I fall into the rather large category of male gamers that prefer to play an MMO with a female avatar. I do it mainly because I'd much rather spend my 500+ hours of MMO play time watching some hot chick beat up bad guys than an over-pumped dude with a penchant for lycra.
So anyway, when it came time to creating a leveling pact duo in City of Heroes with my girlfriend, I had to ask myself the question:
Is it weird to play as a female avatar when you are playing with your girlfriend?
Since we would be spending a lot of time in the game together, I imagined that it would be a little odd having her introduce me to another player as her boyfriend if I looked like a woman... or is it these days? (lol)
I decided to ask her how she felt about me playing as a female avatar. Her reply was:
"I think that would be a little weird, don't you?".
My initial response was:
"Pfft... no.. it would be hot!..",
but I ended up agreeing with her. It was definitely an interesting experience creating a male avatar... kind of a first for me. I wasn't sure if I should be making him look attractive or deadly or scruffy (apparently girls like scruffy) or something else entirely. The CoX character creator definitely didn't help much. There are about a billion different options to choose from. I tried a few combinations, but I just couldn't get comfortable with what I was seeing. In the end I just went with a cross between what I looked like, Han Solo and Superman. It seemed to work... although I don't think it did me justice ;)
In other news, Saylah has written an interesting article about how in gaming, gender sometimes matters. Maybe I should have created a female avatar...
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7 comments:
i ALWAYS play as girls, ever since Chun-Li first introduced the satisfaction of kicking someone's ass with a chick to me.
then again, I'd probably re-roll girl in RL if given the choice as well? sex changes are creepy, and so is menstruation... and i probably wouldn't want to have a boyfriend, either... but i'd be a hot feminine lesbian, woo! yowza. probably TMI, but whatever.
my wife is a bit of a tomboy, and she finds it funny that i'm always running around as little ol ixobelle, but when I asked her, she said she'd roll a big guy if she played a game like WoW, so there ya go.
What you should have done is had your girlfriend create your male character, and you create her female character.
Then you could've been happy staring at each other while you play!! :)
but she won't play wow
/cry
@Ixobelle
I've always played as female characters online. The character creation screens are always begging me to create the perfect woman. Unfortunately I don't think she exists, but I love trying.
Is your wife anti-WoW or is she just not an MMO player? If she does enjoy video games, I recommend trying City of Heroes out with her. It's ideal for couples and a load of fun :)
@Pete
That idea is pure genius! Although I'm not sure she would want to play as the scantly clad trollop I would create for her...
I guess I could try something more conservative...
/gulp
My boyfriend plays a lot of girl toons and I play a lot of male toons. Explain THAT to the people you group with. "So... which one of you is the guy and which one is the girl again?"
@Pike
It can certainly be confusing. Ordinarly it's not really an issue, but when you play with your partner and get introduced to others, it helps have picked an avatar the same gender as yourself. Although it can sometimes be fun to confuse people ;)
I have a girl character in WoW, I looked at the male characters and they're all too burly or in the case of gnomes, goofy for me. Then when I made a Lotro character, I tried a male character and even though he didn't look like an oaf, I had gotten used to a girl character so I switched back again. I tried to get my wife to play WoW once, but it didn't hold her interest long, so it's a non-issue.
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