Why so many men like to play with a female character?

If its a 3rd person game and im gonna be looking at someones ass for 40 or so hours, im gonna make it an ass I enjoy seeing.

I think women are cool.

Making the exact same character in every game gets old after a while. Also boobs.

I play in 3rd person and I'm a ass man

For me, it’s the voice. For a voiced character like V, it requires a very special talent to take you on a journey with them, to listen to their fear, pain, anger and despair. Cherami Leigh just does such a fantastic job of bringing V to life for me, of really bringing that raw emotion out and making it feel real!

Character customization is one of my favorite parts of the game. And to be honest dressing up a "hot" woman is more fun than a guy to me.

Also I like looking at a woman more than a man. So there's that too.

Why be me when I can be a pretty girl

Cause I prefer looking at a woman instead of a man.

I make my V an attractive and slim woman with a massive dong so it’s absolutely nothing like me.

As probably a generic "dude" as one can be, I like playing female characters because it gives me a chance to be someone I'm not. I play games to remove myself from the real world for a bit, and playing a male character feels too much like self-insertion.

It's weird, but being forced into playing from a "self" perspective I find to be less enjoyable. I like being told a story, and getting to participate in it, but I dont like when the story feels like it's supposed to be about myself, rather than a character.

You get to build your own big titty goth girls.

I spend every waking second as myself, why would I want to play as myself in a game that allows me to be someone else?

Cause being a dwarf isn't an option.

尺ㄖ匚Ҝ　卂几ᗪ　丂ㄒㄖ几乇

I mean, I generally prefer to look at female asses. But I often think the female voice actor is better, although Male V is about equal.

I'm curious too, what's the motivation to make the character look like yourself?

I think for a lot of people part of the fantasy is getting to be someone else.

I would like to know why so many people do what you do: create themselves. That is so... boring..? I have never had such an urge. But then, I barely care about my own appearance at all (gamer moment), so I guess that makes sense.

There are a few reasons, but please note that this list is by no means exclusive to Cyberpunk 2077....

Games are about escaping reality, as a man I can tell you that in my experience, men are often locked down into a generic "man" mold that is never broken in real life. Gaming gives us a way to pretend to be someone else completely.

Female characters in games tend to be funnier to play as, they often has better dialog and more customization options.

Finally, one of the biggest reason men play as female characters in games is simply because it is better to have pretty female character to look at when gaming rather than a generic boring male character, this obviously includes boobs.

Just like I don't play humans in games with non-humans, I'm a dude in real life so I don't necessarily want to be a dude in-game. Also, the third-person ass thing is a give in, obviously!

I would join the "more pleasant to watch" gang, but I would also say that maybe getting an experience that I can't get IRL is an incentive to play as a female character for me. Also that's probably the same as with Ranma ½, and people feel differently about it.

And also maybe because exclusively male characters tend to fit in the heroic overcoming archetype that does feel a bit stale

Sometimes playing as a guy feels like the normal boring experience. Often also ladies have cooler clothes. I feel like my character is cooler as a witch than a wizard

Some of the best cyberpunk characters are women and the clothing is cooler.

For the former point: molly millions/Sally shears and YT were both by far the most interesting characters in the sprawl series and snow crash respectively.

Funny thing about cyberpunk as a genre is the women are often the badasses with complex characters and the male leads are usually bumbling selfish dummies that generally fail to resolve anything (Hiro protagonist in snow crash, Johnny mnemonic, case in neuromancer, and to a lesser degree bato in GIS who's just clueless half the time instead of bumbling).

For the latter: mox gear is better than worn browns and grays.

I also just think the voice actor is better and Judy is the most interesting love interest.

I was actually just thinking about that the other day. As far as I can tell, people tend to fall in to one of two camps:

1. Make the character look as much like (a potentially idealized version of) yourself as possible
2. Make the character look nothing like yourself

I always make my characters completely different from me, so they often (maybe 60-70% of the time) end up being women. My friend always makes them look as close to himself as possible.

I think it comes down to different styles of roleplay. I'm myself every day. Why would I want to be myself but Cyberpunk? My friend, on the other hand, wants to imagine himself as being in that world.

And then you have the third camp of people who make their characters horny or humorous, which can be fun to do occasionally but I cannot imagine doing regularly.

Why is it important that your character matches your gender?

