unmediated: Girls who are boys who like boys to be girls

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March 16, 2005

Girls who are boys who like boys to be girls

Excerpt from a Gamespot interview with Sheri Graner Ray:

SGR: Men play female characters. I don't have the exact numbers, but a huge percentage of males play female characters. The number of females playing male characters is so small as to be not worth counting. And they'll tell you, "I don't play a male character because it's not comfortable."

When you're in a stand-alone game, you often don't have a choice--often you are a male character.

SGR: Right. Or you don't play. On my women's mailing list, you'll find them all the time that say, "I didn't play Fable because there wasn't a female character to play." So it's one of those barriers. It's one of those doors that stops them from ever playing the game.

Now, if I get the chance, I ALWAYS play female, and usually one that looks like me (given the option): petite, dark-haired, light on the muscle. In D&D, I try to play a version of myself as much as possible... which usually ends up being a Bard/Rogue type character with a high Persuade but negligible combat skills.

But I also played Fable, and loved it - and had three wives in three cities, including the dark Lady Grey. I played Prince of Persia and loved it. I suppose you could say, perhaps, that there is a difference between the action/adventure and the rpg. The rpg really asks you to put yourself in the character's shoes. But then, Final Fantasy 7 and 8 have a large female cult following. I don't think it's a problem to experience a story from someone else's point of view.

I read books with male narrators and male protagonists. I watch movies with male heroes, told from a male point of view. The important things are character, story, and emotional depth, and those can belong to anyone, any sex or any color.

I think the problem is just that there isn't enough diversity. What if all books we had on shelves were written by John Updike or Phillip Roth? I love their writing, but I'd be bored out of my mind sifting through so many pages of self-reflective upper-middle class male-ness. It's good to have a Richard Wright in there, a Virginia Woolf, a Zora Neale Hurston. I'd like that for videogames, too, obviously.

But what Graner Ray says is interesting. Is it really true that women vastly prefer to play women, while men are more fluid in their gender-identity? I've wanted to conduct a study on this for years, but I lack the social science research skills. Maybe someone out there wants to help out.

Via game girl advance

Originally posted by jane from game girl advance, remediated by yatta on Mar 16, 2005 at 08:56 PM