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Original post by buckED How about a pirate RPG? As far as I know there weren't any women on pirate ships (luckily so since I don't wanna imagine what there lives would have been like)

Actualy there were several noteable women in piracy. Some were even Captains of thier own ships:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_piracy

If given the choice, I almost exclusively play female characters in RPGs. No other reason than women are far more interesting to me than guys are.

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Original post by sybixsus I don't have any evidence to back this up, but I suspect that the vast majority of players don't pick a female character when they only have a single character. For a party RPG, yeah, a female cleric or priest or sorceror(ess) but not when you only have one character. PC RPG's tend to be very heavily dominated by male players. Console RPG's are maybe a bit more of a split.

Well, I am male, and a PC RPG player, and I almost always play as a female character. RPGs are about fantasy, and playing the role of another gender is more interesting.

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Original post by MSW Quote: Original post by buckED How about a pirate RPG? As far as I know there weren't any women on pirate ships (luckily so since I don't wanna imagine what there lives would have been like) Actualy there were several noteable women in piracy. Some were even Captains of thier own ships: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_piracy If given the choice, I almost exclusively play female characters in RPGs. No other reason than women are far more interesting to me than guys are.

Ah. didn't know that. Thanks for pointing it out :)

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Original post by swiftcoder Quote: Original post by sybixsus I don't have any evidence to back this up, but I suspect that the vast majority of players don't pick a female character when they only have a single character. For a party RPG, yeah, a female cleric or priest or sorceror(ess) but not when you only have one character. PC RPG's tend to be very heavily dominated by male players. Console RPG's are maybe a bit more of a split. Well, I am male, and a PC RPG player, and I almost always play as a female character. RPGs are about fantasy, and playing the role of another gender is more interesting.

I agree, I just prefer playing as female characters - especially in 3rd person games.

If you are going to model female NPC's anyway, why not allow the player to play as one?

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Original post by Simian Man If you are going to model female NPC's anyway, why not allow the player to play as one?

That's a pretty naive statement. Obviously the female NPCs are not going to have a full set of animations and clothing/armor/gear and all of the stuff he seems to be wanting.

A simple female npc that stands there and maybe walks around cannot just transfer over to being the player. There is a lot of work to do under the hood for that to work.

As for whether or not it's a problem to not have playable female characters... I wouldn't consider it a problem, I would just consider it a bonus to be able to play as either gender. You open up your game to a wider audience and you add a bit more content to your game as well. Aside from the modeling/animation I really don't think it's hard to script in a simple condition that checks if the player is male or female and then says the dialogue accordingly. It's not often that an npc refers to a player as "he/she/him/her". Usually npcs are talking directly to you and they refer to you as "you".

On the off chance that there is some sort of gender identifying statement, it wouldn't appear that often and it wouldn't be hard to do a simple check and dialogue change if it does.

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Original post by Konidias Quote: Original post by Simian Man If you are going to model female NPC's anyway, why not allow the player to play as one? That's a pretty naive statement. Obviously the female NPCs are not going to have a full set of animations and clothing/armor/gear and all of the stuff he seems to be wanting.

It depends if the female NPC is on the player's team or not, and how diverse NPCs are at dealing with armor/weapons. Female NPCs in my game can do everything the male player character can do, but the player is still specifically male to fit into a solid stereotype.

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Aside from the modeling/animation I really don't think it's hard to script in a simple condition that checks if the player is male or female and then says the dialogue accordingly. It's not often that an npc refers to a player as "he/she/him/her". Usually npcs are talking directly to you and they refer to you as "you". On the off chance that there is some sort of gender identifying statement, it wouldn't appear that often and it wouldn't be hard to do a simple check and dialogue change if it does.

If the game has rich personal/friendly/casual dialog, that won't work well. Females don't talk to each other the same way males do. You can get away with things in a female-female conversation that just won't fly in a male-male conversation, and vice versa. In addition, males and females usually talk and interact with their opposite gender very differently than their own.

For example, in my local culture, females love nothing more than talking to each other about personal issues, romantic drama, and paying compliments to each other, where typical males dislike talking to each other about all of those things.

Females probe each other for personal information, where males will only talk about such things when another male throws it out there. And when it's tossed out there by a male, other males expect a damn good reason for it, such as serious depression, or a drunken state.

