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Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Gender swapping/Gender role swapping in games
So I came across this article while browsing through gaming stuff. Take a gander and leave your comments. Please don't troll, we are all people with different gaming habits.
https://nowloading.co/p/why-video-game-players-choose-the-opposite-sex/4188368
https://nowloading.co/p/why-video-game-players-choose-the-opposite-sex/4188368
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In table top RPG's I play a character that I believe best fits the story line and world while paying homage to the campaign setting. I have only RP 1 female character at the table, and she was a weapon master (fighter w/ all perks to wield any weapon but not really master a weapon). That said I have only played 6 serious table top RPG's.
I really get into table top RPing and I personally would find it difficult to play a female character. The one time I did, she was a mute who only communicated through telepathy and I used a sinister, gravelly voice for her.
Love hearing everyone's take on the topic :-)
It's just an avatar, so everyone should just pick whatever they like most, for whatever reason.
After that - I swapped server and character gender and I had an amazing game experience and for years i played male characters. I felt I was treated much better. I played male characters up until I met my partner who thought me playing male characters a bit odd so I swapped back to female ^^
So in Ashes I'll be a female Lady dwarf with a beautiful lady beard xD
When I choose to play my side characters as female, players walking by asking me "If I need any help", like why don't you ask me the same question when I play with my male character. I did need help, bro.
I play it male first, then If I'm gonna replay it, I play female, then male again... I try different pokemons in my team in every go.
I tend to be the encyclopedia person who informs others, so regardless of the gender of my char, I'm the one helping, not the one being offered help. I do tend to not meet strangers much (I avoid pugs, and don't generally like socializing for its own sake), so I don't get much experience with that. I'll be social with guildies more often.
I don't mind playing either character genders, though I'll tend to pick female if its not having classes locked to one. My favored style is "cute", and it's harder to achieve (fewer options) on male characters. Though I don't favor sexy as a style at all (it's not some morality/religion thing, it's just not my style), same as in real life.
With Landmark, we were stuck with human characters and I was able to create an avatar that was pretty close to my real life image.
Now that people recognize me from YouTube (3 Ashes fans walked up to me within 10 minutes of me arriving at the Ashes booth at PAX), I always try to have Dygz match my real life appearance as much as possible.
But, I typically have a wide range of races, sizes and genders among my alts. Probably the same for age and disabilities, if that were possible.
In the real world, I'm a male, and as noted in the article, for a pretty long time, playing a male character was the only option. Then for a while, either gender was an option, but I still chose male characters, until one day i was playing Conquer Online as a total newbie warrior class, and sucking, and thinking, maybe i'll try the mage instead.
But then i was looking at the male mage, and thought 'this guy looks stupid'. So i rolled a female.
I immediately had a very different experience than I'd ever had before. It was eye opening and somewhat disheartening.. as a female i was immediately approached by a guy who was interested in being incredibly helpful to me as a new player. Initially i though 'oh this is lucky, cuz i don't have a clue what i'm doing yet'.
I soon realized that luck had nothing to do with it, and that the guy who approached me was more interested in helping himself.
After giving me a tour of the early game and providing me with some decent loot, he started pressing for personal info, photos, phone number etc.
I unloaded him pretty quickly.. but then i was faced with a dilemma... if i'm going to play a female character, should i start every conversation with everyone i meet like this:
"Hi, my character name is SweetMercifulGirlPixels, but in real life i'm a dude. So, how you doin?"
Or do i just play the game as it is, and hope that the gender question doesn't come up very much?
I generally chose the second option. If i was playing a female character, I would keep my real gender out of it, unless someone really pressed me about it. But i made it clear to anyone i met that i was just there to play the game, and that was that. Most people didn't ask and didn't care, which was fine by me, and I found it generally suited me to play a female character more than a male.
This goes to the question of Character vs Avatar, and I think that has a lot to do with the difference of opinion on this issue.
In my mind an Avatar is an image you choose to represent who you are, or who you want to be... generally speaking it should be a close reflection of the reality of you.
A character, on the other hand, is an invention, who can be anyone in the world, and need not have any relation to who you really are.
I prefer to play as a character, than as an avatar. Male or female, my online persona seldom reflects who i am in real life.
I like to build strong, and/or detailed and often somewhat flawed female characters. My preference for female characters traces back to the dawn of the interwebs, before the age of graphical games, when i used to be part of a writing group.
It was actually one of the most enjoyable 'gaming experiences' i've ever had, and i would almost say that no graphical game has ever topped it... but i don't think anything like it exists anymore.
