I would say i predominantly play my own gender, though there's usually a rare run as the opposite gender if i like the game to do numerous playthroughs.
Really for me its about how its much easier to get into the head of the character i'm roleplaying.
Playing as the opposite gender isn't exactly rocket science (unless the character is a rocket scientist...), besides the way you can play your character is often fairly stereotypical, it's not like the typical protagonist is a complex character with borderline disorder...
Playing as the opposite gender isn't exactly rocket science (unless the character is a rocket scientist...), besides the way you can play your character is often fairly stereotypical, it's not like the typical protagonist is a complex character with borderline disorder...
I disagree... I love my wife, but understanding her "feminine thoughts", as she puts it, feels like rocket science. So, yeah, why would I put my self through this in a game? I get from her and my sisters all the time "women think differently than men", I disagree, but it's there.
My first character in Morrowind ended up as a really ugly dude and mid game he had a horrid hopscotch of armour pieces from different sets. Then and there I decided to always have female characters after that, focus a bit on how they look and that they'd rather look stylish and die as a consequence than stumble around looking like mishaps. And I still live after that "rule". I'd rather skip som AR than equip an ugly helmet, for example. And my current female human Inquisitor skipped an armor set that is better than the one she's currently using because the latter looks better.
I disagree... I love my wife, but understanding her "feminine thoughts", as she puts it, feels like rocket science. So, yeah, why would I put my self through this in a game? I get from her and my sisters all the time "women think differently than men", I disagree, but it's there.
In a complex real world yes...but in the DA world it is all simplified into Leliana liking shoes, Cassandra liking the equivalent of the Thedas Twilight Series and Dorian having fabulous taste, you cannot really claim that this is a complicated approach or difficult to understand and identify with...
When Josephine starts playing mind games and acting passive aggressive and Sera suddenly dislikes you and refuses to talk to you for no reason, then I might concede that you may feel like you have no idea how your character should react anymore. But you never have that problem in DA, it is all very straightforward and in case you are even the slightest confused the big heart icon on the chat wheel would tip you off...
In a complex real world yes...but in the DA world it is all simplified into Leliana liking shoes, Cassandra liking the equivalent of the Thedas Twilight Series and Dorian having fabulous taste, you cannot really claim that this is a complicated approach or difficult to understand and identify with...
True, it's not complicated at all. I love the romance side in BW games(it's why I play them). I role-play my chars(all) as hetero and that will not change. So the "complication" is in the meta(my thoughts and feelings on that subject).
Out of curiosity, why do you only play one gender? I play both, always have (since BG in fact) and never thought twice about it. What motivates you to limit yourself to only one?
I only play female in games where your persona in game is simply a mindless avatar with no defining attributes beyond their class.
My only exception to this is if I want to experience the voice acting of the female version of a character, like with Hawke, or if some specific female experience is compelling enough for me to be curious enough to experience it in game. Solas came close for me in Inquisition, but I'm finding it hard to do more than one playthrough for DA:I since the game feels so 'empty'. So much space wasted on filler quests that I *need* to do to progress the story.
Limiting yourself to one gender *intentionally* does seem a little odd. I just see it as another option to go and see if it makes any significant differences to the playthrough.
Granted my first playthrough of all DA games has been as a Human Male. Probably because I am a Human Male. 
But the playthrough I did as a female Dalish rogue in Origins remains one of my favourite playthroughs.
Thee's always going to be options and circumstances which can only be achieved through your player character being one gender or other. Like if you want Alistair on the Throne, but married or mistressed to the Hero of Ferelden. If that's something you want to see as a history for future games that's something which needs setting up.
I'm currently playing DAI as female Qunari Warrior. Because generally there aren't Female Soldiers within the Qun, and I thought it would be interesting to see how characters might react to that. Plus I wanted to romance Sera. And to listen to her dialogue across the game? A female Qunari is basically her Fantasy... 
Having seen the end of DAI I think it would also be remiss of me not to do a playthrough as a Female Elf romancing Solas. Should be interesting.
Those are the kind of reasons I don't always play as a male character, anyway.
