Secret Sex

Saturnana

My main (a female Bosmer) is fairly representative of me in a way, but I play male characters as well.
In other MMOs my main would always be male to not get weird chats from guys all the time.

EDIT: haven't had that problem yet in ESO

malicia

lnsane wrote: »

My main (a female Bosmer) is fairly representative of me in a way...

lnsane wrote: »

Nâmae Rin - Master Crafter's apprentice and sneaky little thief

I'm sure you didn't mean that you're a sneaky little thief, but your sig in light of your comment is pretty funny.

FriedEggSandwich

malicia wrote: »

FriedEggSandwich wrote: »

I kinda know what you mean, in that I usually roll my eyes when I hear this uber-hetero reasoning, mainly because it seems so practiced and a little defensive lol. Why not just say you wanna play as a woman?

Because I would be lying. Male player, female toon - two very separate entities. I've never encountered immersion in a game to the extend that I actually felt that the toon reflect me.

If you assume that I'm genderbending because I'm playing with a female toon, what then do you make of people playing with orc toons ? I doubt that all the Khajiit players have a secret desire to be cats or to have tails.

Sure, you'll get players who create toons to reflect themselves. You'll also get player who create toons to reflect who they want to be, but who they're not (think skinny geek creating a muscled hulk). You'll get players who create toons reflecting an idealized version of the girl/guy they're hoping to someday hook up with. Then you'll also get players who create a toon simply because it looks cool, for the challenge of creating a pretty orc female (whole thread here about that) or because "this one loves the way that the Khajit speaks". Assuming that everyone else are creating toons by the same reasoning as you use is a very narrow thoughtset.

It's cool man, I didn't accuse you of genderbending. I was just spouting off about guys who justify playing a female toon by saying they'd rather look at a female ass all day, as if I as a guy playing a male toon enjoy the sight of his tushi. I'm not really that bothered by it though, it's all good

malicia

FriedEggSandwich wrote: »

It's cool man, I didn't accuse you of genderbending. I was just spouting off about guys who justify playing a female toon by saying they'd rather look at a female ass all day, as if I as a guy playing a male toon enjoy the sight of his tushi. I'm not really that bothered by it though, it's all good

All good.

This topic actually has me curious now. I think it might make for very interesting psychology research: the deep down reasons why people choose their toons' race, gender, hair colour,....

Glamdring

Im a male and play as female. Women are the most beautiful creation in the universe. I Love everything about females. And I like strong women in their full power if u understand what i mean.

Lieblingsjunge

I'm woman. I play mostly female characters, however I do have 1 male character. It wears pink, make-up and got long hair.

I probably should've made a male main char, tbh. Because staring at a female butt is not as nice as staring at a man's butt. -cough-.

malicia

Lieblingsjunge wrote: »

I probably should've made a male main char, tbh. Because staring at a female butt is not as nice as staring at a man's butt. -cough-.

Mostly medium/heavy armor hides the toons' butts to the extend that there's not much to stare at. But screens where you see faces, such as inventory..

If I should ever see a real life girl with eyes as green as my toon's , you'll probably find the stereotypical "male stares at female and walks into lamppost" kind of thing happening.

Saoirse_Siobhan

I'm a woman and my main is female, though most players still assume I'm male IRL. I play solo mostly so if I ever chat, it's not for long and I don't bother correcting them.
At one point all my other toons were male, don't know why. But now I have an equal amount of male and female characters. Still only find the time to play on my main though. Maybe one day I'll take the time to level up a male character.

ListerJMC

I'm female, and the two characters that I play as the vast majority of the time are both male: an Altmer sorcerer, and a vampiric Redguard nightblade.

I like them the most simply because I find them the most fun to play as, I have an even number of males and females overall.

Rickter

My personal preference is to play a male. in fact i have this weird desire to create characters that look like me irl. I feel like if i cant see myself IN the character, I cant become immersed. This is MY story, right? so i want to be represented. that unfortunately confines me to making male characters. I will say that I find it a little off putting when i see males playing as female characters, seems a bit misleading tbh. . . HOWEVER, i also feel like playing a character is like writing a novel or that characters story. So roleplaying a female character is no more different than a writer, writing a story in which the protagonist is a female.

