MMOs and First Person Shooters with a second person view point + Girl Characters = Making Men Digital Transvestites since 1998.
I’m seriously considering writing an APA study on this. It’s a growing trend, and it’s one that I’m sure has an impact on men with transgender impulses (as in, it helps them express themselves better and be more open about their feelings).
Meanwhile, I’m playing Borderlands on the XBox 360. It’s fun, and I enjoy being the Soldier Roland – throwin’ up turrets, mowin’ down bad guys with a powerful fucking shotgun and basically using a SMG to pick off creatures 8 bazillion miles away. I may try the Siren next, just to stare at her ass.
I think most guys who play female characters go for it based on attractiveness of the model. And not necessarily sexual attractiveness, just overall appeal. Now, this is different from person to person, but I know that when I look at the WoW races I have a distinct preference between their male or female models, and it’s mostly because the male models look weird to me, except in the cases of dwarves, draenei, blood elves, and trolls.
But really, most guys who roll females do it so they have a chick to stare at for hours on end instead of a dude.
I agree that most do make female characters because they intend to stare at that ass for hours on end. It’s a guy thing, so to speak.
But recently, there’s been an increase of guys who actually find out their preference to being treated like and see as a woman rather than a man. There’s interesting tales of guys who end up going dressed as female Night Elf characters because they realized they want to be women.
It’s not a HUGE amount, but it’s enough to warrant a study, I’m sure.
Rowland owns plain and simple 1 hr and at lvl 7 already. Dem Skaggs bite a nasty chunk outta ya if you let em. You thinking about the steam edition next? or are they cross platform compatible? If so I go for some dueling action……
I know that Borderlands was made for the console primarily and then ported to the PC, so there’s tons of issues. One of them nearly ruins the game on multiplayer right now (the mic issue).
I’ll wait until it goes down in price quite a bit and they patch up the PC version before I even glance at it on Steam.
I noticed that yesterday as a prime example with the voip function as I jumped on a random server to test out the co-op fun. Yes I think its the netcode that was shoddy for the voip. I tested the theory out with using teamspeak and it was fine game worked great as long you didn’t use the voice function and used some other voip.
Paul complains all the time that the biggest mistake he ever made in FFXI was creating a MALE elf character, and would have chosen a female if he’d realized just how much time was going to be spent watching his character’s backside run somewhere.
That’s why I made four female superheroes in City of Heroes, and my only supervillain was a female. Because of all the time I spent behind my characters watching them travel somewhere.
It’s an MMO phenomenon, but recently, most FPS/RPGs are being modeled after MMOs (to give you that MMO experience without the MMO endlessness). Borderlands and Fable are good examples.
I doubt if a study would help prove anything beyond one simple fact:
Gamer geeks/nerds like to look at digital boobs because it’s easier than going out and facing real-life titties.
I think you’re misunderstanding how a study of this would work:
I’d have a control group that was much like you said – they play female characters to oogle them.
But the real study group is the one that already has stated they prefer to be identified as the opposite sex all the time after having played an MMO. To find out if the MMO was a major catalyst in their eventual revelation that they like to cross-dress and/or act transgender.
Basically having thier undertoned sexuality revealed thru the MMO after playing as females in the game they become more bold and comfortable with who they are? am I correct in this?