Category Archives: Geek Life

I’ve been playing female characters in video games for years. I don’t even think about it anymore. This seems to be strange to people who watch me play, and I don’t understand why. I’ve had family comment. I’ve had friends comment. I’ve even had my friends’ kids comment.  I have never understood why this is looked at as such a strange thing. Their disbelief is most commonly phrased as an obvious statement of fact, “… But you’re not a girl.” My response is, “Um…so what?”

It seems that some people who have a natural inclination to role-play themselves in games expect that others do the same. I lost this inclination very early on, and not for some adolescent desire to ogle the nicely animated female characters. The real reason I started liking and playing female characters is far more practical: they were always faster, more agile, and made better spell casters. Essentially, they got the first opportunity to act in most role-playing games and were usually faster than their usually heavier male counterparts in fighting games, while throwing cool spell effects at enemies. In racing games, the girls tended to have faster acceleration. Since I had the tendency to smash into things instead of being able to run through the tracks, I really needed that acceleration more than the higher max-speed that the males generally had. Continue reading →