Limiting yourself to one gender *intentionally* does seem a little odd.
What's odd about that? And why is this considered a "limitation"? That word in this thread's context is loaded, that's for sure. It is all about choice, and the game makers give us that choice.
What's odd about that? And why is this considered a "limitation"? That word in this thread's context is loaded, that's for sure. It is all about choice, and the game makers give us that choice.
I mean that if your going to do multiple playthroughs of a game saying 'I can ONLY do this as a guy/girl' seems a bit odd. I really wouldn't see the point of playing through more than once unless you wanted to try and do things you hadn't done before. And like I went into detail with above there are scenarios which are only achievable as one gender or the other. Such as certain romance angles or who you place on the Throne.
I did not start on the concept of limitation, but it is the focus of the thread. Some folks on here have genuinely been saying that they simply will not play as a different gender. I would say that in doing that there are some things which you are missing out on.
I disagree... I love my wife, but understanding her "feminine thoughts", as she puts it, feels like rocket science. So, yeah, why would I put my self through this in a game? I get from her and my sisters all the time "women think differently than men", I disagree, but it's there.
I'm female, and I don't really know what is meant by "feminine thoughts". But then I'm not very girly...
I will make this observation though:
I've worked in human resources and senior management. It is my job to deal with people and their problems. In my experience (and it is obviously only my experience), people of particular genders, class backgrounds and even ethnic backgrounds do have certain tendencies toward certain personality traits. But 'tendency' is as high I would put it. Knowing someone is, for example, female, does not really help me to understand her problems or predict her actions.
On the other hand, I've found knowing someone's occupation actually really does help me to understand their personality and predict of their actions. Telling me someone is male is not useful at all. But telling me someone is a doctor, a prosecutor, a park ranger, or a maintenance worker? Now that gives me something to work with. It is incredible how many times I have observed patterns of behavior repeat within an occupation group.
Hence, it seems to me that knowing a character is a seeker, a templar, a mercenary, a merchant or a want-to-be-Robin-Hood says much more about who they are then simply saying "man" or "woman".
@Robert Trevelyan, I see. My only limitation is on romance issues, not the gender.
@IncendiarySheep, A doctor or whatever profession is still a human(male or female) or person. When I told my grandmother that I am a "Software Developer" her only response was, "but you're still you, no matter what your profession is."
I most often play as a female character because I am a woman and it makes me feel more connected to my character. I will always romance male characters...it's like myself. Though in this newest outing, I will play as a man to romance Dorian because I love his character and so far his romance feels very real. To me these are playable films and I want to connect with them on a personal level.
As seems to have been said above, like anyone else with a gender specific character type, it's self-projection and hopefully Bioware continues their take on companions and romance in their games to allow everyone to experience the game as their virtual selves.
@IncendiarySheep, A doctor or whatever profession is still a human(male or female) or person. When I told my grandmother that I am a "Software Developer" her only response was, "but you're still you, no matter what your profession is."
Oh, I totally agree. Nothing is absolute - and I probably didn't phrase that as well as I could have. What I meant to say is that, in my experience, the difference between two people of the same gender etc is actually a lot less than the difference between two people of the same occupation. The inquisitor is a bit of a wild card here, because of the way in which the role comes about. But if you take Commander Shepard, who is fundamentally a soldier, I don't think whether Shep is make or female is likely to make much difference to the kind of decisions they make.
I mostly go with a glorified version of myself, I am one of those people. One pattern I noticed about myself in RPGs:
My main character is always a male rogue; if I go for an alternate-decisions-playthrough however, the character happens to mostly be a female warrior/heavy fighter type. My alternate Inquisitor is a female Elf 2H-Warrior, for example.
Out of curiosity, why do you only play one gender? I play both, always have (since BG in fact) and never thought twice about it. What motivates you to limit yourself to only one?
Honestly I used to always play as a dude, without question! Playing a female character wasn't even something I considered back in the day, and it was mainly due to me more easily projecting myself into my game if I was playing as a guy, ya know? I'm a man, therefore playing as a male character just made RPGs easier to get into.
