327 réponses à ce sujet

[Sylvianus]

I have no idea what the op is talking about. I'm pretty sure that at least over 60% of male players pick the male option and for many of them, only the male option and aren't interested with the female option actually. What you see on the bsn is hardly representative of all the fanbase. 

 

On the mass effect board, you'd think in the past that everyone played femshep, and that almost everyone favored her over maleshep. Not to mention all those people who keep claiming that maleshep was boring, etc. People were absolutely shocked when they saw the stats, the total opposite, a result far far away from what they believed on this forum. 

 

Casual players aren't like the hardcore gamers who keep playing over and over the same game, and are more likely to play everything. Those casual gamers have hardly time to do one or two playthrough.

 

And in this case, they 'd rather pick what they identify the most. This is what my brother does with other games. Once I asked him why he never chose to play a female character in Skyrim, dragon age,  etc, he said he had no time for that. I'm pretty sure that it's not only that, but this is probably indeed the biggest reason. He had only played once dragon age. 

 

If myself I could only allow myself to do one or two playthrough, i'd probably play first a male character, especially if there are romances. 

 

As for the reasons why guys decide to play female protagonists ? Why do you care and what is there to judge exactly ? Be happy that some are willing to do that, regardless of their reason. This interest has more positive results than negative ones. 

[straykat]

I have no idea what the op is talking about. I'm pretty sure that at least over 60% of male players pick the male option and for many of them, only the male option and aren't interested with the female option actually. What you see on the bsn is hardly representative of all the fanbase. 

 

On the mass effect board, you'd think in the past that everyone played femshep, and that almost everyone favored her over maleshep. Not to mention all those people who keep claiming that maleshep was boring, etc. People were absolutely shocked when they saw the stats, the total opposite, a result far far away from what they believed on this forum. 

 

Casual players aren't like the hardcore gamers who keep playing over and over the same game, and are more likely to play everything. Those casual gamers have hardly time to do one or two playthrough.

 

And in this case, they 'd rather pick what they identify the most. This is what my brother does with other games. Once I asked him why he never chose to play a female character in Skyrim, dragon age,  etc, he said he had no time for that. I'm pretty sure that it's not only that, but this is probably indeed the biggest reason. He had only played once dragon age. 

 

If myself I could only allow myself to do one or two playthrough, i'd probably play first a male character, especially if there are romances. 

 

As for the reasons why guys decide to play female protagonists ? Why do you care and what is there to judge exactly ? Be happy that some are willing to do that, regardless of their reason. This interest has more positive results than negative ones. 

 

That's basically how I was with ME... I'm pretty casual there. Only two characters. In DA, much more hardcore.. I like spreading it around. Some races click with me more as one gender though.. like dwarves. Also Courtenay Taylor did one of the voices, so couldn't resist.

[BansheeOwnage]

 

I tend to play the same character, usually with the same choices, over and over again because that is what I like to do and have no interest in trying something different. If I am going to devote 150 hours to a play, it damn well better be something I know I will enjoy. I know the choices are there for me if I want to experience them, and that is enough.

I guess I'm not the only one who likes to replay the same character with the same choices (mostly, there can be slight variation). It's like any linear story that you rewatch/read/play. It's compelling, so you experience it again. And like you said, it does have to do with how long RPGs tend to be as well. If something is short, I would be more likely to try variations, but if I'm spending dozens of hours on it, I want it to be relatable and satisfying.

 

I always wonder about this. How much of oneself has to carry over for it to be a self-insert? For example, I can never bring myself to make evil choices, or a-hole choices, and most of my characters have a similar value and moral system as I do in real life. I will base their decisions around role-play and a particular backstory, but there are still those personal elements.

I think we role-play similarly! I just wrote this in another thread.

