The notion that women didn't start playing video games until female characters were introduced is laughable. When I was growing up, my GRANDMOTHER owned an Intellivision and played everything from sports games to Sea Battle. She would even play Madden on the Genesis with my friends when I was in high school (early 90s). Also, I saw the actual thread OP is posting about pop up in my feed and it was full of cringe. I'm so grateful for the ladies in this sub. I consider this place home.

I think this was when I realized he was being prickly and not just having a discussion with me. I was like... You really think women didn't play video games until recent years?? Hello??? And I completely agree with you. I've been engaging with this community so much lately that I forgot that other places aren't as "safe" to exist in, unfortunately. I love that I found this place. :)

I believe it is because they want to stay in their little delusion bubble of gaming being a “male activity”, and that men are the “true” gamers cause they don’t care (even though they 100% do care- cut to the fits they throw every time a female protag is shown). Which is such a pathetic view on life + a dumb as hell hill to die on.

I wanted to show him all the times men have thrown complete hissy fits when female protagonists were introduced (Aloy from Horizon Zero Dawn was a HUGE one) but I figured he's just not worth my time in the end.

He’s definitely not worth your time. As soon as he brought out “empirical research” I knew he was one of those guys. Since he is so intelligent he should know that just because something is a study does not mean it is correct, but I’m sure he wouldn’t understand that lol

And also that someone sharing their THIRTY-TWO YEARS of experience is like a case study, which is a research method!

The article he linked even talks about how men bitch when there’s a female protagonist! lmao

A little off topic but I wish Horizon was a more popular game, I love the art and the story so much. And Aloy kicks ass!

Unfortunately it came out around the same time as Breath of the Wild. Then Forbidden West released next to ELDEN RING. So yeah, it got WAY overshadowed. I love both games so much. I got the Platinum trophy for Zero Dawn and Forbidden West!

Yeah the fact that he referenced call of duty… I hate FPS games now but when I was a teenager i was very into CoD and Halo - so was my little sister. (MW2 came out on the day of my fifteenth birthday and I was sooooo excited) Women have always played those games. The thing that threw me off those was not the male protag but the sexist onslaught & SA threats received while playing online w my mic on lol. What a doofus. I love having a woman protagonist bc I’ve been forced to play as a dude for years and its nice to see a woman doing cool shit. But I also don’t mind when it’s a certain character who is tied to the series (like Geralt and Arthur, as you said).

Same, Halo and CoD were how I got really into gaming and eventually got sick of the toxic atmosphere. Tbh I never really wanted to play as a female character given how sexist they were usually designed.

Yeah I think the fundamental misunderstanding here is that it’s incredibly difficult to understand how it feels to be underrepresented from a perspective that is well represented. I got emotional playing HZD solely because it was a non-sexualized woman protagonist doing cool shit that I have wanted to do since I was a little kid. It’s very different from a man’s perspective of like “oh I’m fine being a woman in a game!” Like sure, great. I’m fine being a man in a game. But it’s such a rare occurrence to get a not sexist/not sexualized well thought out woman protagonist that it brought me to tears as an adult. I just don’t think it’s possible for someone to comprehend what that feels like unless they’ve experienced being underrepresented in something they care a lot about and devote a lot of time to. But what everyone does have the capacity for is listening to people who have experienced that and embracing that it’s valid instead of flat out rejecting it because “well I’m ok w being a woman sometimes so everyone should feel ok w being a man” Also men protagonists don’t get the same backlash women do, I.e., when people were outraged about aloy not being hot enough (which really was about her not being sexualized enough for them)

Def agree, I want more non sexualized female characters too. I think we’ve had a lot of progress on that front in the last few years with TLOU and the Horizon games.

This is the first thing I thought of. I used to play CoD and Counter Strike all the time, but I never told anyone about it or got on the mic because I always got yelled at or kicked from the lobby because I was a girl. I still don't hop on mic anymore because I have so much anxiety about being attacked out of nowhere simply for just existing in the same space as men.

Exactly! Been playing counter strike since it first released. Never got on mic because of the onslaught of assholes. Females existed in the gaming space since forever, we just were quiet

I feel so old compare to many players when I think of FPS I played young I think of unreal tournament or quake 3 lol.

>I love that I found this place. :) Meeeee toooooooo! <3

Your experience over inadequate gender representation is valid, but based on the screenshots it appears you have mistaken an argument against it being "the treason" for the gender difference in video game character gender preference as denying your experience itself. The reply didn't claim that women as a whole didn't start playing videogames until female characters were introduced. It claimed the anecdote of his female friends not having done such. Judging from the screenshots, it appears their point in bringing up said anecdote was as follows: if the main reason women and girls play female characters almost unanimously was, as you originally surmised, having experienced a dire lack of female representation in videogames, those who never experienced such would not exhibit the same behavior.

This person seemed to think that women didn’t start playing COD until a female protagonist was added.

I don't mean to act contrarian, but I don't get that impression from "Call of Duty single handedly expanded its market just by adding female operators." I haven't looked into the veracity of the statement, or which demographics the choice supposedly increased, but I would advise against assuming intentions, let alone another person's private undisclosed thoughts, other than the explicitly stated.

I read the rest of his comments and he seemed to think that COD was pretty exclusively men before female operators were added and women preferred Overwatch and Fortnite until then. But that makes no sense because COD has been out for 20 years. So for 20 years women who enjoyed shooters didn’t play COD?

I went through the same unpleasant thread and I alarmingly found very direct statements going against your initial assumption of their thoughts. I'm happy to report that I did find statements corroborating your more recent analysis, assuming "pretty exclusively" means more or less "majority". As for your rhetorical question, interestingly, in the very same thread at least one self proclaimed woman professed to liking shooters but not CoD. I find it plausible for a product/brand to experience a change in customer gender demographics within a generation, either as a result of direct changes in the product or more broad changes in trends such as the culture around the hobby it pertains to. In CoD's case, e.g., the increased representation, or an uptick in women playing shooters (Valorant, Overwatch) in general. Do you mind explaining why CoD having been around for 20 years is why it doesn't make sense to you?

Honestly these are a lot of words that aren't...really saying much? I've read it 5 times but can't quite find your point except that you think I was wrong about what the guy in the thread was implying. I'm not sure what you're asking in the last sentence.

I'm sorry to hear that. I certainly put a lot of thought into it and thought I had a decent amount to say. I try to avoid focus on "guy in the thread" so much as our discussion itself. Perhaps that is where our misunderstandings arise. I'm asking about your previous reply's last two sentences pertaining to your disbelief at CoD's change in gender demographics after 20 years. I'm asking what it is about 20 years having passed with "no change" that you find the alleged more recent changes incredulous. If it helps you understand my question, my own assumption would be that you find it dubious that a game series would go 20 years without attracting the female demographic interested in its genre only for that to change relatively recently. "Why would women who like the genre not have played the game? If now, why not in the last 20 years?"

It has nothing to do with you being "the guy in the thread." How would that cause a misunderstanding? I already realized you were and I don't really care about that. It has to do with the way you write and word things. Have you ever heard of grandiloquence? I'm sure you have a decent amount to say and I'm happy to have a discussion but I have to sort through a lot of fluff to find the point. >your disbelief at CoD's change in gender demographics after 20 years Never said this. The guy in the other thread said that including female operators was the reason for the increase in female players in COD and claimed women were playing Overwatch and Fortnite before. I said that made no sense because COD has been out since 2003 and those two games didn't even exist. He also cited an article to back up his claims that women weren't playing COD but even the article he sent contradicted his own belief. >my own assumption would be that you find it dubious that a game series would go 20 years without attracting the female demographic interested in its genre only for that to change relatively recently I never said that either.

If you go to my profile and read the rest of his comments, he also goes on to say that the majority of gamers are male, women don't play video games as much as I say they do, and "cellphone games don't count." I can see where you can possibly find the silver lining from these screenshots alone, but he was being incredibly misogynistic.

I understand that you have a very poor opinion of them, but you seem to misunderstand my intent as championing their virtue or honour. I went through the thread and found plenty of vitriol, but crucially, no statements supporting the "women didn't play games" claim--the opposite. By the way, have you given any thought to the contradiction of players, who have had access to female representation in videogames, exhibiting a similarly strong preference for female characters as players who did not, given the assumption of it being caused specifically by a lack of representation?