This pic is 3 years old, ive cut the hair and grew some wrinkles since then, but here is an idea of what im talking about:

DocFrost72

Read title, was misled. 1/10!

Serious: I am male, I play a male imperial primarily. He doesn't look much like me. My old breton sorceror (the main before my imperial templar) is literally me cloned to ESO, even in his RP.

UppGRAYxDD

My argonian practices Parthenogenesis so He is technically male and female...

souravami

Most of my characters are Dunmers and all of them are from house Indoril. None of them are really reflective of myself irl.

Saturnana

malicia wrote: »

lnsane wrote: »

My main (a female Bosmer) is fairly representative of me in a way...

lnsane wrote: »

Nâmae Rin - Master Crafter's apprentice and sneaky little thief

I'm sure you didn't mean that you're a sneaky little thief, but your sig in light of your comment is pretty funny.

Hahaha! Well if it's chocolate or cookies, I'll be going after those for sure.
The cookie jar at our office would love to testify at that, I think. xDD

ViciousBunnii

I am a woman, that plays as a woman in all games, if permitted. The only reason I ever got into the Fallout and Elder Scrolls games is because I could be a girl. When I was a kid, I loved playing with Barbies. Sims is one of my favorite games. I notice if I can play as a girl, I feel more like I, myself, is actually in the game. Loved GTA from the beginning, just never stuck with it, because I couldn't be a girl, same with many other games. Even in Sims I don't really play as a guy. Dressing up men isn't as fun to me as women. Watching women walk from behind for hours a day is way more appealing than watching a man, in my opinion.

ViciousBunnii

TheWhiteDarkness wrote: »

I'm a woman and my main is female, though most players still assume I'm male IRL. I play solo mostly so if I ever chat, it's not for long and I don't bother correcting them.

LOL! I do this too. They'll be like 'Hey man, can you...'. I just wanna say 'Hey chic, no problem!'. haha I usually just ignore it until I keep being called a guy, then I will correct them after awhile.

Angelfire_Arisen

I'm a female and always play female characters. They also tend to have similar features to me irl. Just as Ricker previously posted, it also helps with immersion. The only time my chars don't look somewhat like me is when there are restrictions on customization or they aren't regular humanlike races (cat, lizard,etc.) Since they can't look like me, I just make what I like, then never end up playing them. I love that others do play those races though, I enjoy seeing all the wonderfully different appearances.

malicia

lnsane wrote: »

malicia wrote: »

lnsane wrote: »

My main (a female Bosmer) is fairly representative of me in a way...

lnsane wrote: »

Nâmae Rin - Master Crafter's apprentice and sneaky little thief

I'm sure you didn't mean that you're a sneaky little thief, but your sig in light of your comment is pretty funny.

Hahaha! Well if it's chocolate or cookies, I'll be going after those for sure.
The cookie jar at our office would love to testify at that, I think. xDD

+1
Have you ever wondered how the can of condensed milk next to the keyboard got empty so quickly?

Floki_Vilgerdarson

Pick what you like looking at.

Merlinah123

I'm a female and always play as a female. Don't know if there's a reason for it but that's what I do. I have played games where you couldn't choose and I like being able to choose, the roleplaying seems more "real".

Chrysa1is

ProfesseurFreder wrote: »

How many men out there play as women -- and how many women play as men?

My main character is pretty much reflective of me, and is an older male. But I do have three characters that I play a lot, and one of them is female. I don't think of her as reflective of me, I think of her as a character that I am playing. But I must say -- it is quite amusing to watch how young male players (I'm assuming -- and if this post is about anything, it's about how assuming is dangerous) react and try to interact with me when they _think_ I am a woman! Some of them behave like complete fools.

There's a lesson in there somewhere....

:To assume is to fool oneself." -- Charlie Chan.

It has always been my belief that if you make a character of the opposite sex then you must love anime.

Lynx7386

*Le gasp* men playing as women? Scandalous!

