Why so many men like to play with a female character?
I'm not judging, I'm genuinely curious. The reason why I'm asking is because in this sort of games I like to make the character resemble me as much as possible in every aspect, so I'm just curious to know what is the motivation behind men that decide to play as a female character.
If its a 3rd person game and im gonna be looking at someones ass for 40 or so hours, im gonna make it an ass I enjoy seeing.
I think women are cool.
Making the exact same character in every game gets old after a while. Also boobs.
Also ass.
I play in 3rd person and I'm a ass man
This exactly. If I'm going to spend hours staring at or hearing a voice, if rather it be attractive to me.
Man-ass or male grunting are not my particular flavor of candy.
For me, it’s the voice. For a voiced character like V, it requires a very special talent to take you on a journey with them, to listen to their fear, pain, anger and despair. Cherami Leigh just does such a fantastic job of bringing V to life for me, of really bringing that raw emotion out and making it feel real!
Mass Effect was the same. Femshep Gang \m/
Why be me when I can be a pretty girl
Character customization is one of my favorite parts of the game. And to be honest dressing up a "hot" woman is more fun than a guy to me.
Also I like looking at a woman more than a man. So there's that too.
Cause I prefer looking at a woman instead of a man.
Cause being a dwarf isn't an option.
尺ㄖ匚Ҝ 卂几ᗪ 丂ㄒㄖ几乇
For cyber Karl!
You get to build your own big titty goth girls.
As probably a generic "dude" as one can be, I like playing female characters because it gives me a chance to be someone I'm not. I play games to remove myself from the real world for a bit, and playing a male character feels too much like self-insertion.
It's weird, but being forced into playing from a "self" perspective I find to be less enjoyable. I like being told a story, and getting to participate in it, but I dont like when the story feels like it's supposed to be about myself, rather than a character.
I make my V an attractive and slim woman with a massive dong so it’s absolutely nothing like me.
I spend every waking second as myself, why would I want to play as myself in a game that allows me to be someone else?
I got my V to match me pretty well, and I must admit it's pretty cool seeing my face as a chromed put merc.
I mean, I generally prefer to look at female asses. But I often think the female voice actor is better, although Male V is about equal.
this! don't get me wrong, I like a nice man butt as much as the next pansexual guy, but if I'm gonna look at someone's backside for a 40 hour campaign, I'd rather it be a woman's.
As the next pansexual guy... you know nothing of my work.
I also like the female style choices. With male V I pretty much stayed in Johnny's jacket most of the time. With female V my outfit and hair color changed constantly.
Cyberpunk 2077 is first person though.
Yeah, true. I do use bikes a ton though.
I'm curious too, what's the motivation to make the character look like yourself?
Well, when I play a role-playing game, I want to immerse myself into the game as much as possible. I play as myself, and make choices that I would if I were actually there in the moment. To me, it gives my decisions more weight, because they actively affect "me".
Fair enough. Self insert is interesting in it's way.
When I play a roleplaying game the whole point is to be someone else in another place, so I become them. A different personality, a different gender maybe, a different attitude.
It's still me really, since it's coming out of my imagination. It's an aspect of me, a chance for that side of me I wouldn't otherwise engage with to come out and be seen.
To feel more aligned with a character and try the story on oneself, maybe
But I also have never tried that as this seems to be a missed opportunity to play as someone else
Narcissism.
I think for a lot of people part of the fantasy is getting to be someone else.
There are a few reasons, but please note that this list is by no means exclusive to Cyberpunk 2077....
Games are about escaping reality, as a man I can tell you that in my experience, men are often locked down into a generic "man" mold that is never broken in real life. Gaming gives us a way to pretend to be someone else completely.
Female characters in games tend to be funnier to play as, they often has better dialog and more customization options.
Finally, one of the biggest reason men play as female characters in games is simply because it is better to have pretty female character to look at when gaming rather than a generic boring male character, this obviously includes boobs.