 

 

Hmm... I feel like I self-insert, partially, but also that I roleplay. I don't name my characters after myself, but I sometimes give them some of my features (like scars, eye colour, etc.) even if they look quite different. So like an idealized/better-looking/cooler-looking version of myself, ha

 

But character-wise, it's more complicated. I suppose the main component that I self-insert is my morality, because I have a hard time making choices I wouldn't make in real life, and don't get any satisfaction out of it. I could never bring myself to do most of the renegade or "evil" things, for instance. So I suppose there is some "What would I do?" going on, but I also roleplay because I take into account my characters' past and how that shaped them. Standard RP stuff.

 

When it comes to dialogue options, I think there is less self-insertion, because I'm not as cool as these people So I just say what I think fits them. For Hawke, it's usually Purple because she uses humour to deal with her rather crappy life. My warrior!Inquisitor would take some of the more direct and aggressive options, because she was more short-tempered and enjoyed fighting, compared to my mage!Inquisitor who was actually supposed to be the exact same character if she had been born a mage. So she had to learn self-control, etc. Same person, different background. So that example is a bit like how I roleplay my characters. Same general morality, different life.

So yeah, I want my characters to be likeable and relatable to me, because then I get emotionally invested in their story and get more enjoyment out of it. If I can't connect with a protagonist well, I won't get as much out of the story. And I admit I do have some more escapist elements in play as well, like you mentioned earlier.

[Qis]

....

[nightscrawl]

"High" meaning what percent, approximately?

 
Just for argument's sake, I would have said 50% or so, but I just say that to humor you; I don't think it's productive to get into this or that number when we don't have hard data to back it up. Dragon Age is extremely friendly and accessible to the female player, not only because of the simple fact of gender selection, but also because of how women are portrayed in the series. Sort of a "if you build it, they will come" response.
 
 

I have my doubts. What if you play several characters? Do they only count the first one? Do they count those five minutes into gameplay before you realize how uggo your PC is and start over? Is it based on your first complete playthrough?

 
I've always wondered this when it comes to metrics, particularly regarding DAO. The Bioware responses in these two threads were enlightening.
 
Many players don't finish the game at all. Do those count? DAO had six different origin stories one could play through. What if someone chose to experience all of those and never touched the character again after arriving at Ostagar? Does it count for those racial statistics if the character never finished the game? What about those people who scrapped their character because they didn't like the CC results? What about the players, like myself, who choose not to send telemetry data, or play offline?
 
This is in addition to the fact that the raw telemetry data doesn't tell us anything about the player, or their reasons for doing whatever. Someone may have purposely set out to play all of the various origin stories while having no intention to continue with any of them. They didn't necessarily think they were bad, or find them to be unappealing, but only created characters for that limited purpose.
 
This is probably one of the most useful dev responses regarding the matter, and does partially answer some of the questions I posed. Emphasis added.

As for the figures we have, our telemetry is able to break down unique accounts that play the game more than once or restart-- and the figures I quoted for DAO are the number of unique accounts that ever played an origin, whether it was all the way to the end or not. I'm not going to start rattling off figures (since I don't have them in front of me, and wouldn't be at liberty to start handing them out even if they were) but I do recall the dwarven origins being 5% of the total (3% dwarf noble, 2% dwarf commoner). The elven figure was higher, but still a fair distance from the human noble and human mage.

Again, is that indicative of anything? There are a lot of reasons a player might choose to do something and you don't want to make assumptions about their motivation. And just because a minority of players finish a game doesn't mean you don't put in an ending. Still, it's better to work from hard data than conjecture or anecdotal evidence when citing preferences of the player base as a whole.

[n7stormrunner]

I only play female character for female only romances or the few one that female protag makes more sense... backfired on me with DA: I turned out I hate sera. though ended up liking how my qunari mage turned out so may redo that playthough after I get an xbox one and all the dlc.

[ArcadiaGrey]

I have no idea what the op is talking about. I'm pretty sure that at least over 60% of male players pick the male option and for many of them, only the male option and aren't interested with the female option actually. What you see on the bsn is hardly representative of all the fanbase.

