While an interesting point was raised in talking about the emotional bonds that seemed to have formed between myself and the Commander Shepard of my “Mass Effect Universe” as distinct from the individual and separate universes that exist around other the characters created by other people, someone pointed out to me another interesting point. I am going to paraphrase in order to mitigate the implied (though mostly sarcastic) hostility:

“Why do you always play as a girl?”

To save face here I am going to first of all admit that, while I do have a tendancy to create female characters, I am fully capable of playing my own gender in RPGs and in fact do so on a more than regular basis. I cannot deny that female characters make up a large fraction of my gaming avatars; some recent example come to mind*:

From the depths of Ferelden: Vaera of the Dalish
	From the mines beneath Torchlight: Vela the Vanquisher
Leading the armies of Chaos: Vaera, Disciple of Khaine

Why then did I chose a female Shepard in a game that is so deeply engrossing and personal? When faced with this question in the past, people often fall back on the argument of:

“Oh, I just wanted to see the Shepard-Liara romance scene in all its intended glory“

This might be all well and true for some people but I have to admit that I do enjoy playing a game with a strong female protagonist. Unfortunately, games designed with a strong female protagonist in mind often fall short of the experience that I was seeking in the first place, purely for the fact that the gender of the protagonist plays some vital and attention-worthy role in the story. In my mind a strong character should be able to stand up on its own as either gender and still evoke the same emotions and responses from the audience/player. This is one of the many things that Bioware games do often and to great effect; one of the reasons that I continue to seek out their games like rare and precious gemstones in oceans of useless soil and dirt.

This does not answer the initial question posed; what is the attraction in playing a character of the opposite gender? I honestly do not believe I can give a satisfactory answer here. Why do we enjoy movies where the lead role is a gender other than our own? I dare say the vulgar repetition of bland male action heroes would eventually render audiences immune to the stories being told, in the same way that a man (or woman) forced to eat a prime rib-eye steak for every meal of his (or her) life would soon crave a breast of chicken like a newborn child craves oxygen.

Yet movies are passive and the adventures that the characters eke out are vicarious at best; gaming brings you one step closer in a way that helps you better bond with the protagonist in question. Furthering my own dilemma as presented here, many of my female characters reside in the highly social realms of Massively Multilpayer Online games. So why then would you chose to indulge in a cross-gendered avatar, especially when social interactions play an important role in the game.

Personally the answer is simple: I enjoy it and I find the change both refreshing and comfortable. I know that some people I play with will flat out refuse to play a female character for the exact opposite of these reasons; ultimately it comes down to personal taste. I would love to hear from any of you in your opinions on playing characters of another gender, both good and bad, and to those of you who emailed me in response to my last post: Thank you and I hope you continue to enjoy my ramblings.

Which brings me to ask you, kind readers:

How many of you play characters of an opposite gender? If you do, what are your reasons, and if not then why?

Comment below or email me at corsair@corsairsanchorage.com

*These are the three games that I could find screenshots for. I feel sorely remiss that I cannot find an image of my Age of Conan character, Ynnifer. That red haired scoundrel :P

Serendipity is a beautiful thing.

When I woke up Wednesday morning the day was looking up; it was my first day off in quite some time and I rejoiced at the thought of being able to sleep in, have a nice lunch for a change, and maybe even spend a couple of hours up-side-down on a couch reading a book (my preferred reading position). In the space of six hours I received two phone calls that would change everything: someone had broken street-date on Mass Effect 2, allowing me to convince the girl behind the counter at EB to hand my copy over “nice and slow-like”; and the framers had worked their magic on my lithograph over two weeks ahead of the expected schedule. One 15 minute journey later and my addiction had reached a beautiful critical mass.

In the months since December of last year I have immersed myself so deeply within the world of Mass Effect, in preparation for the prodigal sequel, that it has started to affect me on a fundamental level. Just the other day I legitimately pondered the required energy to significantly remove the gravitational influence of a pulsar, and began a rough calculation until reality came creeping back into the foreground of my thoughts. I dare say it will not be long before I start demonstrating the positions of known Mass Relays at the Planetarium and am subsequently fired for the preaching of gross falsehoods. I listen to the soundtrack to the first game whilst reading the novelised prequels, and when I shut my eyes I sometimes inadvertently visualise the spinning Mass Relay loading screen.

The degree to which this game has entrenched itself into my cortical lobes gives us the context we need to continue. You see, every time I search for Mass Effect on the Internet, read about it in a press release or through one of my many aggregated RSS feeds, or even talk about it with other sapient beings, something strange happens. I get confused and disoriented! All of a sudden, the world has turned topsey-turvey and I grasp blindly as my brain tries to piece my shattered world back together.

To the rest of the world, Shepard looks like this
	Which is confusing because for me, Shepard looks like this

The blatant identity crisis would be understandably crippling for Shepard herself (himself?), yet somehow I find myself thinking for her whenever confronted with this discontinuity. Seeing a male Shepard is like looking into a mirror and seeing someone else’s face staring back, even though the face is an avatar for an imaginary character. There is no logical reason why it should unnerve me so much, and yet I find it physically distressing to see “John” Shepard conversing with the Normandy’s crew instead of “Jane”.

While I applaud BioWare for their efforts in creating a game that is (largely) gender-independent in terms of character interaction and development, I find it incredibly interesting to note how severe my reactions are to resulting conflicts created in both the game’s advertising and general public discourse. The role of gender in a games avatar is a topic for another day, but for now I would love to know:

Do you ever find yourself identifying with a specific portrayal of a character in games, books, film, etc.?

Have you ever encountered this alienation when encountering a non-idealised version of these characters?

I would love to hear your comments below!