I would join the "more pleasant to watch" gang, but I would also say that maybe getting an experience that I can't get IRL is an incentive to play as a female character for me. Also that's probably the same as with Ranma ½, and people feel differently about it.
And also maybe because exclusively male characters tend to fit in the heroic overcoming archetype that does feel a bit stale
Sometimes playing as a guy feels like the normal boring experience. Often also ladies have cooler clothes. I feel like my character is cooler as a witch than a wizard
I would like to know why so many people do what you do: create themselves. That is so... boring..? I have never had such an urge. But then, I barely care about my own appearance at all (gamer moment), so I guess that makes sense.
I like to make a character that I think I would enjoy being. That doesn't necessarily mean someone exactly like me, but also not exactly unlike me.
You never had the idle fantasy of what you'd do during a zombie apocalypse or with superpowers? If not, dang thats rough. Some folks want to self-insert, I don't blame 'em for having a power fantasy. Heck I'm on team human male knight myself.
Of course I have. I guess I just think of playing games differently, where I want to help the story of someone else unfold, rather than self-insert.
Just like I don't play humans in games with non-humans, I'm a dude in real life so I don't necessarily want to be a dude in-game. Also, the third-person ass thing is a give in, obviously!
Especially a reptile elven ass
As I've aged I find myself choosing female characters more and more in games that give the option. For me, it's not about "heheh, hot" at all, they mostly have better voice acting and feel less cliché. I often try the different choices for a few hours to get a feel of which voice actor/actress I like most, and the vast majority of the time it's the female one. I also generally like heroines more, both in games and movies/series.
Same for me, but male V is actually pretty damn good. I might actually prefer him after a playthrough with each.
Some of the best cyberpunk characters are women and the clothing is cooler.
For the former point: molly millions/Sally shears and YT were both by far the most interesting characters in the sprawl series and snow crash respectively.
Funny thing about cyberpunk as a genre is the women are often the badasses with complex characters and the male leads are usually bumbling selfish dummies that generally fail to resolve anything (Hiro protagonist in snow crash, Johnny mnemonic, case in neuromancer, and to a lesser degree bato in GIS who's just clueless half the time instead of bumbling).
For the latter: mox gear is better than worn browns and grays.
I also just think the voice actor is better and Judy is the most interesting love interest.
For Cyberpunk I’ve played both because I play to enjoy the performances, and they’re both different performances. Now when replaying I always do female V because her performance is bloody incredible (not in any way saying the performance of Gavin Drea was bad mind you! But Cherami Leigh knocked it so far out of the park that I consider that personally the “canon” performance)
The character in the game doesn’t have to have anything to do with me at all. Just like a main character in a movie or a book doesn’t have to look or be anything like me for me to enjoy it. I’m looking for interesting stories not my auto-biography
I was actually just thinking about that the other day. As far as I can tell, people tend to fall in to one of two camps:
I always make my characters completely different from me, so they often (maybe 60-70 of the time) end up being women. My friend always makes them look as close to himself as possible.
I think it comes down to different styles of roleplay. I'm myself every day. Why would I want to be myself but Cyberpunk? My friend, on the other hand, wants to imagine himself as being in that world.
And then you have the third camp of people who make their characters horny or humorous, which can be fun to do occasionally but I cannot imagine doing regularly.
Play by the no center sliders rule a la Monster Factory.
There he is, hero of earth camera pans to the most fucked up gremlin you've ever seen
Why is it important that your character matches your gender?
For me it's because of the style options. The hair and clothes style options are much more diverse than what you can do for the male V and, since I like women, look much better on the female V in my opinion.
Been playing male characters in games since the dawn of time (1990) so now I like to switch it up every now and then since we have the option to choose our own characters in a lot of games now.
Metroid (NES) was one of my favorite games as a kid. Finding the hidden rooms etc. it was wild when you found out you were playing as a girl.
Later, I preferred the Rogue in Diablo (1). (Firewall just inside a doorway / other restriction and bzatt with the bow gatt).