For Cyberpunk I’ve played both because I play to enjoy the performances, and they’re both different performances. Now when replaying I always do female V because her performance is bloody incredible (not in any way saying the performance of Gavin Drea was bad mind you! But Cherami Leigh knocked it so far out of the park that I consider that personally the “canon” performance)

The character in the game doesn’t have to have anything to do with me at all. Just like a main character in a movie or a book doesn’t have to look or be anything like me for me to enjoy it. I’m looking for interesting stories not my auto-biography

For 2077, as a nerd with multiple completions with the different prologs (and a hardest difficulty clear of "Dont fear the reaper", and I have yet to complete the DLC), Fem-V I feel has the best dialog and a few other noticable gameplay differences.

If you play as Male-V Your character is more agressive and with a few upgrades feels like they can solve most issues by punching someone through a wall, this works very well writing wise with the street kid background. You also fit more into the sterotype of action-movie star, I sorta view this is the default for dialog as the game expects you to fight your way out of most problems.

If you play as Fem-V Johnny is significantly less of a jack-ass to you early game. The corpo backstory has the games best lines, Fem-V is incredibly sassy and knows how to make people panic by bullshitting work jargon at them. On relationships, especially after the funeral, it makes me question why V and Jackie wernt an item, also River is a wet blanket... Sorry.

Overall both are fantastic VA preformances, I have played more games as Fem-V than Male-V, but thats mostly due to me prefering a netrunner/stealth build on the harder difficulties. One character comes off as a one-liner spouting cyborg with anger issues, and the other is a psycho-chick who will jump out of your cereal and stab you in the teeth.

For me it's because of the style options. The hair and clothes style options are much more diverse than what you can do for the male V and, since I like women, look much better on the female V in my opinion.

Been playing male characters in games since the dawn of time (1990) so now I like to switch it up every now and then since we have the option to choose our own characters in a lot of games now.

I used to make characters look like me, but I found that got boring. And in this age of hyper monetisation and paid costumes it was costing me money. I figured that it was more fun to make an interesting character out of free costumes. And it turns out I like staring at a female character more than a male one.

As many have said, generally I enjoy watching ladies being badass murderbabes in fiction (not sure I’d actually want to interact with an IRL murderbabe, unless she was on my side). As an aside, one of my favorite aspects of the Horizon series is being an unstoppable murder machine in a cute package.

In Cyberpunk specifically, I think a lot of the plot points are more poignant as Valerie—the whole intro scene with Johnny is a massively more problematic and narratively interesting interaction, for example. Another instance is getting turned down by Kerry, even though he’s bi and ruining River’s day because who doesn’t love ruining River’s day? Also in this game specifically I just really enjoy Cherami Leigh’s performance, but I will more often than not play as a lady in games when it’s an option. That’s just a long winded way of saying “‘cause I like to.”

I was an egg so now I'm a woman playing a female character.

I find stuff like fashion more interesting on a female character. Also I don't really think of my game avatar as "me". But it really depends on the game.

In Cyberpunk i started first with a male character and on the second playthrough chose female to shake things up and really enjoyed the voice actor. My subsequent playthroughs have been with female V.

Man I've no idea why I do it. In have a female VR avatar too. I've thought about it. It's just what I do. Like, there's no desire to be a woman in me, but in virtual space I just seem to be one.

I started to use female protagonists for UT2K4. Smaller target. But, then it just morphed into just wanting to see a badass woman be my hero.

I'm trans. 😺

I think that having started playing this kind of game as a lean teenager, I subconsciously felt closer to the female form than the (more often than not) bulky bodybuilder.

Edit: you can probably attribute this to a reaction to toxic masculinity.

Role playing is much more fun when I’m not playing someone similar to me.

¯⁠\⁠_⁠(⁠ツ⁠)⁠_⁠/⁠¯ It just feels right man

Bewbs

The only game I’ve tried to make a character resemble myself was GTA5, just because it seemed funny. Otherwise, I make up a character in the same way one might for a work of fiction, and some are male, some are female.

I started my first playthrough as a male. But male V just seemed like a dull loud asshole. So I restarted as female V. For me this seems like the intended way. V is still loud and brutal but also seemed more sensitive to me.aybe it's just the voice acting.

One of my biggest criticisms points is, that it's not really possible to play a calm and collected character in Cyberpunk. That's something I'm dearly missing. Cyberpunk 2077 is not really an rpg.

Valerie's inflection is more satisfying than Vincent's IMO. I also prefer the additional styling options.

Self-inserts are fine, but severely limit the scope of your roleplaying. I play as men and women, and make characters with their own specific drives, flaws, and strengths.

I also occasionally make my partner and play as her, which might be weird for some but I like it from time to time.

A few reasons. My first playthrough, I played as male V nomad. For my second, I went when a female V streetkid. So, part of it was going for a different story.

