I guess it all comes down to attitude. I think a lot of it is guys creating idealized versions of the female characters they would like to see. I guess it's a form of wish fulfillment.
Girls when they play RPGs, whether they are pen and paper or online tend to be WAY too self conscious. I've found very few who were paticularly good at playing the kinds of characters that exist in fantasy and science fiction novels. Including a lot of the ones written by women that aren't strictly for the "powder puff" crowd.
Thus to some extent you get a situation where a guy decides something like "well I think Angeline from 'The Stainless Steel Rat' is cool, but the only way I'm ever going to see this in a game is to play it myself".
To a lesser extent I suppose there is a sexual aspect to it, because fantasy characters, being works of fantasy are intended to be extremely attractive and appealing on a lot of levels for the readers. Part of most fantasy is the hero getting the girl, and of course if a real girl is playing it's not likely she's ever going to RP that with anyone but her RL husband/boyfriend. Thus some people try and create it vicariously.
As a long-time gamer who started as a kid, and also a confessed pervert, I will freely admit over the years to having played a number of cross-gender characters in a lot of differant forms of media, and my reasons for doing so have varied over time. I don't think there is a clear cut answer as to 'why', since if you asked me why I played this character or that character at differant times, my honest answer would probably have been differant.
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One thing I will point out though is that with gaming becoming more mainstream the "role playing" aspect of roleplaying is pretty much dead. It's mocked most heavily in online MMORPGs for the most part. The thing is that your typical person doesn't really 'get' the FULL idea of RPGs, any more than they did with the first D&D players back in the 1970s and 80s.
To your typical gamer, it's always them, even in an RPG. They don't see it as "I'm making a guy" but rather in terms of "this is my avatar". From that perspective some guy choosing to show up as a girl seems like crossdressing, as opposed to like writing a female character in a story, and honestly with a lot of RPers the latter is going to be how they see it. This creates an "out of context" problem as two almost totally alien points of view collide.
To your typical MMO player, making a Draenai Warrior is no differant than say playing "Super Mario Brothers". They see it as them doing anything, as opposed to seeing
the game/storyline from Mario's perspective. It's not "I had Mario jump on that platform" it's "I'm jumping to that platform".
Truth be told this is a question that will never be answered.
Personally I'm comfortable enough with my own heterosexuality where I really don't care what anyone else thinks.
But then again on the occasions when I play a female character and am asked I am usually quite up front about my real gender. Oftentimes making it apparent before anyone even bothers to ask because I'm not exactly trying to convince people I'm a girl IRL. The only time I am less than up front is when a casual aquaintence annoys me by asking me the question in wierd ways. You know like if I login for a raid with people I've just met and the first question I get comes out is along the lines of "I'd like to date you if your a girl IRL" that usually gets me to give them answers like "my gender should be obvious" or whatever. Especially if I'm around mostly people I already know well.
See, as much as people playing cross gender can be, people running around asking what your gender is IRL every 5 seconds is even worse.
Oh and before anyone asks, I fail to see the entire point of online cyberdating and hot chat and such to begin with. When you get down to it that is the gist of this entire problem, and frankly I figure if your hard up enough where it's a huge thrill to maybe get some girl to type nasty words to you via the internet, you've got a serious problem. That's ultimatly what it boils down to if someone needs to walk around asking every female character they meet if they are a girl IRL.
Heck, a good portion of the real girls I know online (from voice chat and such) are even more ambigious about their gender (or lie and say they are men), and only get on things like vent when they are really comfortable with the people they are dealing with.
I'll also say flat out that people tend to stereotype this as guys playing female characters. The thing is most guys will freely admit it. Girls won't. They are just as bad when it comes to creating their "paranormal romance" pretty boys. The thing is though that nobody puts half as much effort into checking out the apparently male playerbase. I'd say the number of cross gender players are pretty equal among the real genders.
People might joke around about perverted guys RPing lesbians and junk (which as a perv I can see on some level), but as someone who has done a bit of non-erotic RPing on MMORPGs at times, I can tell you that there is NOTHING more disturbing than having some gay vampire proposition you twenty times, chase you aroud a zone jumping into all of your RP, and then finally explain that they were a girl from another account after you put them on ignore. Or worse yet, finding out that it's a girl you knew on voice chat.
On the off chance you decide to ever RP in WoW (it's been quite a while for me) be very, very concerned about any of the more "gothic" seeming male characters running around with roses in pantsuits. If one of them reveals their big RP secret of being a vampire, run fast, run far, run the heck away. It's probably a man-porn obssessed 15 year old girl with a stack of Anita Blake books next to her computer.
Oh yes and male blood elves that RP, avoid them. Really. I don't play horde side much, but I've been hearing that's been the big thing for the girls RPing that nowadays.
>>>----Therumancer--->
