i like something nice to look at when im playing xD

I am not missing a thing. Like I said, I am sick and tired of it. I do not enjoy it anymore. If the game developers will not give me what I want, then why should I buy their game? They obviously do not want my money. It is like going to a restaurant and finding that they only serve liver and onions, when you hate liver and onions. So do you eat it anyway? Or go someplace else that serves what you like?

I agree with this. I primarily play RPGs, and if an RPG cannot offer me even that most rudimentary of roleplaying choices- my character's six- I entirely lose interest. They did not spend their time implementing what should be a basic option, so I do not spend my time playing their game. I will watch my husband play that game instead, and treat it like a movie. And to be quite honest, from what I've seen, I'm not missing a thing.

Games like that really are more like movies anyway, because generally the main character's "story" is already established, so the game involves acting out the role, and you're lucky if there's even a branching story-line.

I don't worry over playing one gender or the other, but I detest playing through a game where I'm really "on rails," just hacking my way from one cutscene to another. That isn't role-playing as I understand it.

It's because the genres are almost entirely meaningless nowadays. The term RPG used to refer to a very specific sort of game rooted in DnD mechanics, usually text-based or with very simple graphics, and with very little player input on the outcome of a given decision. That kind of game simply doesn't have a place anymore in a visual, visceral medium like this one. And JRPGs were unique at one point in that they actually had a clearly defined, epic story in an era where most games had a paragraph of background info on whatever you were doing. That too is a meaningless distinction when every game nowadays has a relatively deep storyline and RPG elements (swapping out weapons and armor, some kind of skill trees) and some games (Bioshock, Portal) tell better stories than actual RPGs.

Personally, I prefer a controlled storyline. When the developers have to create multiple branching stories, they tend to be, in my opinion, weaker and blander than if they have a more focused approach.

Lol, that could be true.

...where have you been then?

havent seen u round these parts...

im going to play lollipop chainsaw and that is with a female protagonist, thats just one game off the top of my head.

if gender mattered... would anything change, for instance a game like assassin's creed is tasked with being male in order to make historical sense, ill leave it at that...

anyways... its all for role-playing purposes... at least for hte people i know who do it, i make all my characters look as closely to sheogorath as possible personally.

I did it in Fallout 3 and NV because there was more men then woman that were important. I do it in Skyrim because boobies and lisbian marriage.

There is some excuse for not giving the choice of a female character where the story is based on an already existing character (eg Geralt) or the game is set in a specific historical period where a female character wouldn't make sense (I remember how ridiculous it seemed when in Europe 1400 aka The Guild I could choose to be a female bishop). None at all in a fantasy game where everything has been invented specifically for the game (eg Fable, the Gothic series, Two Worlds). Then its just laziness on the developers part.

I play as a female character because I'm a girl.
Also because I like the idea of a female being a strong, powerful adventurer... aided by growing up with Tomb Raider. In The Elder Scrolls games there doesn't appear to be an obvious division of gender when it comes to choosing classes concerning the time period; whether it's because it's already passed, not happened yet or simply never has intention of existing...it just doesn't seem obvious to me. Particularly on the Shivering Isles.

I also forgot to mention. What might also make it easier for some male players to play a female in TES, is the lack of gender specific dialogue. For example: In Oblivion when I played a female none of the male npcs tried to come on to me. Which is a good thing, considering I'm a dude in rl. In games like Dragon Age: Origins or Neverwinter Nights, there's always some dude trying to kick it to female players. That's why I always play male in those games.

Okay, but you're not really role-playing a female, then. It's quite true that Oblivion's gender-neutral dialogue tends to support a "neutral" character, but the reality is that one's gender and sixual orientation do have an effect on the choices we make, and the way that others interact with us.

It's my opinion that this is one area where TES is weak. Dialogue should not be the same for all characters. TES manages to have some race-specific talk (especially in the area of battle taunts), and attribute-specific ("Look at the muscles on you"), so it would be nice if that extended to gender-acknowledgment as well.

Personally, I don't know why Geralt couldn't be either male or female in the game, as Shepard in Mass Effect could be either male or female. Games are a different entity than books or movies, as we all know, and have different requirements and different conventions than books and movies do. Granted, I haven't bought or played the game - and never will - so there might be more to it than I realize.

The books predate the games. I didn't think much of the books, but maybe they lost something in translation from the Polish, and I dislike the character of Geralt but given that the game was based on the books it makes sense for Geralt to be male. Possibly the developers could've chosen to use the setting and allow the player to create their own character. I'd have preferred that.

