Men Playing as Women

A reader writes, "According to this report written by an on-site psychologist, 20% of males surveyed play female characters in computer and console games for "gender exploration" purposes. There are some pretty amazing stats cited there- check it out- Pretty hip site. "

do women play as men?

I wonder how a survey would result if the question was proposed...

Do women play as men?

Re:Bullshit!

Well, actually in Quake 3 all models have the same "box" where they can be hit. Just because the model seems smaller, it doesn't mean it is.

Same for the quicker part--they all have the same speed.

Interesting

I play female on EverQuest, People give me stuff. And on Quake, because of the target size.
As for the issue of gender exploration, can't do to much of that in quake. I mean how much exploration can you do when its run,run,run frag,frag,frag?
I would be surprised if the number of men playing women isn't pretty high.
Now it still creeps me out when someone plays an opposite gender character in pen and pencil games. Mostly because it gives a little too much insight on how a particular male thinks women should/do act. shiver.

It's not like we had a choice in Tomb Raider.

Maybe we'll have to wait for TR 8 or 9, when we find out that Lara Croft is actually related to Pitfall Harry, and we get to play either char. ;)

Seriously...
I think "tactical crossdressing" is an appropriate description. In some games, the female models are indeed harder to hit, especially with sniping weapons. But nobody outruns blast damage, so always pack a rocket launcher and a couple of grenades.

Re:Well...

>>Just think of how many people play as "females" in cybersex chats.

All of them! :)

not valid survey, but interesting discussion

Only 33 surveys were completed and a few other comments were included in the findings. The researcher spends a paragraph explaining that this was very informal. Thus the results should not be taken with any weight. However, the discussion on why men play female roles is interesting.

Re:What about on Slashdot?

Odd. I play a troll on slashdot ;-)

seriously though, I use this nick all over the place. Even used it for the name of my record label. And still no one knows what it means :-)

"Gender Exploration?" That's like, totally gay!

I mean come on man, sure I play as a girl sometimes, but that gender exploration thing sounds totally gay. I mean, sometimes I pretend to be a girl on IRC, but its only so the total gaywad guys will hit on me which proves they're gay. I mean, sure sometimes I feel more comfortable as a girl in video games? So what??? Are you calling me gay??? I'll kick your ass!

Stupid fags.

[e-mail]

Just out of curiosity....

How many game players sampled played Tomb Raider? I ask this because you don't have any other choice than to play a female role. Considering this, how many games were reviewed that had exclusive female characters?

In Quake III, I usually play the female skin. Not because I want to explore my feminine side, but because she seems to move quickly, and more gracefully, plus she's not this big grunt that you can see/hit easily.

Fifteen subjects, or 23%, reported that they play female characters because they are "more aesthetically pleasing" than male characters.

That goes for real life too. The female form is a much more pleasing shape to look at than the male form. (Don't think I'm biased because I'm male, ladies. Anyone who's ever studied art knows this.)

Respondents commented that if they have to see a character running round a game for hours on end, they prefer to be looking at a sexy female rather than a hairy male.

Duh...

Yeah, I'll agree with most aspects of the article. I do catch myself occasionally wondering what it would be like to be a female in life situations. Every guy does this. If you say you don't, you're a liar. Once you accept you are male early in life, it's natural to wonder what it would be like to be female. I also say that anyone who says "Oh God, you're a guy and you're playing a FEMALE?" is pretty insecure about themselves.

Some guys want to explore feminity, that's fine with me. I'll do the same. (Although I think I need to cut down on those weekend trysts with Barbie Dream Designer. ;)

-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon?

Female characters rule!

In my years of MUDing, I started to play female characters a lot. It's rather fun. There are a couple reasons.

1.) Female characters don't get whomped right away. - People tend to be nice to them.
2.) They have more style. I don't know why, but rarely is a female warrior disgusting and brutish. They're mean, nasty, tough, but stylish.
3.) It balances the game a bit more. I'm sorry, but, well, there are just too many mail characters.
4.) It helps stop dorks from hitting on people in games. When they realise that they've tried to hit on a guy, they feel dumb and wonder a little before they try again.

Oh well. Those are my reasons. What reasons do the rest of you have?

Competetive advantage

Competetive advantage. . . Hmmm, too bad none of the game companies have come up with the "Wife" character set. These would be a winner every time. Every guy who has been married for over two weeks knows that in every way/shape and form, he will lose. sulking the ever familiar "Yes Dear" as his closing remark.

Why I do it.

When people play games of fantasy, they play as gnomes, wizards, warlocks or whatever. You get a chance to play as someone you are not. So when I play a female online, it doesn't mean I'm a transvestite or anything, any more than those who play wizards actually think they are wizards. Its just doing something you could never do in real life. That's why people play games in the first place.

