Chicks, man...

[TragicHero84]

I love video game girls. I think a game with a female lead is exponentially more interesting than a game with a male lead. There is just something so awesome about a girl who can kick ass. That being said, I don't like female mages. They're so cliche and boring to me. A female healer...riveting. Aeris was ok, though. Sorry, now I'm just rambling. Anyway, the point is, I love video game girls. My personal favorites are Cammy, Psylocke, Jill Valentine, Lara Croft, Felicia, Rikku, Princess Ashe, C. Viper, Kitana, and Tali.

Also..does using girls in games, especially fighting games, make you feel less manly/masculine?

 

[VanillaBean]

No especially if your good with them.

 

[Risingblade]

Nope unless it's one of those where you make your female charecter look like you want. Those kinda make me feel like a pervert...

 

[TragicHero84]

No especially if your good with them.

I wonder if that's changed at all over the years. I was only 7 when Street Fighter 2 came out, so I'm not really sure how the gaming scene was back then. Were guys made fun of for picking Chun Li? Hmmm I wonder.

 

[Sixcess]

Also..does using girls in games, especially fighting games, make you feel less manly/masculine?

I don't recall seeing people make a big deal about this back in the 90s - on the PS1 a hell of a lot of 3rd person action games had female leads - Tomb Raider, Resident Evil, Fear Effect (as in my avatar) and noone gave it a second thought.

I blame the attitude shift on on MMORPGs, and more specifically on geeks trying to use WoW as a bloody dating service. Personally, given the choice, I'll almost always take a female lead rather than a male - the character models tend to be better and the animations are usually nicer to watch for starters.

Besides, there are no women on the internet. I thought everyone knew that by now :trollface:

 

[Paksenarrion]

You know what I like to see in RPGs? Male clerics. There's something about a man who is kind to everyone that makes me want to...violate him.

But that's just me.

 

[RollForInitiative]

Also..does using girls in games, especially fighting games, make you feel less manly/masculine?

I'm pretty sure that it's only men that are secure in their masculinity that don't have issues with playing as girls in a game, fighting or otherwise.

 

[TragicHero84]

You know what I like to see in RPGs? Male clerics. There's something about a man who is kind to everyone that makes me want to...violate him.

But that's just me.

lol same here...in Final Fantasy Tactics my white mage or chemist is always male.

 

[Hiikuro]

Always enjoy girls in games. I see it more as appreciation of femininity than a loss of my masculinity.

In fact, in the game I'm developing, the two main characters are both female and have a romantic relationship. I really enjoy exploring them as characters, and their emotions as a couple. There is something about the depth that is available in a girl that I couldn't have expressed with a male character.

 

[Cogwheel]

I love video game girls. I think a game with a female lead is exponentially more interesting than a game with a male lead. There is just something so awesome about a girl who can kick ass. That being said, I don't like female mages. They're so cliche and boring to me. A female healer...riveting. Aeris was ok, though. Sorry, now I'm just rambling. Anyway, the point is, I love video game girls. My personal favorites are Cammy, Psylocke, Jill Valentine, Lara Croft, Felicia, Rikku, Princess Ashe, C. Viper, Kitana, and Tali.

I suggest you play Iji [http://www.remar.se/daniel/iji.php]. Now. Noooooooow.

Really, it's free. There's no excuse.

Also..does using girls in games, especially fighting games, make you feel less manly/masculine?

My favourite fighting game ever (beating Brawl and some Gundam games) is Touhou Hisoutensoku, of which Youtube has many videos.

I'd say no. And as my playing that game, Kirby and a bunch of others may tell you, I honestly don't care.

 

[Danceofmasks]

The best cleric ever was Fall-From-Grace.

Also, @Paksenarrion, reminded me of Anomen ... he was totally a tool.


I used to play chun li competitively back in the world warrior days (along with guile and honda), and from experience if it emasculates anyone it's the guy you beat the snot out of, not the chun player.

 

[Hristo Petrov]

I can beat the last boss of Tekken 5 only with Asuka Kazama .....so yeah I have no problem playing with a female character also I suck at Tekken 5

 

[CrashBang]

I can't play Mass Effect with a female Shepard because I'm putting myself into the role of the protagonist and I can't connect so well to my character if they're a female. Aside from that, though, I love female protagonists and solid female characters in general. My favourite woman in gaming, easily, is The Boss. She's strong yet sexy, smart, powerful and inspiring. I love her

 

[ReservoirAngel]

Never used a girl in a game. Like, ever.

Plus I'm already the most unmanly man I've ever encountered, so anything retracting from my already pathetic levels of manliness would just be fucking redundant at this stage.

 

[mens warehouse]

Playing the opposite sex in a game doesn't make you necessarily less of a man/woman. It doesn't make you necessarily more comfortable with yourself either or your gender role either, though. If you're a girl you can play a guy because you just prefer looking at a male avatar, you're super butch and none of the girls are buff enough to represent the inner fantasy you, because you feel trapped in a woman's body, or myriad other reasons. The inverse of all of these is true for guys.

The problem a lot of people have when it comes to sex and gender roles in games is not that their specific feeling about anything is wrong, but that there is any interpretation of it that is right. There are plenty of people who have weird hang ups that prevent them from enjoying playing the opposite sex in a game or understanding why anyone would want to do so, but there are probably just as many people who have weird hang ups that cause them to only play the opposite gender.

 

[Monkfish Acc.]

Spoiler: ??????????????

PREDICTABLE JOKES FOR EVERYBODY

Anyway, no. I don't really see how it would.
My favourite playthrough of Dragon Age was as a human noble female. The whole story just seemed deeper, somehow.
The romance with Alistair probably helped a lot.

You know what I like to see in RPGs? Male clerics. There's something about a man who is kind to everyone that makes me want to...violate him.

But that's just me.

So it would seem.
I've noticed a sort of trend with ladies in fandoms. The outright nice characters recieve very little attention, unless they can be made gay somehow. It's like, just a nice dude is boring, especially when he kind of seems like a pushover.

This may have something to do with how little personality characters like this often seem to have, though. They tend to be little more than "hopeless philanthropist". No layers or interesting emotional torment or anything.
Which is weird, because there is a lot of potential for some serious angst, there.

 

[M Rotter]

i had a boyfriend once who when i asked him why he only played girl characters answered that fawning over a male character made him feel gay...which boggled my mind. Later i realized it was hilarious since he was asked seriously many times if he was gay and he was so uninterested in sex (like once i caught him watching tv mid coitus) it makes me think that maybe some guys with a homophobic view on male leads maybe have issues themselves.

 

[TragicHero84]

i had a boyfriend once who when i asked him why he only played girl characters answered that fawning over a male character made him feel gay...which boggled my mind. Later i realized it was hilarious since he was asked seriously many times if he was gay and he was so uninterested in sex (like once i caught him watching tv mid coitus) it makes me think that maybe some guys with a homophobic view on male leads maybe have issues themselves.

ding ding ding! you win teh internetz!! haha...so true, sister, so true.

 

[The Stonker]

You know what I like to see in RPGs? Male clerics. There's something about a man who is kind to everyone that makes me want to...violate him.

But that's just me.

Hi! I give money to charity, I save kittens from being executed and I destroyed a terrorist cell...All in the same day!
Nice to meet you and I'm a doctor who can fly!

But I really don't care if there is a female or a male lead in video games.