 

It's easy to forget that sometimes.  Unfortunately we're the minority, not the majority, so we may be pulling our hair out over something in game that the majority of players never even noticed, or trying out options on our 3rd run when everyone else only ever played once.

 

Most people playing Dragon Age won't roleplay, they'll play one time only and probably choose their own gender to do it.  That's just how it is.  So I'd guess that most guys play guys, so they can be the hero and get the girl.  And if I was only playing once?  Well I'm a girl so I'd play a girl and go for Alistair, Fenris and Cullen probably.  But that was back in the day when I didn't roleplay and playthrough multiple times.  My character would've just been a prettier, badass version of myself.

[Patricia08]

Well, my husband definitely prefers to play as a female if given a choice. And doesn't hide that the reason is exactly "if I have to stare at a character for many hours it'd better be a pretty girl".))

 

I myself tend to play both genders, in some games I prefer male characters more, in some - females. I prefer female Warden and Hawke, male Bhaalspawn and Hero of Neverwinter and my Inquisitors are split 50/50. Reasons are different: voice actor, ability to create nice looking character, specific romance or just overall feel that this gender fit my idea of that particular hero better. I never do self-inserts.

 

Well i bet there are a lot of other man out there who play as a female character the way your husband play the game.  

[Andraste_Reborn]

It's easy to forget that sometimes.  Unfortunately we're the minority, not the majority, so we may be pulling our hair out over something in game that the majority of players never even noticed, or trying out options on our 3rd run when everyone else only ever played once.

 

We forum users are a bunch of weirdos who do all kinds of odd things. Not only do we play female characters, but non-humans and rogues. We even finish the game! Sometimes more than once! The majority of players will never do any of those things, if the telemetry is to be believed.

 

I still cannot wrap my head around the fact that video game completion rates are so low in general. (I am one of those people who has to finish a game eventually if I've played it for more than an hour or so.)

[HydroFlame20]

I always play Male myself I just actually started a new playthrough with a female just to see how things are different.

[ArcadiaGrey]

We forum users are a bunch of weirdos who do all kinds of odd things. Not only do we play female characters, but non-humans and rogues. We even finish the game! Sometimes more than once! The majority of players will never do any of those things, if the telemetry is to be believed.

 

I still cannot wrap my head around the fact that video game completion rates are so low in general. (I am one of those people who has to finish a game eventually if I've played it for more than an hour or so.)

 

Seriously?  I hardly ever abandon a game, I've currently got the guilts for not wanting to finish Jade Empire but I feel duty bound to complete it. 

 

Ummm....so my last Inquisitor was a female dwarf rogue.  Hitting all the targets there!

[Kakistos_]

Come on, how could I possibly pass up Inquisitor Samantha Traynor.

 

[Ieldra]

Why do you "guys" play mostly with a female character in dragon age ? Is it because we have beautiful butts where you can look at. Or is it because we women run more gracefully then man because the man look really ridiculous when they run in this game. Or is it something else ?

 

So why "guys" why do you play mostly with a female character ?

 

P.s. Maybe i am totally wrong about this but i just get the feeling and what i am reading here in this forum that i am not entirely wrong about what i am writing here.    

While I play both male and female protagonists, as a rule I prefer to project myself into fictional worlds as a woman. I do that in tabletop rpgs as well, so the "beautiful butts" are at most a minor factor. I don't really know why I have that prefernce - I'm a heterosexual man with no special kinks in RL - but one influence factor is that I don't like male hero stereotypes, and I find it difficult to disassociate my protagonists from them if they're male, particularly in videogames, and more so in videogames with voiced protagonists. Shepard was particularly bad. Also in videogames, I want my characters to look good, and I usually find it easier to create a good-looking woman than a good-looking man.

 

None of these are the only reasons, though. If I got to play a hero type more to my liking, say, a science hero, and got a really good CC, I'd still play a woman at least half of the time. My default character is female, which means that I play a woman if there's no reason to do otherwise, such as a particularly good or bad voice, bad CC options, LI choices etc. etc.. Again, no idea why.