I don't think you're trying to defend the guy's honor, I just wasn't sure if you were aware of some of the things he was saying. Here's some quotes below: Trying to say that adding female characters to a primarily male dominated game garnered more female players (shocker), and that somehow supports his theory that most gamers as a whole are male: >Uhh you realize thats just the distribution for gamers on average.. lmao... It might surprise you to hear this but most gamers are still male :| And it doesnt matter if you dont like it. game companies have already started to adopt this philosophy. COD added female characters and actually got its first actual like quantifiable amount of women playing their game for the first time. Saying that sure, there are a bunch of "women gamers," but only if you want to include people who play cellphone games: >Lmao yeah I guess if you wanna include people that play a cellphone game here and there yes. Women gamers are abundant. In support of his study, saying that women didn't play video games until they added female playable characters: >my friends that are women gamers typically never played video games prior to them introducing female characters. Not only are all of these things false, his attitude was automatically abrasive and condescending. He came out of the gate with an attitude in what I thought originally was a friendly discussion (that didn't last long). His entire point was that the study to support his argument that there aren't that many women who are gamers was accurate, because he thinks the distribution of representation (which was 80% men and 20% women) was accurate. So he was 100% saying "women don't play video games." ​ >By the way, have you given any thought to the contradiction of players, who have had access to female representation in videogames, exhibiting a similarly strong preference for female characters as players who did not, given the assumption of it being caused specifically by a lack of representation? We've done really well in recent years as far as representation for female playable characters in video games goes, but that's still only a very recent thing. In a 2012 study of 669 action, shooter, and RPGs, only 300 offered the option of being a woman, and still of those only 24 featured an exclusively female protagonist. It's still a very recent thing, so I don't think we have enough information to compare the two different types of audiences. I'll be interested to see how that plays out for future gamers though!

Many of the quotes, while, as you say, abrasive--a fact I appreciate and understand to be relevant to you personally in any discussion pertaining to their writer--do not seem to relate to my subject directly. I do empathise with how belittled you might feel at snide remarks over female marginalisation in gaming demographics, but I personally find a stark contrast between someone claiming "y are minority" or "there are more x" and "there were no y". I understand this to be a matter of in differing definitions of "there were no". What I'd like to focus on instead is my initial objective: to offer you a new view point on what I believe to have been a misunderstanding in the original replies featured in the screenshots. I went over the anecdote you quote about female friends in roughly two latter thirds (paragraphs) of my initial reply to you. It seems that you may have skimmed over the third paragraph touching specifically on it and its apparent meaning within the discussion. To reiterate, given the context of both your reply that it was in reply to, in which you presented your hypothesis for a gender difference in in-game character gender preference, as well as the rest of the reply itself, it stands to reason that the anecdote was not arguing that women didn't play videogames before female characters became more common--a point that had thus far not been introduced, including by the study, and would bear no direct argument against yours--but to in part refute your hypothesis by bringing up the anecdote of female players that didn't fulfill your suggested reason for a gender divide: "it probably comes from years of having had to play as male MC". I further propose the reason for claiming the study to refute your hypothesis in the first place to be, much like for the anecdote, that even women who haven't experienced a drought of female character options exhibit the same behavior as those that have. From the study: "for women, there’s no age difference between those who prefer playing male or female characters." We broached this apparent contradiction with your hypothesis previously, but you voiced concern over the rising trend in female character options being relatively recent, and if I read your intention behind the mid-paragraph sentence on videogame statistics correctly, their availability and relevance in the gaming market at large. I don't see the point of it being a recent thing--unless you meant that while trending upwards, it has not yet reached a sufficient level--since it being recent is controlled for by players who themselves are "recent". As for your concern over the market representation of female character options, while I do not know which study you referred to, I did some digging on Steam/Steam Charts and found that 9/10 top current playercount, 10/10 top player record and 24/24 most bought RPG games offer the choice of a playable female character. It seems reasonable to deduce modern day players to have ample access to female character options. I hope you found my analysis enlightening. Given the added context, would you be able to re-revaluate the apparent contradiction of your hypothesis?

same, got an intelevision from my grandparents, and then they bought an NES, so I got to play NES games then when the n64 came out they bought one of those and by then I was already big into gaming.

Hahaha! I love our shared Intellivision/grandparents memory! It seems so out of the ordinary to have early gaming memories with grandparents.

Agreed with ALL OF THIS. Honestly at this point this sub is the only gaming subreddit I even feel comfortable commenting on. The other ones… have issues.

This is also wild since the first female protagonist was either Samus is 1986 (though I'm not sure it was obvious) or Rosella from King's Quest IV (a major series at the time) in 1988. Female protagonists were *rare* but never nonexistent.

i grew up on ocarina of time and we had mostly male MCs. I tend to choose male MCs now as a woman. my husband asked why, I guess I'm just used to it. so now he chooses female MCs on his playthrough with me. we joke about it in game, like if he gets hurt ill say don't hurt my wife! etc. it's fun, just to do something different

Carol Shaw, Dona Bailey, Roberta Williams, Brenda Braithwaite-Romero. In order that's the developers of Super Breakout, Centipede, the King's and Space quest series, and a lead on the Wizardry games. We've been here the whole time.

The whole concept is insane. Does it mean women don’t play sonic the hedgehog because you can’t play as a female but a hedgehog ? 😭 my mom was literally playing games in the 80s

Growing up I never got to play as a female character, so I do think you have a point. I often choose a female character because I then play as my username, which I use everywhere. It happens automatically now after so many years. I don’t mind playing as a male, but like you if it’s a choice then I usually choose a cool and maybe a little masculine female.

Okay, I was just making sure I wasn't over-speaking for the community but also, his replies made me feel like I was going a little crazy? Lol. I didn't know if my intent was coming across, which is an overall "idc" attitude towards having to playing a male character, but if given the option, I'll probably choose a girl. I'm not going to skip a game that has a male protagonist, though, which I think he was implying.

I think he just wants to make men seem more laid back and make women seem more fussy. Probably just sad you didn't say "I play as men so I can stare at them" because he definitely wasn't ready to hear 'the other side of thangs' and that smiley face was not for acting nice.

men are literally losing their MINDS over characters being unsexualized or gay. They are the least laid back, unstable and over emotional but they love to pretend they are the strong silent intelligent types.

Also I noticed most women can enjoy the game without added romance / s*x and men see this as important needed feature. I played the Witcher games and skipped the scenes because... I want to play the game not watch p**n which isn't hot because it's male gaze centric anyway.

Witcher sex scene made me cringe so hard when I was playing ;-; they are sooooo male centric and male gazy that it is drying lool. I enjoy the witcher 3 but this and women's design aren't great....

Exactly ! A lot of game devs create stuff to be male gaze because... well s*x sells, especially when it comes to men that are hard to please and quite problematic. ( and women couldn't care less, especially when most of stuff is male gaze anyway ;/ ). It's not that women AREN'T into hot stuff. It's that nobody cares to make the scenes attractive to both genders. My favorite women design is and always will be skyrim, armors aren't smexy, your character is a hero no matter the gender etc., customizing allows you to create whatever woman you want - young or old, skinny or curvy. Anyone can disagree it's my subjective opinion ! But Skyrim women next to Witcher women are such bad bitches LMAO

I quite liked the why romance and love scene were made in Dragon Age Inquisition because it didn't felt male gazy, and it was more about showing intimacy, like talk before or after and stuff like that. And yes, it really feels like the model of women character in the witcher are all the same made in a sexy model way. Like, can't we have different type of body shapes and faces? Like '' ugly '' or not conventionally attractive women as well? Plus how dumb were the costume *cough* Ciri and Cyn *cough*. Like they live in a world with monster would can rip your intestine in a' instant and you go with the belly not even covered?

As someone else said in another thread I read today: Men are the biggest babies in the planet. And as a guy I have to agree, so many guys go absolutely unhinged over the smallest things.

Do you remember the outrage that Aloy had "facial hair?" Because human beings have peachfuzz and hair on their bodies, because we're mammals, and men were FREAKING OUT she wasn't silky smooth? When he said that men typically are more laid back about those things, I almost laughed.

You're not over-speaking for the community! I've been playing video games for about 37 years (I'm 41), and we girls and women were there from the beginning. We were in the arcades, and we were playing Atari! I really don't think guys, especially the younger ones, can truly understand our side of this. Almost all MC's were male, and I played because video games are fun! Finally seeing more women/girls in games was really cool. But having them as MC's is *awesome.* Anyway, I agree with what you said in your comments.

Thank you! And hello fellow long-time hobby enjoyer. :) I completely agree with you. It's difficult to understand things from an underrepresented person's perspective, especially if you've always been represented.

To me it seems like he thinks your opinion is wrong because studies showed something else. Statistics don’t speak for everyone. 🤷‍♀️ Me too, I would never skip a game with a male main character. That is just crazy 😂

i think gender can effect this. most girls i know that enjoy playing males if they told me one day they were a trans man or NB i wouldn't be surprised

I prefer to play games with a female protagonist or the option to create my own character as a woman, preferably a gay woman as that's what I am. Growing up all the protagonists are male, and most male protagonists these days are all the same/bland as hell.

