Playing as female characters in video games
I'm sorry to say, but I have to admit, I am one of those guys who go out of my way to not play as female characters whenever I have the option not to.
I prefer to play male characters. I just do. For some reason I am really adamant about that.
However... this is an old mindset which I have found is slowly changing within me.
But... alright... for this commentary, let me first go back and set the stage before we go into the subject proper.
I am currently a 34 year old man who grew up with video games. I went from playing the first NES-carts and getting my first Game Boy (phat, ofc) for my ninth birthday to streaming online via the PS4 and upgrading my PC to be able to handle the newest games as late as this past christmas.
Growing up as a part of the first generation wherein videogames started to get really good and even more importantly, quality certified, me and my friends followed the legends of our time; Mario, Link, Megaman, etc.
Cool characters we could identify with, characters that told us we could be more than what we were.
Cool characters, for sure.
Also... all male characters.
Yes, we were brought up on the misconception that only men could be interesting in the shape of a hero.
If someone had seriously proposed a playable female character back then, I know the reaction would have been laden with smirks and sniggering. Who would ever want to play as a girl? It was unthinkable at the time, especially for the closed minds of impressionable young boys who had already been taught to be better than girls in every way by a society that clinged to outdated values.
No, this era was all-male dominated. There were the Super Mario BROTHERS, the four ALL MALE ninja Turtles... you had your Solid Snakes and your Simon Belmonts, your Duke Nukems and your Sonic the Hedgehogs. The pattern was obvious, but somehow, we never realized it.
Women, if they were ever in the games, were mostly represented by pixelated cock-teases of varying degree who always had to be rescued.
The only exception in those days was the game Metroid, where most young gamers back then were shocked (and in some cases, genuinely horrified) to discover, after having beaten the game, that the hero was indeed a woman when she removed her helmet. I know for a fact that some people got really upset about this. It actually seemed to lessen the value of the game as a whole in their eyes.
That was the level of our collective chauvinism back then.
Since then, I have, of course, had my mind opened somewhat and realized that my personal preference could do with a bit of an overhaul. It isn't always about being the macho man of the 90s where you blast everything to bits anymore. As a matter of fact, that whole genre isn't even as attractive to me anymore as it was when I first looked up in awe as a kid at the flashing 16-bit graphics of the arcade machines and saw Rambo-like heroes running and gunning to the side.
Still, even so, I have always (and still do) on an instinctual level stayed away from chosing the female elf in any D&D arcade game or likewise never ever played as a female Shepard in the epic trilogy of more modern games known as Mass Effect. Why?
Even I find this to be curiously fascinating. It works almost as a conditioned response. I see any character select screen and I always look for the white male, I see customization options and I immediately go for the white male preferences. I have to underline, this is not due to any inherent disgust with women by any means, it is simply a behavioral pattern that seems to be repeating again and again.
I also find this somewhat annoying, as I do realize it is not an optimal attitude for discovering new fantastic adventures to lose myself in.
Though, partly in my defense, I have to say that I have begun to realize that it could also be down to the fact that I am a hardcore roleplayer at heart and I definitely prefer to be able to relate as best as I can with the character I have chosen to represent myself with. And white male characters simply go the longest in achieving that as I happen to be just that; a white male person. So, in regards to realism, I suppose there is sort of an excuse. But it doesn't really make up for my stubborn aversion to playing as a female character in other games.
However, games like Horizon Zero Dawn have slowly but surely started to change all that.
Being a gamer who is apologetic about my gender-pickyness but nevertheless always chooses to play as the white male, I have to admit that some games with female protagonists such as Horizon Zero Dawn have started to affect even people like me, who are dead set in their ways.
Despite having a female character as a lead, Horizon Zero Dawn; just by being so good, completely takes my focus away from the fact that the main character has boobs and a vagina and instead has me completely engrossed in its story, as it should be.
This is so cool because I can feel the susceptibility slowly opening me up to these new venues first-hand. Its like my mind is freed from the burdens of my old-school upbringing and whole new worlds are made available to me.
The first game to ever have done that to me was Perfect Dark for the N64.
I remember being somewhat shocked at myself as I realized that I was playing a game as a woman for the first time and really enjoying it. Games like Tomb Raider had never appealed to me, with its subjectively uninteresting story and focus on a polygon ass, but Perfect Dark, for some reason, just nailed it and made me disregard that aspect of it entirely.
No, it may be a slow process in my case, but I believe I am finally in the process of shedding my old chauvinistic snake-skin and joining the community of gender-diverse heroes.
And this isn't some form of self-gratification like what most guys do when they create a new alt in World of Warcraft simply for the sake of looking at her naked; no, games like Horizon Zero Dawn or Perfect Dark successfully propose that I should completely de-sexualize the characters and use them as my own avatar.
This mindset has begun to challenge me and also allowing me to be more open toward new ideas and possibilities. I still retain the preference for playing a white male character whenever I am presented with the option, however, I no longer have the immature disdain for playing as a female character as I had when I was a kid.
I just hope that my contemporary friends from the past have made more or less the same journey.
Some of them really need it.
