been around for years. Back in the days of the original Asherons Call, Ever Quest etc., there were not a lot of females playing (mmos were still a vastly male dominated and geek dominated culture) yet there was a disproportionate amount of female avatars running around. We mostly operated under the presumption the female we were teaming with was actually a fat hairy 35 year old male virgin living in his mommas basement. The skilled ones could actually make you believe they were female and could bilk you for lots of cash and items (remember this was long before Vent and similar programs caught on, there was no voice back then).
I still play under that premise, but it tends to be less true these days with more female players.
I myself tend to stick with the Superhero and Supernatural genres, and I play both male and female alts, depending on the character concept and what works better. For me it is all about the RPG and style aspects.