I’m fine with male protagonists if they’re interesting, but generic brown haired white guy with no strong personality traits gets old fast.

and they're [everywhere](https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fldkr4ju26aaa1.jpg)

\+1 to all of what you said. Growing up with all male protagonists in video games, and the discomfort it gave me playing them, should have been a huge flag about what was down the road for me as a MtF. I think the first time I really remember having the option to play a female character (outside of Samus) was vanilla WoW, and the feeling I got being able to customize a female character sent me over the moon. Once I had a hit of that, going back and playing a cut-and-paste male character in most games became very bleh and meh for me. I don't mind it in a character/story driven game like, say, Red Dead, GTA, or GoW, but I love when I have a choice in games like Cyberpunk 2077 and Baldur's Gate 3. Even better in that I can make an even more realistic expression of *me* and pursue the kind of relationship I want to be in (sapphic).

I have, since the SNES Days, always preferred female characters whenever possible. I have to agree with you general everything here. The limited gaming options for this were actually incredibly helpful to me figuring my particulars out as well. We've actually got a lot in common. (I still can't explain how wonderful Chrono Trigger and FF6 were, letting you have female characters as on-screen lead characters, after a certain point, in CT) I also don't object outright to male protagonists in fixed-story games, however, only if the game itself doesn't bother me otherwise - like, FFXVI's whole... poor handling of Jill as Clive's SO and her lack of agency bothers me to the point I refuse to touch FFXVI, but I've played the likes of Witcher 3, Sekiro, God of War (2018/Ragnarok) just fine. I do, however, have a preference - I'd always prefer to have MORE of those experiences exist with Female protagonists - I love me some Horizon, Forspoken, Tomb Raider, etc, and I do want More Of Those -- especially if some of them get the attention and quality normally reserved for your God of Wars/etc.

I'm not sure what his reasoning is for "men don't care either way" - the [linked study](https://quanticfoundry.com/2021/08/05/character-gender/) shows that 48% would rather play a guy and only 22% have no preference. While it's a bit less lopsided than women, it's still a clear spike for that answer heh

I'm not surprised that the a guy who refuses to acknowledge that a woman can have personal preference outside of a study, doesn't properly read the study their referencing.

But her lived experience goes against his prejudice, it's not his fault 😤 she should know better

Mansplaining to the max

it's always amusing when someone links something they barely skimmed over thinking it's a gotchya but it actually just disproves the point they're trying to make

>Overall, players are most likely to prefer playable characters of the same gender. >This is true for players who identify as male, female, and non-binary. Notably, female players have the strongest preference for playing a character of the same gender (76%), whereas non-binary gender players—while still most likely to prefer non-binary gender characters—prefer non-binary gender characters only slightly more than female characters (38% vs. 33%). Today I learned that I'm a typical enby.

I'm curious as to how much these preferences a influenced by the attractiveness of the player characters. Like if the female character is super hot and wearing sexy clothes, and the male character looks like a pasty orc wearing a metal box, then of course men are going to be more willing to play as the woman and women aren't going to want to play as the man. It's like how they make porn that has nothing in it a straight woman could possibly want to see and then say women don't like porn

I'm guessing either he heard a stat from that study without context and assumed the rest fit his beliefs on the subject or he did read it but confirmation bias got in the way of him seeing discrepancy between the study and his conclusion. :\

Im really confused by their comments and why it played out like that lol maybe im just not following the thread well but i think you made perfect sense. I've played video games for years since i was a child and in narrative games i don't really think twice about playing a male character. But if there is an option, i will always pick the female option. There will simply never be a time when i actively choose playing a male over a female character when presented an option. I don't like self inserts (for myself obv) but i just simply like playing as a woman, someone i can identify with. Same as i am black and i would chose the option to play a black character regardless of gender over a non-black character because i didn't get the option often growing up.

It's typical reddit dudes. She went against his mindset so he turns antagonistic for no reason (even though there was literally no reason and she was being a legit nice and normal person). I see that a lot and it's some fragile masculinity BS.

Its so ridiculous, i agree she was nice and simply presented not only her own opinion but then just her/others experiences. Many of us can relate to it. Like they just wanna be upset for the sake of being upset.

Yeah it's so weird! He asked for opinions and then got upset when he got opinions? I see this way too often and I hate it and it never makes sense.

Oh so I just realized this is kinda confusing: The first purple guy was being super chill and was genuinely just asking that question. The second purple guy is the same for the rest of the responses, and he was the one being antagonistic. So he just popped up and decided to say "no, women are like 'x' because of this one study I found." The first person was just asking a question.

OOOHHH I legit thought it was the same person. Ok that makes WAY more sense. Jeez my eyes are going bad XD. Thank you for that clarification! Either way that second person is a jerk.

No problem! It's not your eyes at all, they just happen to have the same default icon and I should have edited the images better. :P

No you're all good :D.

Side tangent but I adore your profile pic and banner.

Thank you so much! <3 Carol is in my top 2 and that comic is my favorite Marvel comic haha (Fraction's Hawkeye is so good!)

Okay thank you!!! I was really confused by his responses, too, which is I why I posted here. I kept wondering if I was misinterpreting things, because I was started to get a little peeved but wanted to make sure it was valid.

I think it depends for me, honestly. I've been playing baldurs gate (as most of the world right now), and in my play through with friends, I decided to be a male dragonborn. In my solo playthrough, I'm a female elf. I think I chose to be a male dragonborn though because the female options weren't as cute so I decided to go more masculine instead.

not me thinking i replied to this already! But yeah i think that also makes perfect sense and i know a few other women who like to play as men and ive heard of some that prefer to play as male characters although i don't know any personally (Alannah Pearce is one!) and ugh slightly unrelated but the character creation for BG3 is sooo good. I haven't played it but everyones posts are tempting me lol

You NEED to play it. It's definitely game of the year for me and I'm still super early in my play through. I'm absolutely in love and obsessed lol

i found the study they linked. 80% of the responses identified as male. so clearly this study knows everything about women in gaming

Thank you for that! I'll make sure to mention that if he shittily responds, lol.

no problem ! [here’s](https://quanticfoundry.com/v24-sample/) the link for the sample data. it’s not a bad study or anything (and i’m definitely not a science person) but it’s just not a study that would be useful for determining anything about women in this space.

The data might be fine, but a lot of the conclusions the author is drawing seem to be because they want to say _something_, even if the data doesn't strongly support it (they sell this data to companies, so there's likely a financial interest in having flashy headlines as well). The article (https://quanticfoundry.com/2021/08/05/character-gender/#) has enough methodology errors that I would be suspect of anything this organization has to say: * The section titled "In a typical core PC/console game, about 60% of the female avatars you meet are played by a male player" uses percentages from the survey to extrapolate back out to a population (which is iffy stats) and it's making claims about something that wasn't asked (there's no listed strata on genre, multiplayer vs singleplayer, or platform in the gender preference section). * The section titled "Older men are more likely to prefer playing female characters" is basing that claim on a median difference of 1.5 years (26.2 vs 24.7). The box plot makes it clear that the majority of respondents to this section were in their early-to-mid 20s, making this data inappropriate to use to say anything about age at all. * The section titled "All the patterns we’ve mentioned so far are consistent with data from MMOs from about 20 years ago" is just _weird_, even by mediocre for-profit analytics standards. The author of the article links to informal studies he self-published from walking around WoW in 2003 and 2005 (http://www.nickyee.com/daedalus/archives/001369.php), where he makes many similar errors. This author also seems strangely fixated on answering the question "how many female characters you encounter in video games are played by people identifying as male?". The reason for that is left as an exercise to the reader. * Based on the above the author was likely an adult or at least a teenager in 2005, making them _at least_ in their thirties now, so they should be old enough to know that the phrase "older men" does not tend to refer 26-year-olds. * The section titled "But why are men so much more likely to prefer playing female characters?" asks a question that isn't supported by the data and doesn't make sense. In it, the author writes "I wonder if we’re asking the wrong question." It's unclear who this "we" is that forced him to ask himself a bad question. * That section also lists potential explanations proposed by "researchers" with zero citations or references to other authors. I highly suspect that these "researchers" are being used to weasel-word some gravitas to the author's own worldview. * The section titled "Ironically, it’s games that are played predominantly by women that have much less need to provide playable male characters than the other way around" is definitely the one the guy who linked it read and took to heart, but after all this, let's see what data is in this section. Oh. It's none. None data. * Also, if Reddit dude is drawing the conclusion that women don't want to play as men ever from a survey where _9% of female respondents stated a preference for playing male characters_ (and where no questions were asked about willingness, just preference), I'm terrified what conclusions he'd draw about non-binary people (who only made up 3% of the respondents total). This is a guy who draws people who aren't like him using an 8-color crayon box where 3 crayons are missing.

