I have never understood this attitude. I've heard it expressed many times, by both men and women. Why this disparity? I don't understand. Why would we be so strangely fascinated when we see a man playing a woman and yet unconcerned when we see a woman playing a man? The question always seems to be 'Why would a male gamer play the opposite six?' Never 'Why would a female gamer play the opposite six?'

By the way, this isn't aimed at you, thehunter. I've been reading statements like this for ten years and have never understood it. Maybe somebody reading this can enlighten me.

I'll play either, but honestly, 99.999999999...% of the mods are for female characters, so I go where the action is. All things equal, all things are equal, but all things aren't equal, so I find myself on female characters most often.

I'm a woman and I usually always play a female. I would try playing a man once in a while, but I can never get into it.

Well for one, I think the main thought about this is when playing a game some would try to make a cyber avatar of themselves, or what they believe to be the perfect version of their gender, a super man, or super woman. While others will play an "eye candy" character, the perfect version of the attractive opposite gender.

I do both these character types, a manly male version for my gender then an eye candy version for a female character (I like pretty faces).

Another reason for playing another gender is for the npc reactions some in morrowind will act differently not only based on factions but race and gender. I've gotten better experiences with dialog persuasion on Vvardenfell with female dark elves besides the eye candy thing as well. Other times my males characters were well, better liked in dialog by some npc's it depends on what npc's you talking to (as a hint some of it depends on the npc's gender at least what I thought I noticed).

Same with me except I'm a man playing a man. I voted for second option.

I call this the titillation effect. It is to look at the opposite six for visual sixual pleasure effect. I use to be a teenage boy once too. :drool:

It's human nature, that is why we usually don't have any ugly actors in movies and TV. Hardly anyone wants to see ugly or common folk. We want to see good looking or attractive actors and actresses.

It is espically true in the music buisness. Why do we have so many Britney Spear type singers, Looks but not much talent and we hardly have any Suzan Boyles. Even though singers are suppose to be used for hearing, ironically, singers are based on looks instead of sound.

I like Sylvester Stallone, he's not exactly pretty.

I think people find it odd when a guy plays an attractive female character because they expect him to be jacking off all the time, and that's not something a lot of people want to think about.

Not saying that that's what people do, it's just what I think the general assumption is. It goes along with the bad stereotypes that are associated with gamers.

I am a teenage boy, and I don't play any female characters

Female and only Female, unless the males look ok, but I have yet to see this in a TES games YET there is the fact that I svck at maken a decent looking character on the home systems XD
I need some points on this anyhow:( I don't even like looking at my characters faces they are so bad so I hope in the next game Bethesda makes it easier for people like me to make a decent looking character.
I try to make the females look like me also and if I do make a male when than idk how he should look, hot i guess XD

I understand why people play a character of the opposite six. Maybe I should have phrased myself more clearly. What I don't understand is why other people have such an exclusive, one-sided fascination with the idea of a male playing a female character. As the poster I quoted said, "I completely understood why women would do it, but men???? that did seem a little... strange." So my question is: why would anyone think a man playing a women is strange and yet think a women playing a man is not strange?

I don't know, maybe I'm trying to be too logical here. My natural assumption would be one of two things: 1) playing the opposite six is understandable no matter which six is doing it or 2), playing the opposite six is not understandable no matter which six is doing it. I don't see the rational basis for treating one six differently in this case. *shrugs*

Maybe I'll just have to give up and accept that it doesn't make sense and leave it at that...

The same. Despite male Altmer starting with higher Endurance than female.

I don't understand what people's difficulty is in playing as the opposite six, especially in an almost exclusively first person game like TES. Are you imagining yourself as the player character? If so, why don't all of your player characters look like you?

If you can imagine yourself an Altmer mage I'm not sure what the difficulty is in imagining yourself a woman. The same is true of women who cannot play men.

I guess it's easier for me as I don't imagine my PC to be me.

Double-Standards, really.

