This is a dumb debate in my opinion. In games where you get a choice to be either a boy or a girl, who do you pick?

For starters, lets set out there that the sex of your character will have no influence on game performance. It's just for aesthetics like in MMORPG's and such.

I prefer to make my characters female. WHY, you ask? Well, I'm going to be looking at the damn character while I'm playing, why pick a dude? Personally I'm all about looking at lady types over male figures (not that there is anything wrong with the reverse). So for me, it's a no brainer, female characters give me something more appealing to look at, enough said.

I just get sick at people who think only pedophiles and creepy nerds play the female characters since there are "no girls on the internet." It's not a perverse thing, it's more like selecting what music you would rather your ears listen to during a game, for my tastes, a female character is more pleasing to my eyes!

Pfft...

Guy characters.

Mainly because there are very very rare female characters that don't suck donkey balls. Seriously, I'm trying to think of just three and it's hard. Sad but true.

Not only that, but female characters are all boobs and booty and it's boring (alliterations for the win). I want an in depth female character where her only redeeming qualities aren't her gravity defying tits and her minuscule amount of clothing.

I don't play games with how the characters look, I play them for the fun.

I see your point, and indeed you have a valid one.

I was thinking more about games where you have to select the gender of your character (like in WOW or Mass Effect) and the gender doesn't really change anything but the aesthetics. The core game will remain the same with the only difference being that you follow a male or female in the third person.

That's why I like picking the ladies, it's much nicer watching Commander Sheppard ass wiggle in front of me for the hours I spent walking in game if she was a female and not a male!

See what I mean?

In most games, I pick male characters, preferably ones similar to me. For fighters though, I mostly play women(Makoto=SF3,Cammy=SF4,Sakura=SFA,Hotaro=FFMOTW,Hsien-Ko=darkstalkers, etc.) I have no idea why. I think most likely very few male fighting games characters seem similiar to me. The exception would be Blazblue, as I play Carl and Hakumen.

In general, I prefer to play as a male character, particularly in online games. I did play as a female on one of my play throughs of Fallout3, but that one didn't really matter because I was in first person for basically the entire game.

For the longest time I would always try to make a character that looks like me in videogames. Some weird kind of narcissism, I guess. These days, though, I tend to go for huge black dudes with an afro, usually named either "Afro Jones" or "Doctor Feelgood", depending on how much space I get to enter in a name.

The overwhelming majority of multiplayer chacters in shooters are male.

Therefore, males have a higher frag count.

Males win.

MENTALITY!

It really depends on the game I'm playing. I generally prefer to look at female characters, but there are situations where I prefer to use a male character. With MMOs, I want a character who better represents me, and I'm not a woman, so I pick male character models. Fighting games and action/adventure games I tend to prefer the ladies not only because of the look, but because the speed characters tend to be female and I prefer speed over power in those types of games. Final Fight style brawlers also tend to give the best move sets to the female characters, just check out games like Shadow Over Mystara, Aliens vs. Predator, and Red Star for a few examples. RPGs I just like staring at the ladies so I tend to make mostly or all female party.

I tend to pick the male character for games like Harvest Moon for obvious reasons. In games where the gameplay differs based on the characters you choose, I tend to go with whoever has the best story or the best gameplay style.

Generally I would prefer a female, since I am one, but a lot of the time I don't choose them because the female leads in games tend to be all tits and ass eyecandy, which pisses me off to keep looking at. Haunting Ground was a great game, but I would have liked it a hell of a lot more if she had been wearing clothes that would have properly fit an adult. You can make attractive leads without insulting your female players, but not many game makers seem to want to.

If I'm given a choice of characters with preset personalities and dialogue I end up choosing the one I think I will like the best. IE normally I'd like to play Zoe in left4dead, but Francis is so much funnier. so- most of the time I end up playing as the female is games like Fallout3 where it really doesn't matter at all and you don't even see them and dialogue doesn't change.

I make one of each with similar names to confuse people. :P

There was a survey some time ago of WoW players in the UK and the US. In the UK there was a far higher percentage of male players who would choose to play as a female character compared to the US.

The US guys decided this meant the Brits were all gay because they obviously identified with female characters rather than male. The UK guys decided this meant the US players were all gay because they obviously preferred watching a male character's backside running around rather than a female's.

I'm not sure what this proves other than that surveys can be interpreted to mean anything you want!

DAJB
There was a survey some time ago of WoW players in the UK and the US. In the UK there was a far higher percentage of male players who would choose to play as a female character compared to the US.

The US guys decided this meant the Brits were all gay because they obviously identified with female characters rather than male. The UK guys decided this meant the US players were all gay because they obviously preferred watching a male character's backside running around rather than a female's.