And here I thought I was weird for being a human playing a khajiit!

/sarcasm

I have 5 characters, all are khajiit, two are female and three are male, I'm a male khajiit irl. No, really, it's hard typing with these laws and I couldn't bring myself to play a no-clawed ape, it just breaks my immersion.

Ok, maybe I actually forgot to turn the sarcasm off =P

Alchemical

I play an Argonian. Small chested female? Narrow shouldered male? Only Sheogorath knows.

Honestly race matters more than gender to me. I don't play games to role play as myself. I'm a house wife, my real life is boring. I've never liked playing humans in games, and when elves are just tall humans they are equally unsatisfying. So usually I like to play monsters, beastmen, animals, aliens, something that's SO different from myself that it requires I have to stop and think about how different they are even if it puts me at a stat disadvantage. (This is why I like the Dunmer so much though, they're not boring, typical elves)

Even if I'm not actually literally role playing with other players and just playing any TES game (or most RPGS) by myself I passively think about how my character would react, not myself. And if that character's thoughts and logic would be comparatively alien to my own then putting myself in those shoes is something that takes thought and I can entertain myself with it. It also helps me understand situations or moral quandaries from other perspectives and reach other conclusions that might be more satisfying than if I just applied my own personal boring conservative human views. Gender plays such a comparatively small role it's almost negligible from my perspective, unless you are designing a character who's whole concept relies on gender tropes.

This is why I like Argonians so much even compared to other beastmen races in other games, they have a well developed but very different way of looking at life and morality than most. It's reflected in their seemingly primitive culture, their selective memory of their history, and even their language which lacks present or past tense. Argonians view life as a single moment, the order of events therein not being individually important. How do I, a human who can't realistically conceptualize a world without linear time, relate to that? I have to stop and wrap my head around that concept, divorce myself from my own thoughts. In doing so I immerse myself in the character and by extension I'm more immersed in the greater world.

I danced around the question about gender with that because I'm sure there are people who swap sexes for the same reason though, not just for vain or perverted reasons. Some people might not even think that deeply about it but just gravitate towards certain choices. They don't want to project themselves onto the game, but want to be drawn into the world. They pick something different than themselves to disassociate from themselves and instead become someone completely different. Neither is a more or less valid way of picking your character. I mean, even if you DO just wanna be vain or perverted it's not less valid either, I don't put time into designing characters to NOT like how they look.

All that said, I'm a female and I typically play males, though my ESO characters are an evenly mixed bag (3 female argonians and 2 male argonians that are all somewhat ambigious looking, and a big buff male Redguard for variety and eyecandy). Maybe I'm in the minority, but I don't really care if people assume I'm male on a male character, unless they use it as an excuse to be rude. They'll eventually figure it out or else I'll correct them if it ever becomes important, which is pretty much never. We all make assumptions all the time, taking personal offense to something someone couldn't have knowledge of beforehand is kinda silly. I save the anger for people who are being rude or obnoxious on purpose.

crashen17b14_ESO

I play male characters pretty much exclusively. I dont buy that whole "If I am going to stare at a butt all day..." nonsense because you ARENT staring at your characters butt all day. Or at least you shouldnt be. Honestly your character is usually the last thing you need to look at when gaming. Your health, stamina, magicka, cooldowns, enemy health, friendlies positioning and health, your own positioning, enemy attacks, quest log and mission onjectives... the list goes on. You can trust your character will be there.

Now, when I make a character I usually start them looking like me. Tall, gaunt, pale, auburn or red hair. Then I get creative. My main character is a breton magblade vampire, he is a bloodmage healer. But he is rocking the full body burn scars, pale gray-white hair, and spooky face tatoos. I made him as monstrous and deathly as I could.

I dont make a character to look sexy or attractive. I make them look badass or fitting a certain mental image that fits the character. My imperial templar is scarred, stubbled and tatooed, but was also made to look a bit softer, more scholarly. He was a soldier before he became a battle-priest or chaplain type. He is meant to look stoic and regal.