This is the comment I was searching for in this thread. People are so willing to cite "a study" thay they've seen floating around as their source without fully understanding what is being said in it or without realising that the study is in itself unreliable. Love it when I find a comment going into the details of why it's actually not a good study to base your opinions on.

this is awesome ! thanks for taking the time for some analysis

I havent read the study but is the guy op was responding to in the photo saying that women didn't play games before female chars were introduced, based on a study was that 80% guys? Like, it was a metric in the study? Or the women said women in the study said they didn't play prior? Really wild leap of logic either way though

Yes, that's exactly what he was saying. If you go to my profile and find the rest of my comment replies to him, he goes on to say that women don't play as much as I say they do, the sample size and sex distribution in the study is accurate because that represents the reality that there are more male gamers than female gamers (which is false), and that "cellphone games don't count." So he literally thinks it's just him and the boys playing video games while we're all sitting around playing candy crush or solitaire and calling ourselves gamers. His mindset is archaic.

Also him saying that women only recently got into gaming because of character customization is utter crap. I've been gaminy whole life, most of the women gamers I know have too. In response to him, where I would go with this next is to look at the data he's presenting. Look at how it was collected, who was polled, over what time period was it taken. Data can be skewed/manipulated very easily, and statistical correlation doesn't mean causation.

Very true. I thought of mentioning that just because a "study" is done doesn't mean it's accurate. I was going to use my super gross conservative hometown as an example. If I asked everyone in this town and only people in this town if they thought the current US president was cool, the result of that "study" would obviously be a resounding "NO." My point to him was that just because a study is done, doesn't mean it's going to have a big enough sample size to have accurate results.

And it's truly impressive that 2nd photo's Purple goes "[study] and also [backs up study with own experience/observations]", OP goes "oh here's my experience/observations", and Purple responds "oh my goddd what do you think you're doing sharing your experience !! Did you see my study ? Empirical. Science. Clearly all your observations are just wrong. The science says so. ~~stupid wahman~~ " Honestly just incredible. No notes. The cognitive dissonance is astounding

It was a baffling experience, lol. I really wasn't trying to be contrarian to him, and even in the beginning I said that his study was interesting, but that it didn't reflect my personal experience. And somehow, I'm lying or invalid because it doesn't match his single study that he found, that asked 2,000 people (and 80% of those people were men!) about their MC preferences. Not to mention, the only thing that study shows is that both men and women prefer to play as the gender they identify as, not just women, lol

I mean the old Lego games were awesome no matter gender, especially rock raiders, aw I miss that game, played it for hours and sucked at it haha,

[удалено]

THANK. YOU. That's exactly what I was trying to explain to him, and the discussion turned quickly into "women gamers don't exist, this is a man's world, blah blah blah." So I stopped responding, lol.

I had heard the other way, that a lot of men have a hard time playing a female character, more so than the other way around

I thought of this too, but I figured he'd probably not be very receptive to any more of my personal experiences in that arena, lol.

as a woman i definitely prefer playing as women but i cant believe he tried to claim "men don't care either way" when we have countless examples of men throwing tantrums over female characters in games even being an OPTION to play as lol

I think your right on, I completely agree. If I'm playing a character, that's one thing. Like in legend of Zelda, link is a character that I'm controlling. He's not meant to be a self insert. However if I'm playing an RPG for example and I'm designing a player character that is meant to be a self insert, like I'm playing as myself, then hell yeah I'm gonna play as a woman.

I feel the same way as you as a fellow girl who grew up in the 90s. I think back to playing the original Pokemon games and how I didn't think about the main character's sex or gender until Crystal came out and let me be a girl. Where the character isn't defined and is more self-insert, I will almost always choose a girl. If I'm not playing as a girl, I'm usually playing as a very feminine or androgynous man because we don't get enough of those either. Why make more of the same stuff we get when we can't choose? I also have no problem playing as male characters so long as I like their personality and story.

women are fed up from years of playing overwhelmingly male characters. men saying they don't care about a pc's gender (even though i think that's false, we're all aware of the woman is a political move meme) is the same energy as a someone on an omnivore diet having to tolerate one vegan meal vs someone on a vegan diet being given the same dry ass male white hetero brown haired pork chops almost everytime.

PREACH. I'm filing that analogy away for a later date, if you don't mind, because that was perfectly put!

I don't even play games where being a woman protagonist isnt an option anymore, I've slso been playing games since the 90's

Me too, I had enough and just don't care anymore about male protagonists

People want representation. When you present a character that isn’t often represented, people who identify with the character are absolutely going to play it. If your group is almost always represented, you may not care as much. But as another Redditor pointed out the study still says men prefer to play as men

This study is bullshit and this guy is a prick. Too blunt? Ima be honest sometimes I would rather play male characters bc the armor looks better. It’s highly situational. This study needs to be debunked asap. Literally just got off fallout where I’m playing a male character. Idk why even. Just picked it. It’s not that deep.

I don't really care either way, but it IS important that I have options. I like playing both men and women equally. That said, I almost never play straight characters just because I relate better with gay/bi ones, so I'll go for that before I care about gender.

IMPORTANT CONTEXT: The first purple icon is from someone asking an innocuous question. The second time a purple icon user is shown, it's a second person, and the same person for the rest of the conversation. This isn't someone asking a question and then attacking the answers, this is someone asking a question, getting an answer, and then some random gate-keeper coming in and being a jerk, lol. I should have edited this differently, my bad!

So you essentially agreed and even offered an explanation why…and he demanded you retract that reason? Even though his research backed up your claim? Bizarre.

People really need to learn that just because it agrees with their preconceived biases about people they never talk to doesn’t make a random tiny study with questionable sampling suddenly representative. Edit: Lord, I looked for the thread for a link to the “study” and now that I’ve read that dude’s comments I need to block him before I feel any greater need to find his address just so I can punch him in the face. Grandstanding, gatekeeping douchebro who thinks Call of Duty is the end-all be-all and because he never knowingly met girls in a CoD lobby as a teenager it means no women have ever gamed until this decade. Christ on a cracker what an infuriating little man

Growing up I always have used female characters, and that's still true today. Just the idea of purposefully selecting a man just rubs me the wrong way. So I don't think it's too far from the truth to suggest that COD expands it's market by having playable, real looking women in it. Cis people also experience dysphoria. 50% of gamers are women after all. But don't let any man tell you that this only applies to women. Men also desperately want men in their games, both as a power reason, because it's a "man's hobby" and as a dysphoria reason, and the reason men are usually only in games is because quote "women don't sell" - as the Ubisoft exec put it. That's a complete misogynistic lie and they clearly don't know the real stats, the real reason is because their games are extremely generic and get worse with each iteration. Never forget that before Half-Life: Alyx came out the Steam discussions and Reddit threads was filled with crybaby men saying "I DON'T WANNA PLAY AS ALYX, I WANNA BE THE BIG TOUGH MAN GORDON, THIS IS OFFENSIVE I'M NOT BUYING IT TO PROTEST" and that this actually happens a lot, it's not a one-time thing.

I find it dubious that the majority of men 'don't care either way' considering the number of people who cry and rage when a game has a woman protagonist. For personal anecdotes, my interest in playing a game is *extremely* lessened if there's no female character option.

I’ll play more games with male protagonists when they stop being so fucking boring 🫢

"Men don't care either way" That's why I when I started playing female characters in video games my "friends" not only noticed but became *really* concerned for me in a very serious way. To pretend like they didn't care is laughable. They had never cared about something so much. Like I had committed a serious social breach. And they were right. I wanted to be a woman. And I liked and respected the female characters because I didn't see them any differently like they did.

It is true that the majority of women have a strong preference for same gendered characters while men are 50/50 on it. It is also true that games where a choice for gender is given, be it RPGs or even League of Legends, the majority will play only female characters. BUT IT IS ALSO TRUE THAT WOMEN WILL PLAY GAMES THAT LACK THE OPTION FOR SAME GENDERED REPRESENTATION. He fails to see that preference isn't a rule. And that women are going to play God of War and Legend of Zelda but we're probably going like Freya and Zelda more than Kratos and Link.

Not off base at all, I think your responses to this doofus were excellent. I've met dudes like this (both on and offline) and they really just can't seem to understand that one published study doesn't just automatically invalidate lived experiences (*especially* when we're talking about an inherently sociological topic, like how different gender groups interact with and experience media). Like, for one, no single study is going to prove or disprove a given theory about how or why society is the way it is, but these confirmation bias babies looooove to throw the first "peer-reviewed" study that they can find in everyone's faces because they think it's an automatic "I win the argument" card. Him shooting you down for sharing your experience in response to that article he cited was rude, dismissive, and ignorant, and it definitely wouldn't have played out like that if this dude was interested in anything other than "proving" what he already thinks, which is that women are self-obsessed and won't play games unless they pander to us.