Since then I tend to try to recreate these characters as best I can in newer games. Largely for nostalgia reasons.
For 2077, as a nerd with multiple completions with the different prologs (and a hardest difficulty clear of "Dont fear the reaper", and I have yet to complete the DLC), Fem-V I feel has the best dialog and a few other noticable gameplay differences.
If you play as Male-V Your character is more agressive and with a few upgrades feels like they can solve most issues by punching someone through a wall, this works very well writing wise with the street kid background. You also fit more into the sterotype of action-movie star, I sorta view this is the default for dialog as the game expects you to fight your way out of most problems.
If you play as Fem-V Johnny is significantly less of a jack-ass to you early game. The corpo backstory has the games best lines, Fem-V is incredibly sassy and knows how to make people panic by bullshitting work jargon at them. On relationships, especially after the funeral, it makes me question why V and Jackie wernt an item, also River is a wet blanket... Sorry.
Overall both are fantastic VA preformances, I have played more games as Fem-V than Male-V, but thats mostly due to me prefering a netrunner/stealth build on the harder difficulties. One character comes off as a one-liner spouting cyborg with anger issues, and the other is a psycho-chick who will jump out of your cereal and stab you in the teeth.
Funny you mention Male-V punching his way through problems because that's what I did with my Female-V. Something about the dissonance I find both very amusing and kinda attractive in a way. One of my all time favorite characters is The Major from Ghost in the Shell, and I am drawn to strong bad ass women in general.
And thats the fun of role playing games!
As many have said, generally I enjoy watching ladies being badass murderbabes in fiction (not sure I’d actually want to interact with an IRL murderbabe, unless she was on my side). As an aside, one of my favorite aspects of the Horizon series is being an unstoppable murder machine in a cute package.
In Cyberpunk specifically, I think a lot of the plot points are more poignant as Valerie—the whole intro scene with Johnny is a massively more problematic and narratively interesting interaction, for example. Another instance is getting turned down by Kerry, even though he’s bi and ruining River’s day because who doesn’t love ruining River’s day? Also in this game specifically I just really enjoy Cherami Leigh’s performance, but I will more often than not play as a lady in games when it’s an option. That’s just a long winded way of saying “‘cause I like to.”
I used to make characters look like me, but I found that got boring. And in this age of hyper monetisation and paid costumes it was costing me money. I figured that it was more fun to make an interesting character out of free costumes. And it turns out I like staring at a female character more than a male one.
Relatable
I was an egg so now I'm a woman playing a female character.
Hell yeah sister
In Cyberpunk i started first with a male character and on the second playthrough chose female to shake things up and really enjoyed the voice actor. My subsequent playthroughs have been with female V.
I find stuff like fashion more interesting on a female character. Also I don't really think of my game avatar as "me". But it really depends on the game.
I don't but if I do it'll be with mods, wanna see them booba jiggle
I started to use female protagonists for UT2K4. Smaller target. But, then it just morphed into just wanting to see a badass woman be my hero.
Well, don't want to play myself. So I made "random" good looking characters. Which I realized years down the line, that I'm subconciously creating my current girlfriend, ex, crush, etc. It's funny now going back into old games and seeing a totally different, "random" character from those times
Many years ago a friend said to me, while I was making my first WoW character for Burning Crusade, why would I want to watch a male character run around everywhere? I considered and agreed with that, and made a female character. Since then I've consistently made female characters.
They are always based on what I would consider attractive at the time. Which hasn't changed much all things considered, but there are some variations.
Literally what happened when I showed my girlfriend VR: your avatar is me???
Man I've no idea why I do it. In have a female VR avatar too. I've thought about it. It's just what I do. Like, there's no desire to be a woman in me, but in virtual space I just seem to be one.
In cyberpunk I did both. I made a blades only femme fatale with sandevistan and mantis blades, and I made a male hacker V with smart weapons.
I suppose I base my choices more on what fantasy I have in mind for my character than the fact that I'm a man myself, but if that isnt as much of a factor I very pragmatically go with "girl ass on screen > dude ass on screen".