Think of it like the more extreme real-life equivalent. If a girl acts "manly" nobody really cares all that much; somebody may comment but nobody confronts them about it too often, but if a guy acts "girly" then everybody flips %$*@ and gets in their business.


I don't do it for "eye-candy" I just do it because some characters just fit the position better. Like I said, they're like characters from a story. I take my characters seriously and put a lot of thought into them, I think about it like this:

"I want a character that studies under magic... What's their background and personality?"

I think about gender and race last, because any personality and background could pop up in any gender and race. :shrug: I get deep with making characters, I suppose.

I've switched over to playing female most of the time now - it's just more visually appealing to play dress up with a woman.

Always male, because in both Morrowind and Oblivion it turns out that

In Morrowind, yes, but not in Oblivion, right? Xcept for But even then your not a re-incarnate.

All my Morrowind characters are Dunmer... It just feels natural.

My Oblivion characters are:
An Imperial, who travels.
A Dunmer, Who jams near Cheydinhal.
A Khajiit, who hangs near Leyawiin.


All male. Firstly cos I'm a guy, and I prefer my elite soldiers to be guys who know what they're doing, not girls. I'm not sixist, but I just don't see myself playing a girl who gets herself in danger. Just not my thing- They aren't sixy or something in Oblivion, and mods out there just ridicules them by giving them all 38H's and impractical armour which gives as much protection as their bra.

I kind of know what you mean, at least in the case of Morrowind. Generally all my characters in that game are mer of some sort of Bretons - I don't think the Incarnate has to be a Dunmer per se but I would find it a little far fetched if they were of human/bestial origin. To me, Azura's prophecy seemed as if it was created to revolve around merish affairs. They always seemed to be the ones most involved with the Daedra Lords, anyway.

For Oblivion though, I think I'd prefer to play as anything but an Imperial. You have enough generic overzealous Empire loyalist NPCs running around in that game. I'd rather not add to their ranks.

I have to admit, I tend to romanticize my adventurers, like TheLazyDumer mentioned. I'm not against female characters, but in many ways I still treat TES like the oldschool high fantasy RPGs. I like all my characters to be experienced and cunning, not really the "wayward apprentice" drama they use in all the anime cartoons.

EDIT: Jiub, I miss Flo. :mellow:

To tell you the truth, i'm not completely sure about that myself. For one thing, it seems women always prefer to play as their own gender while men is much more divided. Also, the reason i always chose to play as my own gender was that i so my characters as avatars of myself and presumed most people did. But the main reason was probably that i thought it was something sixual, not that there's anything wrong with that, it just seem'd a little pathetic. But why wouldn't i asumme the same if the roles was reversed? I don't really know, maybe because i'm not nearly as fast to asumme the worst thing about women... atleast not when it comes to that kind of things.



Maybe because Altmers dosn't exist so there isn't any wrong way to play them and it's much easier to see yourself in the role. For instance, i've got no problem playing as Khajiits but i never bothered to even try the Redguards.

When I have the option I play as males just because I can relate better and put my traits and likings into that character.

Always a Male cause i am one lol

I always play as a male. Staring at a woman's butt all day is not my idea of fun. (I'm not terribly keen on first-person. It's too awkward unless you're indoors.)

Always female if there's a choice, as many games don't allow you the option. Go (in-game) gender equality! :hugs:

I try to make my characters as much as myself as possible, to some extent. When I play as the Men races I always pick dark hair for instance. I think thats why I went from Argonian to Men races, because, obviously, they're more like me. Although I rarely make "myself in Vvardenfell", I take aspects of myself and combine them with what I want to play. So if I make an adventurer raiding dungeons, then the raiding part wouldn't be me, but the interest in exploring the world of the game would. And there are, as always, exceptions. I've enjoyed sneaking around assassinating people in Oblivion a lot, but its not something I would consider in real life.

It was a bug caused by me, don't be silly. ^_^

Still though. Take Fable for example. I almost always play as a female in that game, but I reverse the concept you're talking about. I make the moral decisions that I would in real life but I am a woman. It doesn't detract at all from the experience, and I'm not stuck staring at a hulking dude all day.