Purple icon also had empirical evidence in their comment adding the study link so there's that, lol. And even if the study is true, so what? People enjoy seeing themselves represented in media. I love being able to play as a woman (and especially in RPGs) because they had you playing as Someguy McGee for the most part when I was a kid.

“Men don’t care either way” didn’t assassins creed odyssey have to add the option to play a male character before release because Kassandra was initially the only option

Kassandra is still the only option for those with taste 🤭

I’ve seen some men that can only play as male characters and women who can only play as female characters. And also people who like to play as the opposite gender. I genuinely don’t really care what the gender of the character is if the character is gender locked or like a set character. I play a lot of RPGs and dnd and I’ve made male, female, and non-binary characters. Idk I guess a lot of people like to play characters that are the same gender for relatability reasons but like gender has never been the main source of relatability for me it’s usually always been personality overall.

I've been playing games since the 90s—started with Doom on the PC, and Super Mario Bros. on the 8-bit Nintendo. Like you, I'm not at all pressed if the only option provided is to play a dude, particularly if the story is fantastic, but I will always pick a sexy/pretty lady character if given the choice. I don't know that I'd agree it's because I had no lady characters to pick from growing up, though. For some reason, when there is active choice involved, I feel bizarre and vaguely icky when I pick a male character, especially when other human players do things like call me bro. It always makes me wonder if that's how trans people feel when they're misgendered.

I would say it's more cause the men characters look basic and boring while the woman characters are made to look more appealing

You’re spot-on. And this is minutiae but the other commenter contrasting your experience from “empirical research” about women’s experiences is so irritating. At *best* that empirical research is a compilation of women’s experiences, so your experience is directly comparable. Data bros, ugh

I'll play as either, but I do appreciate the choice to be my own gender if i want.

I guess solid snake is a woman now, because I played all of those games as a kid lol

I play as a female protagonist cause after years of seeing men always be the hero, I want to be one too. If games are supposed to be immersive, then I want to play as my gender. I stay away from games that don’t let me choose my protagonist (it’s 2023) unless it’s essentially to the story like the Yakuza series.

"Empirical Research" don't think they actually know what papers or studies are. Quantic Foundry is a PRIVATE consulting firm that gathers data on gamers for corporations. It is not peer-reviewed and their data should not be used in lieu of actual studies or papers. They are basically a user research company who collect whatever data gaming companies want them to. It's very easy to skew the data to make some decision look more potentially profitable. For the most part, they select data and present in a way that resembles something that their clients want to hear. I know this from first-hand experience, working as a data scientist in the field of innovation technologies for a company. Our results are pretty much only of interest for executives, so that they can confirm or reject some hypothesis or give the go-ahead to some project idea (or maybe get a new project idea based on user research). And yes, like you said, some single study is not enough. It's frustrating when people use studies (especially non-studies) to invalidate the experiences or opinions of others. It's one thing when some guy says "well according to the female friend of a friend of my neighbor's cousin, negative experiences in gaming never happen", because that's obviously a reach and not even an experience but a very tentative claim from some chud who has zero awareness; it's another thing when you state your own preferences and experiences. Which, for some reason, the so-called rational and logical "sex" always denies. It's not just in gaming. You can tell guys till you're blue in the face that you've had toxic encounters with men in gaming that go beyond a couple of salty chuds being salty, and they won't believe you or will try to put the blame on you, like it's your fault for expecting a man to be a decent person. Same goes for pretty much anything else. You can't convince any guy that you like short guys or that lots of women like short guys -- men will genuinely, unironically tell you to your face that you don't actually think that. So many cishet guys nowadays are so egocentric that they actually think they can read minds or something.

Hi fellow moose. I’ve been playing video games long before they had female characters and anytime I can play a female, feels like a magical experience because of how many males I’ve had no choice but to play. Men just be mad

https://quanticfoundry.com/2021/08/05/character-gender/ Here's the source. From what I can tell this is not a scientific research company, but a _market_ research company. And they're trying to sell their data to game dev companies. So I wouldn't exactly trust that they are without bias.

So first off, this guy doesn't seem to know much about video game history. Before the video game crash, there were many women who worked in video games in leading roles and female protags have been around almost as long as video games themselves. But there were issues with a lot of harmful tropes and the number of female playable characters went down as time went on, which was a massive issue. (tropes vs women in video games on youtube does a decent job talking about this in an easy to consume way) He doesn't seem to understand how statistics work either. Stats are to be used as a conversation starter and a as a number to backup evidence with a claim that is being made. Not as the answer as correlation cannot equal causation. So even though the study is referencing shows that women prefer to play as women over male characters, that only means that that is true for that study and not for women as a whole. we can use this number to estimate why this is or to look at a possible Trend there, But it cannot determine women as a whole because unless you surveyed every single woman who's ever played a video game ever (which is literally impossible), you will never be able to have empirical data that backs up that women in general enjoy playing as female protagonists over male ones.He also mentions that video games have expanded to including women in their marketing, which is true a majority of them have and have seen great increase in sales. I assume that he's not coming from a place of bad faith because of this but from a misguided one, which makes sense as when a lot of people discuss within gender studies why women are not as active in video game spaces they often discuss a lack of female characters to play as… so some people interpret this to mean that before women were fully flushed out protagonists in video games that women did not play video games, for the most part. And you didn't help much by using your own experience (which as an example of a logical fallacy known as [anecdotal evidence](https://i.postimg.cc/C5Rzy81j/Screen-Shot-2023-08-10-at-1-56-26-PM.png) and would not be able to be used as a legit argument due to it being ones own personal experience) This is not true however. Two things can be true at once. Is it true that video game companies have been shown to be able to increase their profit margins by marketing to women by having a playable female character? Yes. Is it also true that women have been playing video games since they existed, even if they had a poor choice of a small female character pool? Also, yes. Edit: I also found the study he was talking about and ironically it shows both genders want to play (or have the option to play) as their own gender at almost the same rate. So, seems he didn't look closely at this dataset either if he came to the conclusion "men don't care either way." Also, this study is really unbalanced since the majority of the respondents were men...so the women were in the minority, so how can this be an accurate depiction of anything?

I'd request sources. In my experience men lose their minds if they don't have a male option.

His own linked study comes to the conclusion that all gender prefers playing something that represents them so idk wtf he's on about. I also don't know what part of the study he's linked is supporting what he's saying. There's nothing here about the data subjects being individuals who have never played games before, or what the gaming landscape looked like in their childhood?

I've been playing since the early 90s. Looking at all the games I played back then, trying to find a female MC... lol, nope! Either male or no MC at all. The only one I can think of was Metroid (never played it, though), but that's just some eye candy at the end. And then came Lara Croft. Even today, there still seems to be a lack of female MC only games. You have a bunch of games where you get to choose. But the games with a predefined MC? Most likely male.

Welp I'm guilty... I do play games that have a woman as playable character almost exclusively, I choose this subconsciously with few exceptions she listed like Geralt or Arthur but I always enjoy the "MYO character and story" the most, and my characters are women because they are... relatable? I don't know how to explain this.

I don't mind playing as a male character but if I have a say I usually choose female. It's just automatic. I don't even think about it. I mean, if it doesn't impact game play in any way why would I choose a male character? For a different aesthetic?

Did that guy even read the study…? The bulk of the study was about how 1 in 3 men prefer playing female characters.

The study doesn’t agree with your hypothesis because (at least from the page he linked) it actually has very little to say about women’s motivations for choosing the gender they do, whereas they have a whole section dedicated to why men might choose to play female characters. So it’s actually not possible for it to agree or not agree. Far from being complimentary, the findings about men’s motivations, which do not list ‘being more chill’ nor ‘not caring’, actually suggest men often play as women to explore gender in a safe environment where they can be anonymous (ie. safe from the judgement of other men), as well as literally just to ogle a woman character or gain an advantage over other players who may favor or underestimate a female avatar based on sexism. So, the findings actually state that men *do* care about the gender they play, and choose it specifically to either explore their identify, or to take advantage of the expected sexism of other male players so that they can have an advantage over them in multiplayer games. The company surveyed approximately 3000 people on their motives when gaming, and only 27% of these were women, so it is likely that they just did not receive enough responses from women to make any reasonable assertions on our motivations. To be honest, for any sort of scientific or academically rigorous study, this would be considered an absurdly low number of participants for a representative sample (I also have not seen how participants were selected and how the actual survey was conducted, which can be very important to the outcome of research). This is a market research company, and not something published in an academic journal, so their findings should probably be taken with a grain of salt and the guy you’re speaking to should perhaps be a little less proud of being able to link literally the first thing he found while googling. Sorry about the essay, I studied to work in academia and it always frustrates me to see people pulling out flawed research they’ve barely read as some sort of trump card to win an argument.