I'm not sure what this proves other than that surveys can be interpreted to mean anything you want!

i lol'ed

i usually choose depending on how i much i like the character. l4d, it would be zoey or louis, l4d2 would be ellis or coach. "incidiary bullets of love over here!"

and for rock band, the first character that i made was a dude, and now i play as a female character, mostly because i'm lazy to go through the list of characters that i've made, and she's on the top of the list, and many other reasons.

The less a character reminds me of myself, the better I'm able to play them as a character, rather than just an extension of my own fairly goody-two-sboes, subdued behavior (fortunately, there are very few overweight, glasses-wearing nerds that are the protagonists in AAA video game titles, but you see where I'm going, right?). To that end, when I can play a female character, the game becomes not about my journey, but hers, and to me, that's vastly more satisfying.

Of course, if the overriding priority is to beat the shit out of things, or shoot at them, or blow them up, then it really doesn't matter, does it?

Erad
I see your point, and indeed you have a valid one.

I was thinking more about games where you have to select the gender of your character (like in WOW or Mass Effect) and the gender doesn't really change anything but the aesthetics. The core game will remain the same with the only difference being that you follow a male or female in the third person.

That's why I like picking the ladies, it's much nicer watching Commander Sheppard ass wiggle in front of me for the hours I spent walking in game if she was a female and not a male!

See what I mean?

I see. I choose characters who have the more entertaining personality to me, despite gender. And they usually tend to be male.

The vast majority of the time, I choose female. If it's a customizable character, I like to try to make it look like me sometimes, though it's still kind of weird because the character is still tall and, well, I'm not. If I can't get it close enough, I just go with whatever I think looks nice.

The only game I can think about offhand that I'm going to go guy on is Borderlands, when I get it. I'm more than likely not going to like the female character's play style. I'm not really a TF2 Spy type of person. Fallout 3, I might make a good karma guy sometime. After I'm done playing with bats and explosives.

I'm with Erad if it's a single player game. I'd much, MUCH rather spend all that game time looking at a female character. But that's only if t's 3rd person view. If it's first person then it doesn't really matter too much either way...

...Except in terms of character abilities etc, as people say.
usually some boring dick of a guy represents the average, and that's good for starting out. Some small sexy female is weak but fast , or a sniper, spy or something else that specialised- in which case I'll ply as a female when I get better because those are fun skills. And then there's a giant brutish male that is slow but very powerful...
It annoys me a bit that there is that stupid skills categorisation based on sex at all, or why it usually stays within that dumb convention.

For multiplayer games I prefer to play as a guy character because I don't want other guys chatting me up, -_-

There is an exception to that however:
-If I get really good at a game and I wat to be a bit evil... I'll make a girl character that looks really weak and crappy and then set about thrashing the pants off of people who judge the book by its cover.

WOMEN HAVE NO RIGHTS, SHUT UP.

Erad
That's why I like picking the ladies, it's much nicer watching Commander Sheppard ass wiggle in front of me for the hours I spent walking in game if she was a female and not a male!

See what I mean?

I picked a female Sheppard as well.

I also exclusively used Liara and Tali (the two female aliens) during away missions. I also made it so that all three of them were always equipped with pistols.

I called them my Angels.

... Yeah, I'm gonna go now.

Ha!

That's pretty hilarious since I too used them in my party. I had no desire to see a male running behind me nor did I want to hear their voice. The ladies however...MmmmmMMmmmMMmmmm

Do I sound absurdly homophobic by doing this?

Either, but I guess I'd usually prefer to play a girl. Because usually when I play I feel like I AM the character and...I like feeling like a badass chick I guess. XD ...MOST of the time anyway. Like that new game Bayonetta, the demo I played seem pretty fun, but her design still confuses the hell out of me. Gotta respect 'em for making it a girl with glasses though, that almost NEVER happens.

I'm cool with playing a guy too (especially if I find them hot)...but well, lets say if Max Payne is really going to look like this in Max Payne 3, I'm not looking forward to staring at his ass in third person this time. =/ (Even though Max Payne's face in the first one was absolutely silly, but I liked how he looked from the back. XP)

Boy, this post wasn't at ALL shallow.

I think I normally pick guys, but like they other person, in fighters, I generally pick girls. I think that's because guys are more about power and girls have more interesting fight styles.

Girls are more fun to watch tho...it's not a perverted thing, I just don't want to watch a guy for however long the game is. I understand where you're coming from, even though it does seem like you're trying to have other people tell you it's not a big deal because you're not sure yourself...

Well...

I like screwing with the design select options sometimes. So when I create guys I try to make them look like girls as much as possible and when I create girls I try to make them look like guys as much as possible 8D usually it's the first way round though... yeah...

I remember in Tales of the World I ran around in probably the weakest armour for the entire game JUST because it looked like a dress.

Well... in the current game I'm playing, I could have chosen this:


But so far I'm using this exclusively:


In fighting games... these are some of my fav characters...