The guys commonly tend to create mostly male characters and fewer female ones.

I wonder if the same is true about the women playing TES games. Are most of your characters female, male or is it 50/50?

I NEVER use female characters because I'm a guy and I feel like I'm the one portraying the in-game character so he should be male if that makes any sense. My friend on the other hand is a guy and he usually makes female characters in his games. He says it's something pleasant to look at while playing.

I make character of both sixes, It depends on what I feel the character is going to be and go from there.

Nope. When I can, I make female characters. Call it a reaction for so many years when there was no choice except the default male. Granted, in the early games 4 or 6 square blocks running about were rather generic, but once the opportunities came, I took advantage.

Traditionally, I haven't made females in OB/SK due to the issue of boob plates on armor - they look absurd and I don't want to look at them. Recent developments in both games' modding scenes have made it more even.

I would actually question your first premise. This topic has come up several times in the years I've been on these forums, and I'm not sure there's any agreement that the majority of guys actually play mostly males. There are always a number of posters who express strong feelings about it, but those feelings tend to go in both directions on the issue.

I have a feeling that younger players tend to gravitate to playing their own gender, and that older players are less exclusive about it. I don't want to drag out any "psychological theories" about it, and I may be way off in my guess, anyway.

I'm male, and about 90% of my Elder Scrolls characters are female. My form of role-play involves seeing the character as another person, very definitely not "me," so I have no need to identify personally with the character. I find that I'm most interested in characters who are the least like me, actually. I think it reinforces their "other-ness," and allows me to see them as friends I travel with, like the characters in a book or movie. The result is that their game-lives tend to develop into imaginative personal stories that blend with the game's stories. In a way, each character is a completely different experience, and the result is that the game is never the same twice. I don't think that would happen if I tried to make my character into a "mini-me."

I think this is probably true. It seems to me that, in my years on these forums, most of the males who have stated that they only play male characters are mostly younger gamers (when I know anything about their ages and six). And I think you're right that as they mature many male gamers tend to relax about this issue.

Myself, I'm a male gamer who only plays female characters. I don't identify with males in real life and I don't identify with males in video games either.