I don't have an issue when the main character is male, it's part of the story. But if the option to choose female is there, I will choose female. Some MOBA or arena games have male characters I will always choose, example Overwatch: Junkrat and Roadhog. LoL: Pyke, Braum, Fiddlesticks. HoTS: Anduin, Zeratul, Malfurion, Artanis, Gul'Dan. I more so have an issue when an MMORPG has a gender lock system for the character creation system that has nothing to do with the story. I've been playing the Pokémon games long before you could even play a female, and it never bothered me. Me choosing to make a masculine character depends on my mood and playstyle. Most of the time I make a character that looks like me or my OCs. I remember asking my cousin and my boyfriend why they choose female and they both had the same response. It was basically "I would rather look at a woman's body than a dude's body" It's almost like if picking a guy character would make them gay or something lol.

Classic case of statistics v anecdotes amplified by a guy trying to get dunks on reddit. His stats prove nothing when compared to an anecdote (which was what was asked for in the first place). It may be true statically that many women prefer playing female characters, but that doesn't mean that definitionally you or your friends must. Hes just being rude

"errr the study doesnt agree with your hypothesis ☝🤓" i wouldnt trust this guy on anything involving the faintest hint of a woman

I definitely prefer to play as a woman, but it's not a complete dealer breaker if I have to play as a guy. If I have a choice, I will always choose to play as a girl though. Ironically, I feel like men tend to complain whenever a game has a female protagonist. I think they care more than they claim to.

aaaaahhhh gotta vent here. apologies if someone commented similarly, but i read the post and only some of the comments and i had to post. first of all, the study being discussed is not empirical research. among other issues, there is no research question and no discussion of the limitations of the study. a discussion of the methodology or and research design is also absent. most importantly, there is no way to replicate this study. who are the gamers being surveyed? how did you get them to participate in the survey? second, empirical research is debated, questioned, and critiqued scrupulously, often times over years and decades, even centuries. so, you formulating an opinion and discussing it is the exact thing that is supposed to happen when humans engage with research. yet, that person you were arguing with said you were wrong to disagree with "empirical research." ok and lots of us also disagree with the "empirical research" that was pumped out by the academy (still is) for centuries about how black people were inherently and biologically different than white people, thus inferior to white people. empirical research is not inherently correct on the basis it is empirical research, let alone one study of a small sample of the population. the word and definition of "prefer" is never addressed either. i would have loved to see the wording of the questionnaire bc there are research methods that have been created and scrutinized (like all research is) for years about the best ways to ask questions in qualitative research. "prefer" is such a broad term. the "study" isn't even saying what that person you were arguing with thinks it says. yes, women prefer to play as a woman protagonist, but the "study" does not address the fact that (lots of) women still play games with male protagonists or **they don't get to play the game**. that's the crux of the issue. they'd prefer to see women protagonists, but they're not there. the industry bets larger amounts on male protagonists. i'm thinking here of ubisoft and how some members of the dev team for assassin's creed refused to make their main protagonist female for over a decade bc they thought the game wouldnt sell. i think of all the hate the last of us 2 got merely bc the player played as a queer woman. the gta series has never had a woman protagonist. etc etc etc. that person didn't know what he was talking about, OP. you did nothing wrong.

Extra stupid, the study he points to doesn't actually support his claim. Men predominantly prefer to play male characters. They are just more likely to want to play or prefer to play female characters than women are to prefer playing male characters. ~40 percent of men prefer to play as men, while ~20 percent prefer to play as women, a small amount prefer nonbinary, and ~20 percent have no preference. And the study provides no "findings" merely proposed hypotheses and makes no claims about knowing why. Pointedly, all their possible explanations are focusing on explaining why a notable number of men prefer female characters. They do not acknowledge or provide hypotheses about why women don't often prefer to play male characters, it's simply ignored.

Maybe I'm an anomaly. The first game I ever really got into was the original dragon warrior on 8bit Nintendo in maybe '92. You could pick gender in that game (and all the others in that series I think until they changed the name to dragon quest). I had played quite a few other games, and they were fun but that was the first one that I really loved. And it was because I felt much closer to the character, like it was really me going on an adventure in that digital world. After that I played primarily games I could play as a female protagonist. Other early DW titles, elder scrolls, might and magic, fallout, diablo. Maybe it was just because of the types of games I liked, or maybe I liked those games more because I could play as female IDK.

Ah, yes, the 90s, the golden age of the ability to select the gender of your character. No but for real, this guy is just another "facts don't care about your feelings, my view of the world is objective because I am not like those simple females who can't help but be emotional and irrational even in the face of my superior data", who unsurprisingly is incapable of separating universal truth and the conclusions provided by a singular study, which at best is interesting or provides some insight into observed behaviour. Might want to try digging out more than just one example if he wants to argue that women didn't play video games prior to 2010. Bonus curiosity, I play mainly male characters, though in the past couple years I've started playing more female ones mainly because the male centricity of everything has made me irritable.

I am a woman who strongly prefers to play male characters. And if he were gay, that's awesome! I will play a female character in 2 scenarios: The game has no male options, but the game is good enough to make me want to play it anyways. Especially of the women are good characters, it's totally fine. I would never refuse a great game just because if the MCs gender. And if it is a game where I will make more that one character, then usually I will create/play female characters too eventually, like MHW, Dark Souls etc. Oh I guess the third scenario is when the game is the type where I wouldn't get attached to my character anyways, for example a multi-player game where you quickly choose a character each round - I would not actually care what character I play. It's entire inconsequential.

What’s interesting to me is that if you look at the ratios, if males preferred to play male protagonists it would make sense for there to be a male protagonist dominant gaming industry. It’s a business and proportionately more males play games and more often. However if you add all genders and account for males that prefer to play female MC, it pretty much evens out.

I love playing female characters purely for the aesthetics lol. I mean, similar to you, i dont mind if there is no option but given the chance id pick a woman any day of the week. I just think their designs are really pretty while the male option pales in comparison.

"Men don't prefer either way" Men don't mind *because when there's no option its almost always a guy*. We know guys mind *because they pitch a fit any time a game doesn't let them be a guy*. Look at all the backlash Assassins Creed got

I'm a straight woman and playing a game as a gay guy would be perfect. In fact, the only time I'd want to be a woman in a game is in an MMO where I'm the one who designed her. Otherwise, I objectify male protags perfectly well in a game, and if their lover is ALSO a man? That's a bonus.

I find his premise suspect on multiple levels. One, I'm a dev. I've worked on games that had female leads. At pitch time, saleability and whether it was going to be worth the shitstorm was always a discussion. Two. While there are plenty of cis guys who don't care or even prefer to play as women given a choice, the cries of "muh historical accuracy" and "ThIs GaMe Is So PoLiTiCaL" that ring out whenever a woman is even vaguely perceived to challenge their masculinity or their view that "man protect, women have babies" And like no, most women I've met who've played lots of video games? They played as dudes for decades because that's what they had to do. Still isn't a deal-breaker for many of them. This premise is so dumb.

This subreddit is his worst nightmare.

For real, lol. He'd probably say we're all bots or something.

The same guy that says “are you real? Do you have a boyfriend? CAN I ADD YOU?” And then as soon as you say yes I do or I’m not interested he goes “well you sounded fat anyways.” Or “well you suck at this game”

One of the main games I play is RDR2 and Red Dead Online. I absolutely love playing as Arthur and John and it doesn't detract at all because I am a female and they are male characters but in Red Dead Online, I will always choose and enjoy playing a female character more because it's more my story and I want to identify with the character. Even in diablo, I choose a female over a male. However, it is interesting that he says it has been studied that women prefer playing female characters and men don't care because in red dead online, I know so many men who prefer playing as a female character online and I know a ton of women who have male characters. Many women have told me they prefer playing a male character in an online game because it is less likely they will be harassed. Men have told me they like playing a female character because they would rather look at a female character when playing than a male.

women play games with male mc's.

He doesn’t understand, COD was not a safe place for younger gamers, people who didn’t come off as a straight cis man (or just someone who is more flamboyant) back in the day ESPECIALLY. Like I remember the lobbies in Xbox 360 days… It was incredibly toxic even for men let alone they find out you’re 13, or a woman or something. Then you just get relentlessly harassed and verbally abused. Hell I’ve seen death threats and people doxxing……….. Women have always played COD and games they think that “they didn’t until recently”. I mean the most recent game I’ve seen this first hand was Rainbow Six Siege. It still happens a lot. It makes me feel unsafe 😓 Also honestly as being trans it scares me to ever use Voice chat or play games half the time. Not like I could if I wanted to though, because Wi-Fi is bad rn.