Males verbally bash each other to bond, and most females are thrown into confusion by it. They can't figure out if the guys are best friends or they hate each other. They only compliment each other when the situation really deserves it, and the compliments are always scaled down to about 25%.

That's not to say you can't have genderless conversation. But it won't be very friendly or personal.

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Original post by Kest If the game has rich personal/friendly/casual dialog, that won't work well. Females don't talk to each other the same way males do. You can get away with things in a female-female conversation that just won't fly in a male-male conversation, and vice versa. In addition, males and females usually talk and interact with their opposite gender very differently than their own. For example, in my local culture, females love nothing more than talking to each other about personal issues, romantic drama, and paying compliments to each other, where typical males dislike talking to each other about all of those things. Females probe each other for personal information, where males will only talk about such things when another male throws it out there. And when it's tossed out there by a male, other males expect a damn good reason for it, such as serious depression, or a drunken state. Males verbally bash each other to bond, and most females are thrown into confusion by it. They can't figure out if the guys are best friends or they hate each other. They only compliment each other when the situation really deserves it, and the compliments are always scaled down to about 25%.

I would argue that you are incorrectly stereotyping, and the difference here is not gender, but instead role. Hardened veterans, whether male of female, converse and interact in very similar ways, as opposed to the way that a court dandy, again whether male or female, would converse.

For much of our history, gender has defined role, but in modern society, or in an egalitarian fantasy world, this doesn't have to be the case.

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That's not to say you can't have genderless conversation. But it won't be very friendly or personal.

Agreement - there will be minor differences at least.

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Original post by Kest Females don't talk to each other the same way males do. You can get away with things in a female-female conversation that just won't fly in a male-male conversation, and vice versa. In addition, males and females usually talk and interact with their opposite gender very differently than their own. For example, in my local culture, females love nothing more than talking to each other about personal issues, romantic drama, and paying compliments to each other, where typical males dislike talking to each other about all of those things. Females probe each other for personal information, where males will only talk about such things when another male throws it out there. And when it's tossed out there by a male, other males expect a damn good reason for it, such as serious depression, or a drunken state. Males verbally bash each other to bond, and most females are thrown into confusion by it. They can't figure out if the guys are best friends or they hate each other. They only compliment each other when the situation really deserves it, and the compliments are always scaled down to about 25%. That's not to say you can't have genderless conversation. But it won't be very friendly or personal.

I gotta agree with swiftcoder. Seems more like you're getting into stereotyping territory which isn't going to help much in gaining a female audience. You might as well say you're not going to have a female warrior because females would rather shop and talk about shoes.

You can definitely have a personal and friendly conversation without involving gender. It depends on the characters. Sure if you want all the women to be stereotypical and be emotional and all romantic and complimenting, then you might have a problem with dialogue... but you're thinking too narrow-minded if that is your only argument for not including both genders as playable.

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Original post by Konidias Seems more like you're getting into stereotyping territory which isn't going to help much in gaining a female audience.

Who says allowing a female player is going to increase the female audience? I don't know about you, but I've never passed up a game just because the player character was strictly female.

On the issue of stereotyping, that's a given. Females do interact with each other and males differently than males interact with each other and females. It gives our species flavor. If you ignore that, your characters will be robots. But then again, that's pretty common.

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You might as well say you're not going to have a female warrior because females would rather shop and talk about shoes.

Nothing I mentioned about male or female interaction was meant to be bad for a game. The point was that those things won't work well with the opposite gender.

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Original post by Konidias A simple female npc that stands there and maybe walks around cannot just transfer over to being the player. There is a lot of work to do under the hood for that to work.

you actually hit the nail on the head with that. Like I stated its all about the time and production cost. Has nothing to do with stereotyping really.

After pondering it for a while I got the idea to add one female race as "Vampire" which would be strictly female to kind of level out the playing field. But the more I thought about it I came to the conclusion that it would ultimately push away from the style of the game rather than bringing balance to it. I mean that being the only female race in a cluster of all male races. Not to mention that people might take it for a bloodrayne rip off.
But on the other hand I'm still tossing around the idea and getting opinions.

But nevertheless I really appreciate everyones views and opinions. This stuff helps. Thanks.