 

Romance can influence my character choice. I can play hetero romances from both sides, so if there's a character I find particularly interesting, I choose a fitting gender. Meanwhile, same-sex romances doesn't appeal to me, which is unfortunate in Dorian's case since he's one of those characters I really like.

 

Edit:

It may be the deciding factor that the traditional hero in our culture is male, and as I'm an anti-traditionalist radical, I like to play against the types most present in our culture's collective mind. For the same reason, my protagonists are never completely "good", and as opposed to my gender choice, that's something of a hard rule.

[Get Magna Carter]

the short answer is "Why not?"

 

Some players make the character an avatar for themselves (often based on themselves) and assume everyone else does.

other players do not consider their character to be based on themselves and design characters around other ideas, such as someone they would like to date (which is probably the main reason [where a reason exists] for cross-gender playing in games offering a choice).

 

As long as the player is not delusional about it and accept both that they are not the character and that the character does not exist, it doesn't really matter and people should stop making a fuss just because other players are approaching character creation with a different attitude to them

[Orian Tabris]

I try to avoid playing a character on the basis of sexual preference (in RPGs). In DA, I choose gender based on the romance options available, and I consider what each class and race will be. I try not to double up on race and class combination.

[vertigomez]

We forum users are a bunch of weirdos who do all kinds of odd things. Not only do we play female characters, but non-humans and rogues. We even finish the game! Sometimes more than once! The majority of players will never do any of those things, if the telemetry is to be believed.

I recall Gaider saying that more people finished DAO as a woman romancing Leliana than as a rogue.

I've always wondered this when it comes to metrics, particularly regarding DAO. The Bioware responses in these two threads were enlightening.
 
Many players don't finish the game at all. Do those count? DAO had six different origin stories one could play through. What if someone chose to experience all of those and never touched the character again after arriving at Ostagar? Does it count for those racial statistics if the character never finished the game? What about those people who scrapped their character because they didn't like the CC results? What about the players, like myself, who choose not to send telemetry data, or play offline?
 
This is in addition to the fact that the raw telemetry data doesn't tell us anything about the player, or their reasons for doing whatever. Someone may have purposely set out to play all of the various origin stories while having no intention to continue with any of them. They didn't necessarily think they were bad, or find them to be unappealing, but only created characters for that limited purpose.
 
This is probably one of the most useful dev responses regarding the matter, and does partially answer some of the questions I posed. Emphasis added.

Oh wow, thanks for that info!

But I'm now convinced more than ever that this data is next to useless, haha. At least when it comes to gender. Unless we start polling players about the info and comparing them to their protagonists. Yet it's a bit fruitless to ask on the BSN because most everyone here is an anomaly, playing the game multiple times, finishing the game, restarting the game when their PC doesn't look exactly perfect, etc. Whereas I'm willing to best most casual players don't spend forever fussing in the CC or replaying DAO twenty times just to catch all the different epilogue slides.

Makes me curious about the romances, too. I think it was Weekes who said that there are plenty of heterosexual people who enjoy playing same-sex romances in DA, and that's apparent on the boards and tumblr, reddit, etc. But just as a point of curiosity I wonder how many (for instance) men played a female character who romanced Blackwall, either because 1) they happen to enjoy romances from a female POV, or 2) would have preferred to romance Blackwall as a dude but were willing to settle.

Even with characters who are bisexual, there are plenty of people who opt not to play their own gender to romance them even though they theoretically could.

I dunno, I'm just rambling. I think it's all very interesting, but not something we're ever going to know outside of quizzing random people on the forum.

[PhroXenGold]

I'm a guy and I play a both genders in game, though I do play more women than men. And it probably comes down to the fact that I play my male characters as self-inserts - I think of them as me (or as close to me as you can get) - and so I will only play a race, class personality etc that I can picture myself as. On the other hand, when I play as female characters, I can disassociate them from myself much better, so I can play a much wider variety of characters.

