Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - General Why do men play a female characters?

Just a thing that always interested me as a psychologist.

So before playing this game I was assured that this is just because some guys likes the looks of a woman character. Average game time played by an adult is about from 1-3 hours. So for some men its more appealing to spend those 3 hours looking at a woman rather that playing a male. Just a "visual" preference. They don't associate themselves with the character and bluntly speaking just "enjoys the view" while playing. But this game introduced Lizard race that has no resemblance to a human female. And we still have lots of men playing a female lizard. Now that is interesting...

Perhaps because both males and females can make for interesting protagonists, each for their own peculiar and unique reasons?

I cannot help you if you do not understand the appeal of a slender neck, a slim waist, a dexterous tail, the strong yet graceful limbs of a predator, the exquisite texture of scales in varying sizes...

I think you get the point.

Why play what you are?

As a psychologist, you're probably overthinking it.

As a physicist, think of it as exploring parameter space. There's an option, so use it, or at least try it. It's content.

As a human, why play a lizard? As a human, why use a wand?

It's one of the options in the game. That's why.

Same question have been asked many times through my years in the RPG world (since 70' with Pen and paper!). Its fun to explore another concept and its always nice to look at (digital world).

edit: And female/male no matter if its a elf/lizard/orc/troll or such is always to experience the same thing with different reality. It should be the same - but its not as its very apparent in the real world. But im sure many dont put any valuation into the choice and do its because its fun and new or maybe an old habbit from other RPG games.

I am a girl and I am going to play a male lizard, the Red Prince, once the game is released because I want to experience his story. (That probably does not directly answer your question but I'd say it is a comparable situation?)

I'm not a psychologist but I know someone that might have a neighbor's relative that is one, so I'm qualified to say that there are two kinds of people, the ones that want to play anything because they can, and the ones that want to play an extension of themselves. Now what that tells you about these people I couldn't say, but you probably could, you're the psychologist.

Just a note:


The visual appearance of female Lizards still consists of elements that can be decoded as 'female', so a 'human female' is still visually present here and will be actualized in some way (in most cases not in a firm sexual way I suppose).
The observation of 'male' players playing 'female' lizards shows quite well, as others pointed out, that the explanation of men just being visually appealed by female sex in video games always falls short for a great group of 'male' players.

I think the answer is simple - people don't always play characters that represent themselves, so, why not? Is it so different from playing one who isn't human, or who doesn't have the same morals or values?

I don't think of myself as being the character I play. I am a writer in control of the character. I like "writing" female characters.

On a seperate note, don't underestimate people's ability to be attracted to odd things. There's porn for flat-out dragons after all

Because it is fun and something else for a change. And you can test if you would act diferrently if you play something completely different from yourself or your preferences.

To me creating a character in any game has always been closely tied to my interest in roleplaying games. WHen I come up with a charater I come up with a concept. What it consists of can vary. Sometimes I center a concept around a specific personality, sometimes there is a particular skill or playstyle I want to do something with, sometimes I'm just fiddling about in the character creation screen and find a facial expression or combination of features that gives me an idea.

For example, in one of my file in the original game a character was born from the following influences.
I was fiddling through hairstyles and found the giant affro hair on a male character that happened to have a moustache currently. In the background I was playing the sound track from some old Clint Eastwood western movie (cant recall the name). Suddenly I had this image of a gunslinging macho man with a huge affro in my head. That character ended up as a dual wand character (since they are more similar to pistols in how they are wielded).
That time my concept was of a male character.

Anyway for me it has nothing to do with trying to play something similar to myself, nor about what I find sexually attractive. I play what makes sense for the concept.
For example one of the female lizard faces + "hair" styles made me think of some sort of vampiric fairie dragon so I took that look and built a caster caracter with the zombie trait, focused around blood and poison magic.

Interesting answers!



Well actually not very comparable. One institute conducted a social experiment once. They asked group of men and women same question - how will you feel if tomorrow you will wake up as an opposite sex? Well while women group gave some positive answers like "great its interesting to be a man for one day" "i would hv done this and that" Men on the other hand gave very negative answers like "God its awful" "I would have killed myself" etc etc....
So this showed us back then that woman are more positive about the idea of changing sexes. Like you are now Elwyn, no big deal for you.

The answers of other guys are very interesting in terms of how they took the question...

I usually make male characters but if I think that the male models look ridiculous I'll change it to a female. It's not a big deal for me because then I name the character after my daughter.

Well I guess we now know OP is a cisgendered FREAK! GET OUT!@!@

Is it bad? =)



That's known case as I stated. I'm more interesting in the reason some guys prefer to play as a female character in every game. And in a lot of cases they complete the game with only one character. While in real life even the thought of being a female is strange and frightening for them.

It's just interesting to explore possibilities. Sometimes we see things from other perspectives, other times we see ourselves from other perspectives. The latter case was kind of a big deal for me, but even without that it's just cool to have a different angle on things.

No offense intended here, but that's a pretty ridiculous assumption. What makes you think that the same male player who would "prefer to play as a female character in every game", would also think "being a female is strange and frightening for them", aside from the fact that there's a lot of baggage that comes with real life in terms of making large changes to one's life?

It just doesn't follow. Even if statistically, more men fear a gender change, which incidentally one study is nowhere near enough to confirm, there is still that percentage that do not fear, right?

Perhaps it's those men who "prefer to play as a female character in every game"?

This!

And again it comes from a woman =))

That is what I have been waiting for! Why don't men that chooses to play as a female characters state this! There is male and female sides in every human being, and by playing a female character do you try to reach those deeeeeep buried female side in yourself? And if the answer is yes, why are you ashamed to say it?

Oh, wow, I guess I have not really thought of that!

Disclaimer: I am not a psycologist, biologist or any kind of a sociologist, so all that follows may be completely wrong.

I think that almost through all the human history women were regarded as a fair sex or as a weaker half of the mankind. That changed only recently through the 20th century so that now, men and women are viewed to be equal. However, I think that deep in our subconciousness we are still held back by those very old perceptions that women are weaker than men. So, maybe men are ashamed to admit that they want to experience their female side because by saying it they would admit to a weakness?