ひげ
Pretty good video here on why men love playing as girls in video games.
I had ALWAYS played as male characters, self-inserts, until I got on Phantasy Star Online 2. That game has different stats for the different genders, and playing as a girl gave me the stats I wanted so I did that. I've never been the same, I play as a girl almost all the time now. The only exception is when there are good beard options (basically no games tbh) or if the girls in the game don't look aesthetically pleasing or don't fit the vibe (not gonna' play as a girl in Halo). I also gave up on the idea that I HAD to play as a self-insert all the time and started getting attached to the PSO2 character I had created. Not in like a weird romantic way but I like her a lot as a character and I enjoy playing as her in a lot of different games. She just looks cool and has a cool vibe, idk. I've definitely noticed that my personality shifts a bit when I play as her too, like taking on the role of the character. Kind of like you would playing D&D or something.
Playing as female character was a fun novelty once or twice .. but it really doesn't fit in things like combat games unless there's magic involved. These days I just tend to self-insert male.
Edit: Also never played MMOs so I don't know how things change with playing against real people.
@djsumdog here's my step-by-step process on making characters in any game
1) try to make a female character that looks like Damaris (my pso2 character)
2) look at the male characters to see if they have good beards (they rarely do) so i can self-insert
3) try to make an attractive female character
4) resign and make a self-insert as close as i can
i almost had to resort to #4 when i played baldur's gate 3 for a little bit until i found that half-elves were much prettier than the other races. i did have to do that for need for speed unbound, but i still got relatively close, just not as big of a beard as i'd like.
I just play whatever I feel like at the moment.
@djsumdog
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