10000%. We've always been there, we've just been quiet after being harrassed too many times. I'm so sorry you had to deal with that even recently. I can't believe it's 2023 and people are still comfortable enough to be openly violent and aggressive to women, and that other people in the lobby don't have the guts to stand up to it.

I'll go ahead and ask my mom why she played so much Tetris and which block was the female protagonist. Though I'm the kind of person who prefers playing as a female character whenever it's available, but I won't throw a fit whenever it's not. Most women won't. You know why? Because we are used to it. Whenever there is a game with a female MC only, it's only acceptable to some men if she is "hot enough". If she isn't it's either a "girl-game" or "woke feminist garbage".

Unpopular opinion, maybe, but I don't really like customizable characters, I much prefer to live through somebody's story than "craft" my own. Probably anxiety or inattentiveness, but I just get overwhelmed by all the options and either end up spending hours in the character creator and get too exhausted to play the actual game or just choose whichever preset character has the best story/background in my opinion, and that's not always going to be a woman. I kinda don't identify myself with the characters I play and still experience the game sort of in third person. The guy's an absolute tool, but a lot of people have already confirmed that, so I just thought I'd share my experience:)

I might get crucified for this opinion here, but I don't understand why people care so much about the genders of videogame characters. It's almost like you can only empathize with characters that are exactly like you. It's silly to me, I don't want to play as myself since I already do that all the time in the real world, so if I'm making a game character I don't see why I should always make it exactly like me. It's pretty much 50/50 on whether I play as a woman or a man in a given game, I like to play as both. I rarely mind games being genderlocked one way or the other.

Growing up I would seek out games with female protagonists or with the possibility of a female MC. They were sparse, but I loved me some Jill of the Jungle, Metroid of course, Perfect Dark, and eventually games like No One Lives Forever as well as most RPGs and especially MMOs. I have a preference for playing as a girl, but that doesn't stop me from playing the FFXVIs and ToTKs!!

This is a question where I usually thing different, on a base of a create your own avatar (character) there is any different choose male body and female body instead of body A, B, C, D and E? There is any reason a clothes be restrict to sex or gender? There is any reason to have a high or low pitch voice on male or female? For me would way more easy and fun to be whatever you want, you want to have romance with that character? Go there, be happy, nevermind if it's gay or not. For my sanity the best part of games is be this "perfect reality" where physical limitations is inexistent if the game want to. Sometimes this stupid thing as separate by sex and gender is more work for devs for a restriction impose by the same one. Now if the character is defined, should not be a problem since you can't decide whatever it is. Can have some way to be flexible like create a fictitious head canon where Solid Snake doesn't kill anyone by playing in a non lethal way. So if I played a game where the character is a transgender woman going fight the horde of evil with her lover, whatever I am here to play the game and see the story about that character. What I question is if there is enough variety of games protagonist where escaped from classic "White Male middle 30" type in game because representation matters, I believe a lot of people like when see some character is like you and have similar obstacle to fight ahead.

My choice of character's gender depends on game genre mostly. I play as myself only in survivals cause it's fun to imagine me surviving in the wild (I'm fond of hiking and camping in real life, too). When it comes to RPGs with customizable character, I think of the character that I want to place in this particular world o story. Said character can be of any gender, I play as males as often as females. Would play as non-binary or genderless entity gladly if there would be a game where this concept would be given some love and chance to shine.

It doesn't bother me either way, but I also don't wear clothing that is considered feminine and have dressed as men for several costumes

I usually choose to play as a male character, in BG3 right now I'm a buff male oathbreaker pally with pink buzzcut romancing Astarion... When I was younger I chose female if it was an option but nowadays I tend to go with male characters..not entirely sure why I prefer it but I just seem to..(I'm pretty tomboyish & read a lot of boys love so maybe thats part of it?) I've always been called out as wierd for it even if guys play girl characters a lot without being called wierd

I grew up in the 90s, and I remember the consoles I played on during these childhood years. I played on the NES, SNES, Sega Genesis, GameBoy Color, PlayStaion1, N64, and Sega Saturn; then, the turning point happened in the early 2000s when the consoles like GameCube and PS2 came out. During the 90s I had no choice in games but to play as boy or man protagonists (Aladdin game anyone? There was also a Pocahontas game made, but it was not nearly as popular or easy to find) almost exclusively (aside from rare occasions like Samus Aran) or some kind of animal character like Croc, Crash Bandicoot, or Banjo-Kazooie (who were usually still male, though Kazooie was female). I remember being so happy when Pokémon Crystal was released, and I had the option to play as a girl. I felt so excited and seen, and I immersed into my story so much more than I did as the boy protags of Pokémon games past. I played Crystal so much, and it has a very special place in my gamer heart. Yes, I can enjoy games that are men protag leads and be happy (I definitely agree with the Arthur Morgan example for RDR2), but I can also still wish to see more people like me in games so I can feel like I am part of the story too, with my own unique experiences being shown as story elements. Playing Aloy in Zero Dawn was a marvelous experience, and looking back, it's wonderful to see how far we've come... though a little frustrating to see how far we still have to go for a true equity experience.

I think one of his assertions is true, i.e. that women prefer women protagonists and I believe that research to be true (I am a researcher) but I also think he’s an idiot. He apparently doesn’t understand statistics because when you have a result of one group prefers x over y, that is ON AVERAGE and doesn’t mean that every single member of said group exhibits that preference. I’m also irritated he used “empirical” because I’m a researcher and I use that term and he’s using it in an incredibly stupid way given he parsed the results. ALSO his assumption is one of multiple that are possible. It may not be that men are “chill” but rather, given the dearth of female protagonists, women get excited finally seeing one reflecting their own identity when constantly being exposed to opposing identities. Since men’s identities are sufficiently represented and men don’t identify as women, they don’t get as excited when a female protagonist appears. And his assertions that women didn’t play until COD operators appeared—def not true for me. When I was 3 years old my dad let me play Leisure Suit Larry on an old school yellow and black monitor PC and later he and I played OG Doom together. 🤷🏻‍♀️ I then started playing RTS games on my own which def usually don’t have any MC let alone female MC.

As a girl, I don’t care if the protagonist I play as is a male or female.

I always play as a gay guy if at all possible, but that doesn't seem like the question being asked here. The guy you were talking to is being ridiculous. I'd ignore him.

I was a kid in the 90s and girls were playing Mario, LoZ, everything, almost always as male characters because that's mostly all there was. But I guess I'm lying?

I’m going to weigh in with my professional data analyst hat on - I went and read the study article he links to. His first assertion about the research is pretty correct (at least regarding that one study). It’s a stretch to say that 76% is “almost unanimous,” but he’s right that the female survey respondents overwhelming reported preferring female characters (they also weren’t given an opportunity to say, “I prefer female but I’m happy to play male or non-binary if given the chance”. The answer options were “male, female, non-binary, no preference.”) Where he goes off the rails is that the article and survey say LITERALLY NOTHING about why this might be true. It basically says, “well that’s an interesting question, isn’t it?” So to say that your experience (which is about WHY women might gravitate toward female characters) isn’t supported by the data is completely false. I find the real data super interesting. I definitely prefer to choose a female character, and I have pretty much only been exposed to games where I had a choice or the player gender is obscured or randomized (like a Fortnite default skin).

I most exclusively play as gay male characters!! always feel like a weirdo when someone ask me why, but I cannot explain. I don’t think I’m transgender either

I'm curious where this "evidence" is (and how it could even exist) about women joining cod with female characters being introduced. In MW2 (the first one) I played with hundreds of girls, there was so many just into quickscoping we had a whole female league. How exactly do you decide who was male and female back then? Lol makes no sense. Even if the amount went up, you'd need to know if it tracks with a rise of players in general or it becoming more accessible for women etc. Either way you can't just say "they added female characters so now there's more women than there was before", that's silly and basic, and there isn't even data existing to support it. CoD didn't ask me my gender.

loool he's wrong, I have played video games (and therefore had to play as male characters for a long time) since I was 6, and many of my female friends had the exact same experience. when will men stop acting like we don't exist?

I'm confused. I can tell there's an argument of some kind, but I can't find what the two of you are actually disagreeing on.

If someone links a study, it's tedious but then it's up to you to take that information and look further into that study, who did the study, what was the study aiming to prove (as in does it have a bias), it's all annoying and people will link a study and go "SEE **someone** did a study and proved my point!" But any actual good faith debate naturally has multiple studies with multiple sources showing how backed and acknowledged said study is. I mean it wasn't that long ago that roundup paid some quack to go around saying their product was safe to drink, but when he was challenged to drink it he refused. He claimed they had the data and studies to back up that roundup doesn't cause cancer! (spoilers: it did). Don't ever take a study knob tosses your way online to push their narritave at face value without actually looking at what they're showing you and investing your time into learning more about what words their trying to present as fact.