I realize that. My point was that games have the freedom to do things the books did not, just as movies based on books have the freedom to do things that were not in the books. Geralt in the books was certainly male; Geralt in a video game - at least in my opinion - could, potentially, be either male or female.

Personally I prefer to play as a female because I like seeing a female kick ass, they are much better at it.

Interesting that you mention this. The protagonist in all but one of the Silent Hill games was male. The movie was originally going to have a male protagonist because of that. But early on the filmmakers realized that the main character worked better as a female, so they changed it.

Of course you cannot make two versions of a film, one with a male, and another with a female protagonist. Although with anime they come close to having both in one, when they go with the standard uber androgynous male lead When it comes to video games, it is much easier to offer both genders as playable. It does mean more work for the developers of course. You have to make two models for the player character, and two sets of every article of clothing they might wear. You also have to double the voice-acting, meaning a much bigger footprint on the hard drive. But seeing that Mass Effect and many other games manage it, it does not seem like an insurmountable challenge either.

Not insurmountable for a series like Mass Effect that has an enormous budget, sure.

Thinking little of an RPG that lacks even basic customization options makes sense, but it seems to short-sighted and/or selfish to reject games solely for having a male protagonist. It reminds me of the threads I saw pop up when Skyrim screenshots appeared, asking that spiders be removed from the game because the OP had a phobia. The game can't cater to everybody; you can't remove spiders because they scare some people, and vampires because they scare some people, or else it just goes on until you've removed everything. If you try to make them all optional, you're driving up the balancing and bugtesting that needs to be done.

I'll fully agree that females are terribly represented in the industry, with 9/10 female characters that do appear being stupidly obnoxious six objects. If a set character's gender is important enough to not play a game over, though, how is it also meaningless enough that the character can be expected to switch it without any change or impact at all? "Pointless palette swap" hardly seems like good representation either. If you want to make game characters blank slates who can be matched to whoever is playing, you're going to basically end up with no set characters at all; male or female.

I think it would be amusing if a game (obviously 1st person) began with the player not knowing the character's gender, and finding out only after committing a significant amount of game-play. It would require some clever pronoun-avoidance in early dialog, of course. Maybe half-way through the main quest, the truth would come out, and from that point, the game options would become increasingly gender-specific. A little bending of the mind is a good thing, I think...

There's a certain cursed item in Baldur's Gate, which, when equipped, changes the character's gender (and then can't be removed.) I always thought that was an amusing twist, and wonder how many players restarted because of it!

I disagree that it is short-sighted to play the game you want. Rather quite the opposite. I think you are wasting your time, and your money, to pay for something that you do not want. More then that, giving a company money to create something that you do not like is only going to give them incentive to continue creating products that you do not want. It is completely self-defeating.

I do agree that it is selfish to play a game that you do like however. Doing what you want without any concern for anyone else is absolutely selfish after all. Since it is my money and my time, I reserve the right to be selfish. Should I be selfless and play a game I do not like? Do you buy games you do not like, and spend hundreds of hours playing them?



There are two basic kinds of RPGs, one where you play a predetermined role, one where you create the role. Or another way of looking at it, is that some games tell you a story, some let you make up your own story. I prefer the second, because I do not want to play someone else's character. I want to play a character of my choosing, one whose background, goals, appearance, name, etc... that I create. I not only want a blank slate to start with - that only I fill out - I need it. Because I want a character that is matched to me. It works very well too, I have had thousands of hours of enjoyment from the ES games, and they all let you start out with a character that is entirely of your own determination. You may think it is meaningless to give paying customers what they want, but plenty of us gamers - and consumers - do not. Bethesda obviously does not either, because that is exactly what their games do, and it has brought them a great deal of success.

Metroid did it. IN THIRD PERSON.

Mind blown?

Nah. I survived the 60s.

The point wasn't about people playing what they want, but about avoiding even finding out what the content is because they don't like what's on the cover. It's akin to refusing to play a game because you don't like its title. People are welcome to do that, but I think you'd be hard-pressed to describe that as a particularly informed decision-making process. As for "selfish", the idea again is not about people playing what they want, but taking it a step further into a company being obligated to design a product specifically for them. Refusing to consider a game if the protagonist doesn't personally resemble them enough seems reminiscent of that.

Again, you're missing the point. It goes back to taking it a step further than playing what you want, into expecting everything to be what you want. If you only want to play the blank slate variety of RPG, go for it. Saying the other variety should also be changed into the blank slate variety simply because it's your own preference, not so much.

I don't see where SubRosa did that.