I think that having started playing this kind of game as a lean teenager, I subconsciously felt closer to the female form than the (more often than not) bulky bodybuilder.
Edit: you can probably attribute this to a reaction to toxic masculinity.
A few reasons. My first playthrough, I played as male V nomad. For my second, I went when a female V streetkid. So, part of it was going for a different story.
Another part is Judy. Yes, people have made mods to allow romance as a male character but those just don't seem right to me. Judy's a badass, beautiful, crazy-smart, and one of the only characters in Night City that I could likely be friends with IRL. But friends/extended family is all it could be. She's very clearly a lesbian, in her character as you get to know her and even her choice and style of tattoos - the roses on her arm especially seem rather anarcho-sapphic to me. Using a mod to "make her straight" just seems wrong, like a violation of deep parts of who Judy is. So, my second character was a lesbian.
And finally, when I started my second playthrough, I was a bit thirsty.
They "don't seem right"? How so? I am romancing her as male v and I haven't had any issues. She was originally bi to begin with. There's mods to fix the voice and some of the animations, too. Using a mod to "make her straight" is harmless. Let me guess, but it's ok if people make panam romance females, right?
They "don't seem right"? How so?
It feels to me like robbing the character of her agency (yeah, it's a program that doesn't really have agency). And it seems too similar, to me, to "she just needs the right man" sort of thinking, which is just tiresome.
Let me guess, but it's ok if people make panam romance females, right?
You do you. I'm not judging. Just stating how experience it myself. I'd not do that myself with Panam because her dialog when flirting with her as femme V makes clear that she's not into women.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯ It just feels right man
The only game I’ve tried to make a character resemble myself was GTA5, just because it seemed funny. Otherwise, I make up a character in the same way one might for a work of fiction, and some are male, some are female.
I'm trans. 😺
Role playing is much more fun when I’m not playing someone similar to me.
Valerie's inflection is more satisfying than Vincent's IMO. I also prefer the additional styling options.
Bewbs
Self-inserts are fine, but severely limit the scope of your roleplaying. I play as men and women, and make characters with their own specific drives, flaws, and strengths.
I also occasionally make my partner and play as her, which might be weird for some but I like it from time to time.
I started my first playthrough as a male. But male V just seemed like a dull loud asshole. So I restarted as female V. For me this seems like the intended way. V is still loud and brutal but also seemed more sensitive to me.aybe it's just the voice acting.
One of my biggest criticisms points is, that it's not really possible to play a calm and collected character in Cyberpunk. That's something I'm dearly missing. Cyberpunk 2077 is not really an rpg.
Games is about new experiences, escapism if you will. Playing as somebody else and trying to thing how that person would act and feel adds to the escapism.
I don't generally do that. But...what do YOU want to look at when you play games?
2077 is a first person game, so seeing the character really only happens in the menu. In third person games where I can see my character, I... just prefer seeing women. Don't get me wrong, it's not like a game is worse if I can't look at a female character, but if I have a choice, why not?
For 2077 I'm not exactly sure why I chose it the first time. It may have had something to do with not being able to make a male character that looked like some version of me. I probably didn't like the long hair options. I don't regret it though, I really like Judy.
Obviously subjective, but;
I'm male, 5'7", 150, athletic build. Definitely male in appearance, but I'm not bulky. To your point about "the character looking as much like you as possible", depending on the game, my frame is more similar to the female than the guy who's neck is bigger than my waist.
I like smash-em-ups just fine, but sometimes I want to approach the mechanics as I would in real life, and that's intentionally, and executed with subtlety. A lot of male-focused paths/stories are forced to be blunt force and loud.
Smaller hitbox
I've almost always played female characters in video games because I prefer characters with speed and agility advantages that suit my preferred duck & dodge play style.
Honestly I can't think of any recent games that give characters statistical, mechanical differences based on gender.
The only mechanical differences I've ever seen are story related, like different romance options for men and women.