 

So, as a simple example, I can't picture myself being an elf mage. But I wanted to play an elf mage in DA:I. So I made her female.

[Catilina]

I playing for the variety of choices and outcomes. Despite this I admit, on some level I usualy build myself into the my characters: idealized, or caricature or bad qualities by focusing, or mixtured these. Whether intentionally or not: I've noticed that I'm still in my characters. In summary: perhaps I'm too self-centered, or probably a lame role player. It's hard to play a completely different perspective to me, although human nature quite complex, a variety of reactions capable. Therefore I not always choose the same way ofc. (However in the real life sometimes we need role-playing, frequently we wear masks.)

 

I usually do a few female characters, but rarely I finish the game with they, or just ran across the game (for example i have one fem Hawke, a rogue, all anothers male mages. She created because, i want to playing at least once with Bethany [and trying a femHawke].) I have one female elf in Inquisitor too, for Solas. I do not know whether I will finish the game with her, because it is too much timekiller quests in the game...

[BatarianBob]

I like how the word "guy" is in quotes. Great bait mate. As long as we're trolling...

Well, Inquisition is a game about hanging out in a castle deciding which boys you like while waiting for other characters to do the adventuring. Obviously the Inquisitor should be female.

[Donk]

Who cares?

[Onewomanarmy]

No one? Lol.

[AlanC9]

On the mass effect board, you'd think in the past that everyone played femshep, and that almost everyone favored her over maleshep. Not to mention all those people who keep claiming that maleshep was boring, etc. People were absolutely shocked when they saw the stats, the total opposite, a result far far away from what they believed on this forum. 

After a while you realize that this board has nothing much to do with the general playerbase. Back in the day all of the NWN players here were talking about MP, persistent worlds, and mods. Bio tracking data conclusively showed that most NWN copies were never used with any of these.

[Deadly dwarf]

For me, I suppose it's an offshoot of playing too much "Tomb Raider" prior to my Dragon Age obsession!  (I try to make all my female Dragon Age characters -- except Hawke -- look somewhat like Lara Croft:  pretty, brunette, etc.)  A female heroine is also a perfect underdog, even if Dragon Age villains, whatever their shortcomings, aren't particularly sexist.

[Heimdall]

As a male, I play both genders for various reasons.

I chose a female as my canon in DAI because I like how the Solas romance works into the story. I chose femshep in ME because I liked Jennifer Hale's voice acting a little better than Mark Meer's.

[AlanC9]

Just for argument's sake, I would have said 50% or so, but I just say that to humor you; I don't think it's productive to get into this or that number when we don't have hard data to back it up. Dragon Age is extremely friendly and accessible to the female player, not only because of the simple fact of gender selection, but also because of how women are portrayed in the series. Sort of a "if you build it, they will come" response.

So the ratio of female to male DA players is simultaneously well-known and unknowable, eh? (Actually, that's just ambiguity in what "high" is being used for.)

50% is quite possible from current survey data. Note that this would mean that the OP's speculation is the opposite of the truth, since to get from there to the known PC gender ratio we'd need to have a lot of female players creating exclusively male PCs. Or people who prefer males creating a lot more PCs, etc.
 

Does it count for those racial statistics if the character never finished the game? What about those people who scrapped their character because they didn't like the CC results? What about the players, like myself, who choose not to send telemetry data, or play offline?

Gaider answers the first question in the first of your linked threads, doesn't he? Only 15% of players even tried an elf. In the second thread he specifically says "played an origin"; if telemetry was just the achievements then they might not have been able to pick up someone who didn't finish the origin but did try the CC for that race.

Note that being logged out of data collection may reduce our -- (I think the phrase is "level of confidence" -- in the data, but there isn't much reason to think that people who opt out are also different in their approach to playing the game. Though there's no way to tell since they've erased themselves from the data set. Which, of course, can only harm their interests if they really are different from other players.