Another part is Judy. Yes, people have made mods to allow romance as a male character but those just don't seem right to me. Judy's a badass, beautiful, crazy-smart, and one of the only characters in Night City that I could likely be friends with IRL. But friends/extended family is all it could be. She's very clearly a lesbian, in her character as you get to know her and even her choice and style of tattoos - the roses on her arm especially seem rather anarcho-sapphic to me. Using a mod to "make her straight" just seems wrong, like a violation of deep parts of who Judy is. So, my second character was a lesbian.

And finally, when I started my second playthrough, I was a bit thirsty.

2077 is a first person game, so seeing the character really only happens in the menu. In third person games where I can see my character, I... just prefer seeing women. Don't get me wrong, it's not like a game is worse if I can't look at a female character, but if I have a choice, why not?

For 2077 I'm not exactly sure why I chose it the first time. It may have had something to do with not being able to make a male character that looked like some version of me. I probably didn't like the long hair options. I don't regret it though, I really like Judy.

I don't generally do that. But...what do YOU want to look at when you play games?

You can play as who you want to look like, or who you want to look at. I prefer the latter.

I've never really been on the manly man side of the spectrum, and not many games offer options for more androgynous or feminine looking men, so I usually feel better represented by a female character.

Also, for 2077 specifically, I prefer fem!Vs VA.

Obviously subjective, but;

• Smaller hitbox
• Better animations
• Many awesome games where the equally awesome protagonist is female (Metroid, Portal, Hellblade, Tomb raider, Horizon, etc)
• If the story is based on the character, it's often more emotionally intelligent
• Usually more agile, fast, stealthy, and has long-range attacks (magic users, snipers, archers, etc)
• Usually has more of a flourish in attacks, so fancier and more graceful

I'm male, 5'7", 150, athletic build. Definitely male in appearance, but I'm not bulky. To your point about "the character looking as much like you as possible", depending on the game, my frame is more similar to the female than the guy who's neck is bigger than my waist.

I like smash-em-ups just fine, but sometimes I want to approach the mechanics as I would in real life, and that's intentionally, and executed with subtlety. A lot of male-focused paths/stories are forced to be blunt force and loud.

I think most guys just want to look at the female character doing the things, as if they're a spectator where other people play games as an extention of themselves. I like to imagine I'm in the game and that my character is me. That's hard if I'm a female character.

Smaller hitbox

me: I do this on 3rd person games. If I'm going to look at a figure wandering the landscape for hours, I'm going to make an ass I like to look at.

I'm a simple man.

Unlike some, I prefer to make a character that doesn't represent me physically. As a man, I find it more interesting to play as a female protagonist.

I tend to gravitate towards female characters in single player games and I ask myself this same question a lot. The weird thing is that I have no gender preference when my options are more limited - it's only when I'm being asked to customize my appearance. With male characters I never really know what I'm looking for - usually what looks right is what looks familiar. Maybe I'll be scrolling through hair options, find something that reminds me of Aragorn, and before I know it that's who I'm roleplaying. With a female character it's easier for me to resist these influences and make someone original because I can rely on my own preferences to tell me what looks right. I'll still play male characters if I have a specific influence in mind, but otherwise I find myself much more likely to actually finish a game as a female PC.

On Skyrim, cause I have boob mods,and I love boobs. On any other game I generally play male chatacters cause I am male and that is therefore more relateable to me

I just go with what feels right, different looks for different play throughs. Or just something ridiculous I can laugh at

I never play females much. I like to just mirror my own gender; I'm playing this game for fun, not for tits and ass. Only thing that sucks is funding mods with male v. They're rare, and it's annoying. Nothing but porn over there it feels like at times.

Autogynerotica

If it's 3rd person game, most of the time I roll female characters cus I just like looking at women. My inner perfectionist desires pretty. I noticed a funny trend, if I roll a male character and the model doesn't look 11/10 I will just get bored of that game and stop playing lmao

When I was a kid I'd always choose princess peach in mario kart. I think it was my way of subtly projecting my confidence in my own masculinity. Basically showing off lol

https://youtube.com/watch?v=lYv_yiOHVFI

For me it sorta depends on how engaged I am in the game or think I will be. My default for third person perspective is female because as others have said you are staring at your character constantly. For cyberpunk I did male as it is not third person except when driving and the whole relationship thing. I did the same for baldurs gate again because of the npc interactions. champions I tended to make males as super heroes are closer to my heart so wanted them to be more like me. Another thing though is in many games females can be made smaller and have a smaller hitbox or have other small effects. I made my dragons dogma and elden ring female. I almost always make my characters as small as possible male or female if third person. Even outside of hitbox your character blocks your view.

Who cares. People have been doing this since the inception of video games. Let people have their fun.