Do you play as a male or female in a game, given a choice?

[OverCoat]

where is poll option lol

If I am given a choice I usually play female because I'd rather constantly stare at a nice ass in my game. It's also probably some deep freudian psychological shit, I dunno.

How do you guys like to play?

[Bleck]

I play as a dude since I'm not secretly gay

[Emunator]

It depends on whichever character model is better designed and overall looks cooler. Usually it's the female. Like you, it's probably Freudian

[OverCoat]

I play as a dude since I'm not secretly gay

[Brycepops]

Yaranaika face

FFFFF POR QUUEEEEEEEEeeeeeeeeee D:

[The Legendary Zoltan]

A man. Preferably a black man. You should see my Oblivion character. He's gonna party like it's the year 999.

[OverCoat]

That reminds me Chipp

have you seen TYRONE SHEPARD from Mass Effect? hahaha

[KyleJCrb]

Almost always females (unless I have no choice, of course). I've tried using male characters in say, City of Heroes for example, and I always get bored with them. It's not necessarily always the visual appeal either; I'm just more interested in a female who can kick ass.

Or I'm just unknowingly gay, and a pervert. Don't care though, either way.

[The Damned]

Depends on the game.

My main pokémon game, I will play as male, but to help differentiate it from my second game, I will play as the female character. That way, I don't get loopy after a day of playing and accidentally do something bad to my main game.

Left 4 Dead games, I go random. Always random. That way, no one complains about "I had that character picked". You hit random, people can choose first. Besides, it's not like there's any pros or cons with the different characters.

Most other games I play, there is no option to create a character or choose a gender.

[lazygecko]

Doesn't matter to me. The supposed stigma behind it in MMOs is especially laughable, it sounds like they're treating them like online dating services instead of games.

I've noticed in World of Warcraft that people playing female elves or humans are more likely to be guys, while female tauren or orcs are more likely to actually be played by women.

[Thylacine]

I play as a dude since I'm not secretly gay

I play as a dude and I'm secretly gay, so your logic is flawed.

Playing as a girl just feels weird to me unless it's a specific girl, like Lara Croft or Joanna Dark. In those cases, you're SUPPOSED to be a female and you're playing out a specific story. But if it's a character that's supposed to be an extension of one's self, then I'm always male.

I don't think poorly on it. The guys who play as females do it for reasons that make perfect sense - either visual interest, or simply more admiration for a female character who doesn't adhere to stereotypes. It'd be like faulting a guy for always hanging out with a girlfriend because he "only likes doing things with girls."

If I ever did play WoW, I always thought I would play a Tauren female. That's more because I had come up with a cow character that I had never had opportunity to play as before (given the sad lack of player-run cows in MMOs nowadays). I'd specifically write a backstory where I'm married, though, to hopefully prevent guys (playing as guys, assumedly) from hitting on me. This is the only situation I could see myself "cross-gaming."

So, yeah, dudes for me. Take that as you will.

[DragonAvenger]

I've done my fair share of both, actually. Since most heroes (moreso in older games than now, though still a majority) are male, I tend to lean that way, even in the MMOs I've played, but I tend to pick whatever suits my fancy at the time. Sometimes it's based on who looks better, too. If all the males look dumb, I'll go female, or vice versa.

[cobaltstarfire]

It really depends, most of the time if it's an RPG and can choose I play a female. (sometimes I might switch it up for fun, or if the female isn't very pleasing to look upon. When I get the remake of G/S I'm playing the male for example, cause the female looks dumb IMO).

When I played WoW my first character was a Female Tauren Druid, the other two characters I got very far was a Male Troll Hunter (my favorite of the bunch even though the druid still got more play time). And a Female Troll Mage, whom I only got to about the 40's and only ever played before any of the expansions. I think it's because there was lack of any real lore or story I could mentally weave for the Mage like I could for the Druid and Hunter.

Doesn't matter now, since the last time I played was for BC, and I think I only played for 3 weeks (long enough to get my druid to 70, then decide I didn't want to go through the effort of finding new equipment for her, or any other character for that matter).

