People have always loved to play games, so it’s no wonder that thought the progression of humanity, that games have also progressed through the ages. Video games came about as a progression of our wanting to “play”. There is a subgenera of games called RPGs, or role playing games: some examples would be The Elder Scrolls series, The Dark Souls series, and the Fallout series. Essentially an RPG is game in which players play the roles of characters and act out fantasy adventures, the outcomes of which are partially determined by chance, usually by dice. Now, when playing RPGs or even MMORPGs — Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game — some people will decide to play a different gender than their own. So for instance, a guy playing one of these games might decide to play as a female character instead of a male character. Now, there are a bunch of possible reasons for this, I would like to talk about a few of them.
Firstly there is the obvious one, they could be either transgender or gay. So with transgender people, playing as their true gender offers them a form of freedom, especially those that can’t perform their gender as they wish in their everyday lives and use the game as almost a form of escapism. As for gay people playing as the opposite gender, they could be playing for the reason of wanting to be close with the gender they prefer by playing the gender that their goal romantic partner likes. Secondly, some people just like role playing female characters because they want to for the hell of it and they do it because it would just work best for the character they created. Thirdly, sometimes a game is just better when you play as the female character: for instance the endings in a game you want may require you to play as a female character because perhaps the only way you get that ending is by hooking up with a specific character that only female characters have the option to romance. And finally, some people like to do it for the “aesthetics”. Some people just don’t like looking at a male model the entire time they play a game, so they will choose a female character because it “gives them something to look at” and as I know as well, some people actually prefer games that have customization and like to customize characters, male or female.