My dunmer magknight, fire and lightning, cataclysmic forces and daedric powers, is a follower of Boethiah and respects the Tribunal. He is lean but muscled, his face gaunt and features knife sharp. His hair is long and elegant and iron grey. He also has the full body burn scars, but he bears them with pride, for he earned them in a daedric ritual. They are the Price of Power. To wield fire, one must KNOW fire. He might have been handsome (for a scowling dark elf), but his scars and lean features marr whatever beauty he might have, because he isnt concerned with being pretty. He wears the trappings of power and pain as naturally as he wears the mantle of dark elf superiority.

Basically i build myself as a base so i can relate and feel immersed, and then make changes to fit the character and archetype. I do however also enjoy designing female characters, though I never play them. My fiance hates making characters, so she usually tells me what she wants and lets me go to town.

Enigma_Bombay

I'm female and play female characters exclusively in mmo's unless the character class I want to play is only available as a male. I'm also married, the parent of two kids and probably older than a lot of gamers I encounter, male or female. I never correct anyone in a game who refers to me using a male pronoun or nick because I really don't care.

I haven't had anybody get "overly friendly" to my characters in ESO but I also haven't played here very long. I've had it happen occasionally in WoW, most often while in random battlegrounds, oddly. I did have a raid leader once who implied that, because I am female, I should be more flirty and friendly on voice coms; I could have reminded him that I was consistently top heals for the team and didn't really need to justify my presence any other way but well whatever lol.

I just try to treat everyone equally and that's how I'd like to be treated, no matter gender or race presentation in a game environment.

(And yes - I choose to play healers most of the time. I have over 100 hours on Lucio and over 80 hours on Mercy in Overwatch. Make of that what you will.)

Bax

I play as male. I don't have problem staring at my butt, because it's awesome anyway. /nohomo

And if I am bored staring at it, I can always switch to first person view. Anyway I usually play as a male in games. It feels more natural for me to roleplay male than female (even if I roleplay different type of personality than I am myself). But main reason is that male armour usually look much more badass. I don't want to be wearing steel bikini when facing boss 3 times bigger and stronger than me with huge sword/claws/whatever (ironically I wear half naked pirate costume on my main, but pirates are badass so it's ok, right? ).

But in case of ESO, female armour actually looks quite good and realistic so I might try some female characters in the future and fool around with boys

tim_tesy

Im a dude, I play a female wizard lizard and like dressing her up all pretty. she has a swank hat too!

Dustfinger81

tim_tesy wrote: »

wizard lizard

Nice!

Sigtric

Way back, 2001ish when I started playing MMOs (Asheron's Call at the time) my coworker who got me playing told me I should make a female character. His reasoning: People will give you free stuff.

I'll be damned if that wasn't true. I even made a male character later to compare. People would run by and initiate random trades with my female toon. Lots of gold, lots of items. Male character? Nothing.

I ended up ultimately playing male characters because as I learned that game and later others, I discovered in this genre of games that I couldn't keep interest in playing the female counterparts. Something didn't feel right. I needed some sort of connection to the character. I always built my male characters to have some sort of semblance to me whether physically or some aspect of a personality trait. I could never connect to the female characters and want to play them.

This did not hold true in single player story games. Back then MMO weren't very heavy in story telling and you made your own. If a female main character was pertinent to the story I had no problem in a single player game keeping interest and playing it.

Over the years in MMOs I'd try a female toon from time to time because it would offer something visually different from my normal, but they'd always go neglected after a day or two, and eventually deleted.


In ESO the same held true, and anyone who knows me here knows all my characters were visually identical. It was always the same male nord configuration. One day around the Halloween fest last year I got it in my head I wanted to finally give in to the racial passives and make another DK, this time Dunmer.

I didn't like the look of the male Dunmer at all, so I went female.

She is now my most favorite and cherished character. I have no where near the same interest in playing the others.

/shrug

SydneyGrey

Came over to see why a thread about sex hasn't been locked and deleted yet.
LOL

I'm female and play as female most of the time, although I've played as male in a couple of games. I just feel more connected to female characters. They're not reflections of myself, though ... they're always more beautiful, more badass, and 20 times braver.