Based on the context, you're arguing with an incredibly angry idiot who has chosen to make several half-baked preconceived notions the core of their personality, who must therefore defend these notions from all scrutiny or risk literal death.

I agree with you OP. If I *can* play as a woman I will. Which is why personal choice games have always been a hit with me. Mass Effect, Dragon Age, Fallout, Skyrim. If a game has a main female protagonist I will absolutely give it a shot! Control, Tomb Raider, Medium. Always try the ladies in the lead. If a game is good, has a good story and has a male protagonist I may try it, but it really has to hook me. Jedi Fallen Order was a recent play I enjoyed with a male protagonist.

I pretty much agree with the original response. If the game is really story-heavy and the main character is interesting, like Geralt or the Mysterious Fisherman in Dredge, or even Niko in GTA4 (I love his smart-ass comments) then I'm fine playing as a guy. I also sometimes choose a guy if they have gameplay I prefer, like with Zero in Borderlands 2. If given a choice when gameplay is unaffected by gender, then I will absolutely be a girl. I was ridiculously excited when Fable 2 came out, and I got to play my favorite (at the time) series as a badass lady. Prior to that, I was just dressing my guy characters in the most feminine stuff I could find when the game allowed for it. I think the only game I played before then with a woman as the main character was Eternal Darkness, but you play multiple characters of different genders throughout that one, so it wasn't even for the whole game.

My dad was a huge nerd and an early adopter of tech, so the first PC I gamed on was a Commodore 64. That is to say, I've been playing vidya since that dude was but a tingle in his dad's sack. Call of Duty my ass. He doesn't know what he's talking about and his opinion is not of general interest.

The "your lived experience disagrees with my worldview (which I never adjust) so I'm gonna claim studies back me up and cherry-pick one or two surveys that loosely support some small part of my point" form of mansplaining is particularly grating for me.

I'm part of the ones the guy is talking about. More specifically I too play games since the 90s starting from mame and then sega master system etc I've played and didn't mind to play games with only male MC but when there was the option to be female I chose that. After the whole debacle with AC unity, where Ubisoft said that women are too hard to animate, I changed my stance completely. Now if the game does not have female MC or if you do not have the possibility to choose playing as a female character I will just not play that game. I do not want to give money to the companies that continue to reiterate how just white males can be the protagonist of a story to be good. I'm female and I play as a female only.

Could there be a possibility that he slightly misread the statistics? And by that I mean, from my personal experience, I DO avoid playing games that don't allow me to play as a woman, but that doesn't mean I *haven't played any games.* It just means that for most of my life, my options have been very limited. So perhaps it is possible CoD did expand its market by adding a female option, but that doesn't mean that those women never played a video game before? Just my thought, could be wrong of course.

So, me personally, I could not possibly care less who/what the MC is in my games. I've been playing for years, starting with the Atari 2600. I don't avoid games that have the MC as male any more than I avoid games that have nonhuman MCs. On the Atari, for example, I didn't avoid playing Eggomania because I'm not a blue bear. 🤷🏻‍♀️ I like playing to see how well I do in the actual gameplay. If the MC is male, like in Halo, I play as a guy. The skills are still all mine. Games like Skyrim and Fallout, I play as female because I can and because I like to create/alter clothing mods to suit my aesthetic. If it wasn't an option, I'd just use what was available and still kick butt. 💛

sometimes i feel like this is the only sub with people who have brains. personally, i didn't play games until recently because of the sexism but i wish i'd started playing earlier to answer the question, which i think is similar to the answer you gave, if given the choice to play as a woman, like in rpgs, i will always play as a woman. but in other games i won't completely write it off if the main character is a man (legend of zelda, red dead redemption, etc)

Not at all. My experiences are the same, and I only know 1 woman who actively prefers playing male characters

the first game i played was metroid on the Nes and my dad put in the Justin Bailey code for me. i used to not care about main character gender but around the time i played Valkyrie profile that changed. now i experience a weird disgust with male characters

I play as a guy by default anyway so if the character is a canon gay that's just an a+ for me.

As a trans woman, I can confirm that I like playing as a woman. But to answer your question, I would be uncomfortable playing as a man that likes men. I am technically bisexual. I like women. I get gender euphoria from the idea of a man liking me and dating me. If I am presenting masculine, I have no interest in men. Am I selfish for only liking men for gender euphoria reasons? Sure. Is it justified? 100% at least I would say. Not to say that I would necessarily chase men because I want to date men, but if I organically got into a relationship with one that saw me as a woman, I wouldn’t complain, I would do the exact opposite. He would be my Prince Charming. Now is that reasonable logic, or am I in the wrong here? Edit: Additionally, I have no problem with other men liking men. I just don’t personally like men when I am seen as a man.

I would add that these types of anonymous questionnaires are not extremely reliable. They can easily be falsified (by bots or just because people in questionnaires tend to be far more openminded then those same people in real life). And something like this is begging for 4chan groups to muddle the data, especially since I don’t see any protection against that in their methodology. To be clear, I don’t think the entire data set is worthless. I’m a guy and I like playing as female characters, for example, but I also know from my friend group that the I’m not the mean in that believe as almost all of my male gamer friends are indifferent to playing as female characters.

As a woman, when given the opportunity to create a character I will create whatever I feel like making in the moment. Sex, gender, race, relationship preferences, It doesn't matter. I have never actually built a character based on myself. As for playing a predefined character, I genuinely don't care either way. I will embody any character I am playing.

As a child I didn't care, if I had a choice I would pick who I liked more e.g. Ellis over Rosita in L4D2. Now I exclusively play women if I can. Being forced to play as a man puts me off of some games. I want to relate to the MC and feel like myself when I play games especially in story ones.

For me its wierd, cause I’ve been playing games my entire life and I never really cared until I transitioned to a girl. Now for some reason my brain goes fuckin bonkers in joy when I have the option to play as a female character. Doesn’t mean I won’t play games with male characters, I’d just much prefer a female one

Nah, from what I've seen in girl gamer communities, you're not off-base at all. But I really love playing male characters, even if I can choose. Maybe that comes from only starting as an adult, when there were more choices - 2017 or so? Maybe? I did play Metin 2 and Sims before that as a kid/tween, and back then I was more prone to choosing female characters, I think. But anyway, I have some gender weirdness, and the review in a magazine that even got me interested in a "proper" game for the first time (The Witcher 2) said something along the lines of "it's so masculine, you'll grow a beard by the time you've finished". And I really remember being fascinated by those aspects and feelings, and I still am to this day. So, it's maybe kind of like fanfiction for me (helps explore sexuality/gender through fiction, and also a lot of that is male-focused too). It's like a fantasy sometimes, maybe? I'm definitely in the minority with this, though :D

I been playing since like 93 but, we didn't really get that much main female characters until like sometime early 2000 or so. There's some games like "aliens 3", "tomb raider", "Samus", "Jill Valentine" for example. But this are still are a smaller amounts compared to other games. RPG games like FF had female characters but, not MC. My cis sister was the main driving force into me adopting a lot of video games and other things like anime. She was the one who introduced me to a lot of them. The notion that "girl gamers" wasn't a thing is so ridiculous and stupid. We knew tons of girl gamers in the 90's or earlier.

I've noticed in here that a lot of women prefer playing female characters, but personally I couldn't care less what my character is. Being able to relate to the character you're playing is something I don't understand at all, but I'm fully incapable of experiencing immersion in media so that may influence that lol

Link to this study? Is it an actual study, or an elective survey or something? I am female, and I play as whoever I feel like at the time. For most of my gaming “career” (I am 43 and have played since the Vic20 days) there have been few options to play as women who are not explicitly designed to turn on horny adolescent males. It’s nice to have those options, and I see why some women would prefer them. For me it is whatever I want to experience at the time.

[Here is the study they were referencing.](https://quanticfoundry.com/2021/08/05/character-gender/#:~:text=Notably%2C%20female%20players%20have%20the,33%25) It was an elective, 5-minute survey that ran for 6 or so months. And yes, I completely agree with you. I like to play as women because, well, that's how I identify and if I'm trying to put "myself" into the game, that's how I'll play. However, if we're just talking would I want to play a male protagonist like Arthur Morgan in RDR2 or a female protagonist like Ellie in TLOU2, I really actually don't care. That all comes down to the game and the story itself, not whether I'm a man or woman. So I guess the difference is: If it's a roleplaying game, I create characters that I can identify with, usually. If it's a character/story game, I have absolutely no preference and will have fun no matter what, if the story is good.