This has been the case for years now, but it still boggles my mind. Gaming is an overwhelmingly male hobby. 90% of the people playing enthusiast level video games are male. Yet the clear majority of protagonists in these products are female.
New resident evil? Female protagonist.
New Ghost of Tsushima? Female protagonist.
New Hollow Knight? Female protagonist.
New Silent Hill? Female protagonist.
New World of Warcraft expansion? Female protagonist.
And that’s just the biggest trailers of the night. Gay ass indie is almost entirely female (or queer coded) characters.
Is there another industry that hates its own core customer base this much?
Any of my MMO buddies over the years who would say shit like “if im gunna look at my character’s ass for 1,000+ hours I want it to be a chicks ass, duh!”, well, they’re sleeping in the bed they’ve made for themselves lol
I’ve heard that line a bunch back in the day.
I heard it a lot but it came off as hollow to me as we all know that pretending to be a chick was the strat to extract gifts from thirsty players.
My experience while hardcore raiding in WoW 15 years ago, across multiple servers and large guilds:
90%+ of players chose characters matching their gender
literally zero women played as male characters
every female character who refused to use a mic ended up being a dude pretending to be a girl
on the contrary, women were eager to confirm their gender because simps immediately helped them grind gear and consumables
dudes who openly played female characters and were not obvious proto-trannies were exceedingly rare and usually very open about manipulating people into giving them free shit
every female in every guild ended up forming intimate online relationships with multiple male guild members, almost always class leads or officers who could advance you (or capable simps who would provide in-game resources)
almost every female player was already in a real-life relationship when she began messing around with dudes in our guild, and more than one of them had real life husbands in the same guild lol
multiple dudes got absolutely crushed when they attempted to move their online relationships into the real world because the girls either lied extensively about their situations or lost all interest in the men when they retired from the game (situational alpha syndrome)
Women in raiding guilds were easily the worst part of my WoW experience. They caused nonstop drama while constantly underperforming.
They were there for the drama and attention, not the game.
In PWI, I played a female character... Because Venomancers were a female-only class. And since they were kinda OP, Veno-man-cers were pretty common. But gender-exclusive classes is pretty rare in even the old MMO days.
This is such a radically different experience to what I had back when I ran with a World vs World guild in Guild Wars 2. I don't recall any of our women causing drama. The closest we got was one grandma leaving her mic on when she went to the bathroom and we all heard her flush the toilet and teased her about it all night.
My main character was a female belf death knight around the same time. The only time I got directly mistaken for a girl (by someone I knew for more than a day) by a desperate dude, I just said "wtf, I'm a guy". I don't think guys choosing female avatars with at least one character was rare, because most functioning people don't overly project and seek representation, relatibility or whatever they call it, from the media they consume. Guys pretending to be girls, however, were rare and notable.
In general tho, I always found it off putting when people are too eager to immerse into an online setting, distinct from deliberately role-playing into fictional settings. Not that far removed psychologically from those who attach too much identity into their professional sportsball team, with a low situational awareness and ability to compartmentalize.
Why I always laughed when female gamers would have sob stories about treatment from male gamers. Like I can remember the rare time a girl entered the comic book store as an early teen and we would roll out the red carpet for her
Same, but I never saw the point since my characters are generally tromping around in armor. 1000 hours with the back of a mail hauberk on my screen? No big deal, especially since my focus is going to be on what's in front of my character, not on the character.
These are presumably the people still wiping to Onyxia 21 years later, too focused on their character’s ass to see the fire they’re standing in
Exactly
Probably mostly from people who modded their games to make their character look naked or exposed.
In my experience it was mostly cope from the guys playing healers lol
How many of them trooned
I skipped wow since BFA. The feminist writing and diversity was already in your face.
I can't imagine how it is now.
It's still shit.
Yeah I haven’t played retail since Cata, though admittedly I dipped my toes back in for a couple private servers and a month of classic. To me, it became a directionless zombie with Cata/WoD, just shambling on to collect those sub fees instead of ever aiming in a direction and going with it
Pandaria and Legion were good and for me Legion was a good ending. I didn't need anymore.
Everything since has been treading water and pulling random new big bads out a hat then promptly throwing them in the trash.
I quit with the Lich King. Went back maybe a year later with Cata for a bit. Stayed maybe six months and it wasn’t the same. Haven’t been back to official since. As far as I’m concerned WoW died alongside Arthas.
I've been playing MMOs since Guild Wars 1, all my mains were a white dude with dark hair and a beard. Did I play other characters that looked nothing like me? Sure. But I wanted to play something relatively like me for the majority of the time.
Never goon. Never be a coomer.
I thought the samething.
The Lusty Argonian Maid and its consequences have been have been a disaster for the human race