In non video game related RPGs I'm pretty 50:50 normally I don't design a character with a Gender in mind much of the time (unless there's an imbalance among players), I let the character decide it (if that makes any sense).

[Triad Orion]

I usually will play as male characters, in both WoW and other games. I had a couple of female characters before too, but really the decision isn't one I care about. I'm just as likely to play a game with a static protagonist that's female as I am one with a male protagonist if the game interests me.

[IrateResearchers]

I tend to make female characters, unless,

A: The character is for comedic effect. (My Belf (might as well make a girl) DK engineer. My Dwarf DK, human (Worgen Placeholder) Rouge.)

B: It just works. (Tauren Shaman, Troll Priest)

C: It's an RPG/FPS/RTS. (Crystal Chronicles, and many other games.)

Mostly because they look better.

Also, as a writer, I get to notice how different each is treated.

[relyanCe]

Unless it's a MMORPG player avatar or I have an explicit reason for building a male character (say i'm building an archetype of some sort or making an obvious expy), I will invariably roll a female character for reasons twofold:

1. If I'm going to be staring at the backside of someone for hours, it's gonna be something I'll enjoy.

2. Given pretty much all model designers are male, more time is always spent on female clothing/equipment/body, which means prettier visuals on two levels (smexy womens and smexy polygons)

[Inimitable]

Left 4 Dead games, I go random. Always random. That way, no one complains about "I had that character picked". You hit random, people can choose first. Besides, it's not like there's any pros or cons with the different characters.

If you play as Louis nobody can complain when you take pills even if you don't need them.

As for character creation, I tend to go female for a couple reasons. First is most games I play have male protagonists, so it's nice to mix it up. Second is because of all the hawt pixel-woman action that I usually deny paying any attention to.

[atmuh]

girls girls girls girls

[1337 1]

Female, though I dislike playing MMOs as female (in those select few cases where I do play MMOs; too many dumbass boys hitting on you). Although I have many reasons, in the case of mario kart, I play as Peach because it annoys the hell out of my friends. Apparently nothing is more embarassing than taking a blue shell from Peach?

But really, a lot of games actually adapt the story to accommodate the choice (for example, Bioware games like NWN or Mass effect). And thankfully its sometimes more than just "major character X" falls in love with main character.

[eshman]

Male, definitely male. However, in most fighting games I tend to do better with the female fighters for some reason... Odd...

[The Coop]

girls girls girls girls

Not that you can ever have too many, but in this instance, there's one too many...

[Arcana]

It varies for me, but more often I tend to lean toward creating girl characters than guy characters.

My first two WoW characters were male on Horde, when I went to Alliance side I rolled a female human and then a male night elf. When I back to Horde, I rolled all male characters. Simple reason? Female Alliance models look better than Male ones, and the Male Horde models look better than the female Horde models.

In Dragon Age I first created a female, but then stopped playing that character and rolled a male dwarf instead.

I think a big part of it is that I like to play dress up on my characters, and it's more typical to dress up female dolls than male dolls. I'm also secretly gay.

[Monobrow]

I play as mostly dudes. I guess I either like dudes, or am so used to most heroes being dudes anyway.

Every once in a while I make my character female and am like OMG WOMAN POWER!

I did this in KOTOR II (Which worked very well) and Oblivion. My Morrowind character was male though.

Oh yeah, back in the day when I played UO, my character was female and I tried to make her look like me.

I also like to start characters and make them look like my current boyfriend.

[KyleJCrb]

I also like to start characters and make them look like my current boyfriend.

If you're doing this in MMORPGs, I hope you run around in public areas yelling "FAGS FAGS FAGS FAGS FAGS".

[XZero]

I'll almost always play as a male character in games where I have a choice. Interestingly, when I play RPGs, I almost always name my hero character the same thing if I have to name my hero. I guess I like consistency.

As a note, my Wii Fit trainer is the woman, largely for the same reasons noted by the people who like nice things to look at while playing games.