However, as I grew up I kind of stopped caring about that and saw each of my characters as just that, characters, like I was writing a story and they were the main character. This ofc meant playing as a female character would not inhibit my desire to get into that story since there was no longer a desire of projection.
But yeah I play a certain gender based on the type of class or role I want to play in the game now. If I'm either a dagger wielding rogue or assassin type character or a very offensive focused warrior type character I'll be playing as a dude! But if I want to play a super tanky type character or a magic wielding/archery/ranged/etc type of character then I'll be a chick! Those gender/class match ups just work best in my own personal opinion, story wise, couldn't really do any other mix of it anymore lol
Although I did run into one issue.... the first time I played a female character it was in ME1, and I romanced Liara cause Kaiden is boring, and when I got to ME2 I thought "I'll romance Garrus cause he's the best frickin BRO to ever exist in video game history!" Buuuut... I ended up just screwing the brains out of Kelly instead then jumping on that Samantha train in ME3..... which is when I discovered that even though I no longer have a role-playing connection to my characters, I still cannot romance other males, even as a female 
It would be interesting to know how many who play as a different gender would admit to mainly playing a Mary Sue/Gary Stu character (an idealized image of a partner of the opposite gender). I used to make the same Mary Sue character in every game, but I have eventually come to appreciate playing characters with a wider range of personalities, appearances and motives, even those I don't like or agree with personally. I draw inspiration from characters in fiction with interesting, but not necessarily desirable traits.
It would be interesting to know how many who play as a different gender would admit to mainly playing a Mary Sue/Gary Stu character (an idealized image of a partner of the opposite gender).
First time I played a female was in KOTOR.... FInished my first run with a male that looked pretty ugly, but overall it was really nice gaming experience. KOTOR was my first real RPG game. After that I wanted to try something else like playing the opposite gender ? I was like... isn't that weird for a guy ? So, I rolled a female and I was surprised on how much I enjoyed it. And I play mostly females since then. I usually don't romance anyone when I have a female character because I feel awkward about it. My character might be female, but my brain is male wired... so romancing another male ingame is kinda weird for me.
I don't see a hero material in women so I always pick male.
Its a fantasy game, so I play female. Read into that what you will.
You do know the meaning some placed behind MMORPG, right? Yeah, so you're not off there with the WOW statement.
However, some if not many would disagree. I play more female chars in GW2, why? They have better run animation as the males, except Asura and maybe Sylvari. I play both male and female in all mmorpgs I play. In BW rpgs or mmorpg(SWTOR) I play mostly male, because I do enjoy the romance(Except Mako; She's annoying). Romance gives me something other than fighting to work towards. I also play Swordsman online and there the male animation look and feel better, running and in combat. In Age of Wulin both male and females in combat feel really nice. Neverwinter, females look, move and feel better in that game, so I have a female there.
It all depends on the game and the opinion of the player. This is a trivial matter. The OP probably wanted to know how many took or take the opportunity to play another gender as he/she did.
I just don't have much of a desire to play as a woman.
Some posts in this thread about MMOs suprise me, even shock me. Back in my WoW days, 90% of female characters were played by males and NOONE, absolutely noone who has been playing for longer than a week would assume a player to be a female just because of a female character. Maybe things were different in other MMOs, dunno.In Bio games I don't play self inserts because it's almost irrelevant in regards to choices. No gender exclusive choices (not counting romances), no choices universally more likely to be picked by one gender, the only differences are appearance, voice and few dialogue lines acknowledging PC's gender. Therefore arguments like "I can identify with my character more" hold no value to me.On the other hand i like to play 'beating the odds' characters. That's why most of my Shepards are traditionally beautiful females.
Well appearance definitely has something to do with it...and voice. If there was a gigantic blob as the main character with the voice of Bane would you still be able to immerse yourself as him if he spoke the same dialogue?
Like a guy above said, I personally go for a somewhat glorified version of myself. (if I wasn't a college student and instead in 5x better shape fighting demons.) I normally always do a second playthrough where i play as a very different character. I played a drawf rogue the second time who looked like a duck dynasty character except he was incredibly short.
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