Absolutely

In High School and college I did a lot of RP Mudding. And while I didn't spend much time on FurryMUCK, I knew some people who did. For those of you who don't know, FurryMUCK is an anthropomorphic mud-- everyone role plays a character as an animal. Furry eventually became the red light district of MUDs, and that's all I have to say about the place.

Anyway, I knew more than one real life women who had alternate male characters on the MUD simply because they were sick of getting hit on. On the internet, no one knows you're a dog. So that 14 year old lesbian school girl is probably some twice divorced 35 year old guy named earl. The real question is, "Who's playing the 35 year old guy named earl and what's her phone number?" :)

-Ted

Re:do women play as men?

Somewhat related to the above [salon.com]

... and in related news

"IRC Users Victimized"

2/23/2000 (AP)
A report released by the FBI NIPC today indicates that 93% of the attractive women logging on to Internet Relay Chat (IRC) servers are actually men who fit the "lonely homosexual man" criminal profile.

An international man hunt has been launched in an attempt to locate a criminal using the alias "lolita69" in #netsex on EFNET.

"lolita69" is the suspected mastermind behind a recent campaign of distributed deception that has caused approximately 1.2 billion dollars in damage to major IRC servers throughout the United States.

Does this count?

I played Ms. Pac-Man once...

Those arn't females, those are men

Sure, the body shape is female, but that doens't make them female. Gender is more then just body shape. It is no coicidence that men are stronger then women. Oh sure, a really in shape girl can out run me, or lift more then me, but if I as a normal male started exercising that much I would be able to out do the girls in any strenth contest. It is all about testostorne and a few other hormons.

No look closely at the so called girl players. They are men in strenght every aspect. Many guys in high school play sports (okay, not /.) and are in peak shape about the age of most game charicters. Most girls, even if in the same sport are not as strong. Oh they might be more agile (I don't have knowlede here, but I don't think aglilness is gender related - can anyone clarify?) but they do not have the strength to do the things that men can do. Very few people can do what Lora is doing in tomb raider, but men will have a much easier time devolping that strenght.

So my point is these are not girls they are playing, they are men with the overt features of women.

Now in D&D it is possibal to play the opposite gender, but video games don't provide that. Even in D&D type games, can you really say that you are doing a good job? I tried it once, and I won't again - girls think differently, it isn't something I can put my finger one, but they do. Now maybe with some study I could duplicate that ability, but not now.

Note, when I say that girls are different from men I'm trying not to put judgements on it. Yes men are stronger, but that doesn't mean better. And calling women weaker should not be used to imply they are not strong enough since for most tasks they are plenty strong. And thinking different is something that I can't put my finger on and even then you have to realise that I don't think like most men either.

When games get female roles that are female and male roles that are male, without reverting to sterotypes then we can compare.

See a lot of discussion in rec.arts.interactive-fiction (or whatever the group is) on the subject of gender. It turns out to be hard to do gender correctly.

P.S. All generalzations are false. Be careful when/if composing a rebuttal that your not pointing out and exception. Anyone can find an exception.

Re:Yeah, I do

"If I had boobs like that I wouldn't leave the house. I'd just stand in front of the mirror all day and look at my boobs." --Butt-head

Re:"Gender Exploration?" That's like, totally gay!

check out Baiting.org [baiting.org] a site dedicated to pranksters posing as sexchat girls and then pulling the rug out from under the stupid guys who fall for it. Some of the logs are pretty damn funny.

Re:do women play as men?

I've certainly played male characters. Sometimes I don't even do it on purpose. "Default" gender in our society is male. I have an identifiably female name here, but a lot of my psuedonyms are less obvious. Unless you identify yourself some way, you're just assumed to be male. It's amazing the stir you can cause by waiting a while and "coming out" as female.

The atmosphere has become a little less testosterone laden, but it used to be "inconceivable" that a female would be online unless it had something to do with her boyfriend. I had at least one online friend who wouldn't believe I was female until he met me.

Women as Men online

I would say that there was more to the issue than for exploration.

While a number of people have raised the point of the woman playing a man to avoid sexual passes and so on, there has always been a tactical advantage as a hacker to pretending female gender. In the eighties most of my friends had gotten free accounts on systems with special features by finding a girl to talk on the phone and 'Prove' they were female, at any number of systems.

The fact is that having females on a BBS was a huge draw, and sysops were VERY horny boys most of the time.

Exploiting this issue has always been one of the humorous side-effects of a desperation for female attention even in a virtual world.