Anyway, back in the day, those who played the game would each choose a character to write for... and a lot of it was just independent writing that happened to take place in the same fantasy world, but many collaborations ensued, and a complex story full of magic and betrayal and such was woven.. I had three primary characters i wrote for, and two of them were female.. but as a writer it was known that i was a male.
People often wondered how i managed to write a female so convincingly, and I guess my standard response to that was that i found them to be so interesting. As a guy (but not a bro kinda guy), when i envision a male character, i habitually think of the typical all brawn no brains type, and i didn't know how to write that. I found male characters dull.. maybe i still do, but over time i've come to see that most male characters don't fall into the all brawn no brains category. That was just my personal bias acting up.
Interestingly the game dissolved, after the owner of the listserv shared their "big embarrassing" secret with us and vanished... she (Kathryn) was actually a guy named Mark. All of Mark's characters in the game were female, and also the writer Mark was pretending to be was female... having told his secret to us, he disappeared and was never heard from again, which is too bad, cuz i don't think any of us cared at all, and we found out soon after that there were others in the group for whom gender of the writer didn't necessarily match reality. For Mark though, it was something of a coming out experience, and perhaps one that he wasn't ready for.
From a writing perspective, I really don't know why it would matter. If you're going to write a romance between a man and a woman (for example), you're not going to get one person to write the man's lines, and find someone else to write the woman's lines. I mean, you could but why would you want to? :P
I'm pretty sure i don't write either of them very well these days. 15 years of graphical video games have rotted my brains
When i roll a female character in a game these days, she usually conforms physically to the description of a particular girl or woman from one of my stories form back in the day. I tend to recreate the same female characters in whatever game i go to. I think the reason I do it is because in my mind, she's a creation of my storytelling, given physical form, and now i can experience her having new and interesting adventures... stuff that I never thought of. The stories i wrote for her might have ended long ago, but her story gets to continue, and that's awesome, because a writer's characters are their children.
The last major game i played was FFXIV, and i rolled a female character there as well, but FFXIV was different in that some of my real world friends were playing too. They didn't seem able to successfully wrap their heads around the justification for why i would play a female character. They found it weird.
My guild in FFXIV didn't seem to find it weird, but something about the friends commentary got to me.
So now i'm not sure what i will roll in Ashes. I mean, i'm sure to have alts, and the sum of my characters will include both genders, but for a main, I've been leaning towards a male character.
...Not a male avatar.
Its a long time between now and launch, so i don't know what I'll decide on, but i do know that even though i'll be the one moving the mouse, the character i'm playing will be someone completely different from me.
And that's the way i like it.
But, my callsign is designed such that it wouldn't take too much effort to Google games I've worked on before.
I specifically chose this callsign to be recognizable by Dave Georgeson (and a few other SOE devs) because we've worked on a few games together.
I was pretty shocked in 2010 when I found that some people called all of their alts by their real names and tried to make their characters in online RPGs as close to themselves as possible.
Up til then, I always made a new fantasy name for each game.
With Landmark, I started to participate in podcasts, so it's best to keep the same callsign across all games - and tons of fun to run into other podcasters/streamers at conventions. Isarii, a co-host on From The Ashes, recognized me first thing at PAX.
I think we know each other from Landmark podcasts.
I know my co-hosts real names, but we always refer to each other by our callsigns.
All great for industry recognition - especially by game devs.
But, yeah, if I was just a player... I'd want to keep my callsign completely separate from my real life.
I avoid inserting myself as much as possible in any game. Table top RP'ing makes it hard sometimes when an event occurs that would make me mad in real life (assuming the event is possible and happens in real life), but that's it.
Video games however it's not me at all. My character exist in the world and only in the world. For me I can take an additional step back from what happens to my character/avatar and the "world" without getting mad/depressed/etc. *I do have fun though, me and my characters share that*
I am sure my characters have some of my personality quarks/flaws by default, but that would not be intentional.
Games and classes that are genderlocked to male I generally just don't play. If you can't be bothered to give me the option to play my own gender in the game, I can't be bothered to give you my money.
That said, I prefer games that give you the choice. My disinterest in playing cross-gender is just my personal preference and I think everyone should have the option to play a character they can be comfortable with.
In LARPs and table-top though, I don't have the same problem and I've played a lot of male NPCs for both, so I think there's a certain limiting factor in the visual that contributes to my feeling on it.
What I'm trying to say, is, that it's not a definite thing that will always happen.
I have experienced it occasionally with female characters. Never with male characters.
Maybe you're not as hot as we are.... In a 3D fantasy gaming world.
#snapsfingerandwalkout