In recent play on Everquest I found that as a female I was FAR more likely to be simply GIVEN stuff because I was in a female character. I actually stopped playing female characters because I felt that it was in some ways a cheat. The females are projected on the screen as scantily clothed buxom lasses, who despite the fact that they might be 50th level warriors, might not have had the wearwithal to buy pants.

In Clan Lords (another multiplayer game) I found that by creating a female character I was absolutely treated better than the males. In a game where I was represented by a 32 by 32 icon of an elf in a dress, guys would go out of their way to help me.

As a former administrator on a mush for 6 years, I have seen a number of players be given advantages based on their gender.

In truth, as a 14 year old boy, I used to log into DDials as Generic Girl and log the disturbing modemsex so that I could show it to the other members of the systems I was on.

And as to getting away with pretending female gender, I found that it was easy. Just act like a person and don't make a big fuss over your gender. Most people don't actually pay much attention to their gender until it is brought into question.

As I like to say, "Actually I am a superintelligent blue hamster developed at MIT."

My name is scumdamn and I've played as a woman.

It all started in Street Fighter II. I started off with Ken (I consider him a gateway drug. He looks so effiminate.) and of course got hooked on Chun Li. I mean, she was so strong. She could throw from feet away and I could kick everyone's ass with her. After learning her idiosyncracies, I couldn't play with anyone else. Since Street Fighter, women in fighting games have been either too weak, just wierd, or their boots clashed with their tights, so I've played as men. Of course, with Virtual Fighter 2 I played as the drunk. I guess that says a little something about my state of mind, huh? If I can't be a woman I'll self-destruct. With the advent of Quake, the female skins were always too butch. What fun was that? Might as well just play as the Marine.

With Quake II, the female model was fine, but she just couldn't match up to Chun Li. I thought the magic was gone. A Chun Li model came out, but by then I was playing Half-Life with that boring Gordon Freeman.

That brings me to the crux of the problem. Now that Quake 3 is out, there's a model named Mynx who looks good, isn't too weak, doesn't have annoying pain sounds, and doesn't have any weaknesses. The problem is that if I were to play as her my son would rag on me and make fun of me. What should I do? I'm all confused.

Just sign me

Mixed up in Mississippi

Re:do women play as men?

However, I don't think there are alot of women who would enjoy being called whores and sluts because they're better at a game than some random loser.

I don't see why it's much different than cries of "asshole", "dickhead", and various "insult" implications of homosexuality levied at any other player. If you're playing with immature losers, they're going to act immature. If you can't deal with it, go play elsewhere where there's a more acceptable environment. I and most other friends I know are perfectly capable of dealing with silly insults, and I really fail to see why anything less would be expected of women than men in this regard. If I were a woman, I'd be more insulted by the implication that I couldn't handle that kind of crap than the crap itself.
--
Kevin Doherty
[e-mail]

Re:Why I do it.

I think a friend of mine hit the nail right on the head. He said,

"If I'm going to be staring at this EverQuest character for six to eight hours a day for months at a time, I want this character to be a cute chick." Nuff said.

Re:do women play as men?

I remember being the only female on several different BBSes -- and no one figuring this out for several months. I was quite amused.

same situation when I played Magic (remember, those cards that you (yes, you) used to play with all the time with every other geek in sight), especially at math tournaments. I was REALLY stared at. classic comment: "are you REALLY a girl?" (this is only funny if you've seen me, I guess. let's just say that I've never had anyone mistake me for a guy yet, and that it doesn't have to do with my long hair)

however, most people were very friendly, and only a few were patronizing. I find that I prefered it before, in some ways. back then, it would be inconcievable to make offers of cybersex, etc... (well, at least I never saw any!) :)

Lea

Computer-based RPGs

Hmmm, interesting thought.

<Dungeon Master> You encounter a script kiddie!
<Haxxor> Heh, I'm compiling "trinoo"
<Wumpus> I'll use my P3 +5 on him
/Wumpus rolls dice
<Wumpus> shit! I missed
<Dungeon Master> Ok
<HaXXoR> I'm casting "trinoo" on his P3
/HaXXoR rolls dice
<HaxxoR> Hah! a 20
<DM> Sorry, Wumpus your Pentium is DoS-ed for the rest of the battle...
<Wumpus> I draw my dual 486s.
/Wumpus rolls dice
<Wumpus> Hah! a hit with cpu0, but cpu1 misses. Take 33mHz!
<HaXXoR> Ok, that's it. I'm compiling "kill"
<Wumpus> I'm stepping back and pinging him with my +3 TCP stack.
/wumpus rolls dice
<Wumpus> bitch! take 16 pings!
<HaXXoR> That's ok, I'm gonna kill(1) you this round.
<HaXXoR> BTW, I hardly felt that, I'm wearing +8.2 send mail
<Haxxor> I'm going to kill -9 Wumpus
<DM> "kill" has no effect.
<HaXXoR> WHAT?!??
<Wumpus> That's right, I'm running as root, fool.

Re:Those arn't females, those are men

I think you can find accurate male/female abilities in fighting games. If you watch the more realistic ones, like Virtua Fighter or Tekken, the female characters don't do as much damage with strikes, but are faster and more agile to maintain the balance. When a male character does a throw, it is usually a wrestling move, like a body slam or suplex, where the damage comes from landing alone. The women's throws are more judo-style leverage moves followed by strikes once the opponent is on the ground. Or she just grabs the guy by the collar, bitchslaps him around a little, then finishes him off with a knee to the head. (Bonus points to anyone who gets that reference.)

I think game designers deal with gender issues in one of four ways:

• Real World: Typically fighting or sports games, where realistic gender differences add to the experience.
• Balancing Act: The game relies on character classes, with men and women being equal within the class. This is easy to do in RPGs like Might and Magic (to pick an example I'm familiar with). It's also the "politically correct" way.
• Deal With It!: The characters have specific gender either for plot or design purposes. Good examples would be Alpha Centauri (where a rule-driven choice of faction comes with a gender-specific character as leader), Tomb Raider and Oni (where the central character just happens to be a woman), and Diablo (where Sorcerors are men and Rogues are women, and allowing you to switch would have made the game even later. :-))
• You're The Character: Think about Gran Turismo. You don't have any representation in the virtual world; just the car you're driving. And the car has tinted windows, so you can't see in! :-)

Keith Russell
OS != Religion

Re:Guile kicked Chun's ass

I'm afraid you're sadly mistaken. Chun Li could recover from a block very quickly and throw Guile's chump ass with zero problems. Besides that, she had that little bitch-slap that was great for humiliation. Even after they gave her a fireball and all that interesting shit I still used her as either a ground character with throwzilla magic or an air character who could bounce off walls, throw in the air, and multitap you on the head. Even if you were in a special move. Guile was my bitch when I played Chun.

*g* very interesting

Time I spoke up... it's a very interesting topic to me, as I've played/interacted crossgender for a couple _years_ on a muck... and not as your stereotypical 'hottie', either, at least not the way that is usually meant ;)

For me it's a bit like the way Lewis Carroll made the protagonist of his Wonderland books a female- there's a certain type of geekiness that just can't relate to trucks and boasting and fragging people in Quake and all that stuff, and this can easily be seen as a more female perspective. Perhaps it is. Perhaps it'd be equally helpful to just interact with really intense geeks who cared only about nifty algorithms and programming APIs (not so much CPUs- cpu dicksize wars is, well, rather male ;) )

I did, however, spend an adolescence feeling very frustrated and outclassed and afraid to talk to girls, and never understood why none of them made the effort to reach out to me- and this is why I _know_ the genderbending thing can be educational, I've learned from it. I know some people get flustered from being hit on when they pose as females, but since I was trying to work out a comfortable persona to _stick_ with, I had to find answers to that problem- and I ended up being just like the girls who'd intimidated me so much when I was a teenager. There was no way around it- to cope at all with a flirting sort of situation I needed to deal with more confident people who were able to say what they thought, just the kind of person I wasn't. That kind of insight is something I never had as I was growing up.

I certainly agree that many males passing as females do a questionable job of it- certain attitudes and especially descriptions (!) just scream, "horny teenage boy living out fantasies!"- but it's not a rule that such genderbending is always spottable. I know that I've occasionally startled IRL women who'd assumed, after getting to know me, that I _was_ one of them. The trick is that you can't really cover up your true self, it will always show through one way or another- and hell, I've never understood Guy Stuff or felt like I belonged to Maleness anyhow. When my true self shows through, people take it to be a female self. This doesn't trouble me, because it doesn't really matter much in the long run- not like I have an active sex life so it's rather a moot point most of the time.

Oddly enough, I am not wildly effeminate. I have to shave or I get 5-o-clock shadow, my voice is pretty deep, I have no complaints on a certain very private level *g* so I have to wonder- is my basic confidence in my physical maleness strong enough to totally permit my embracing of a _personality_ oriented femaleness? In other words, if I was hung like a chihuahua, would I be driving a pickup truck, lifting weights and fragging people in Quake with massive displays of virtual testosterone? *g* this notion amuses me greatly.

Well, _that_ was bizarre to talk about on Slashdot. Back to the normal posts for a while. Yeah, gimme that crakhor quake model! She's a real hottie plus I think the bounding box is smaller so you can beat the other guys and frag their asses! (huhuhuhuh, he said 'box') ;)