I am male. If given the option to play female and a female would make the story more interesting I will choose to play a female. What defines “interesting” is arbitrary. Valheim - female named Muscle Wife. Phasmophobia - black male with friends (due to movie tropes) and female solo (because they look janky and ragged as hell). MMOs - depends on the aesthetic. If I am going to be staring at a character for a long time and I am not roleplaying an ugly bastard then I will choose female most of the time since I don’t play MMOs to self insert.

When choice isn’t an option I do not avoid a game just because of a character’s race or gender, but I am starting to get real sick of white male protagonists. They aren’t really offering me any new perspectives.

I used to always prefer to play male characters and if there was character customization/creation, I would almost always try to create myself in the game.

Now that’s all flipped. I load up old Dark Souls saves and see a derpy version of myself and just cringe a little. I typically only create female characters anymore, but they often just look better and have more interesting hair styles, etc.

I’m male. If the game has much of a fashion/customization aspect to it I tend to play female characters, since I guess I’m more interested in how female characters look than male ones. I think a lot of this has to do with whether you view your in-game avatar as an extension of “you” or not - personally, I do not identify much with my avatars regardless of their gender.

I usually just play whoever has the best racials or abilities. If i can play as the giant tank guy or girl (think Karlach or Reinhart) i usually play as them.

I like playing things that are not me.

Me playing female characters is the same reason why you will never see me play a human if I can get the option to be literally anything else.

Really depends on the game/story and if I like the characters. For example playing Fallout 4 as a female protagonist felt out of place, like it was just a mod that someone hacked in. But on the other side Cyberpunk 2077’s male character annoyed me enough that I restarted as female V. And then there’s games like Skyrim where the only difference I notice is the grunts you make in combat.

An aspect that I haven’t seen mentioned explicitly is that female characters for the longest time were just easier to pick out in a 3rd person view.

They have a different silhouette, often more flamboyant garb (to stick out among the male dominated aesthetic), and sometimes even different animations making them easier to pick out in a group fight.

Also, I have fewer stereotypes of females in medieval or sci-fi settings, which makes it slightly easier for me to explore both the world and different roles in ways I might have missed playing a stereotypical male.

I dunno, I’ve always made whatever struck me as cool in the moment. No real pattern to it other than wanting the character to look cool on screen while I’m making it. If it turns out later that something in game makes it not look cool, I might not make the same choice on a new character, but it’s still about having something neat to run around on the screen with.

Like, playing Neverwinter back a few years ago, I had one of every class, and between three accounts, some duplicates of a class in different races. I spent a ton of time on that game while I was recovering from a chain of health issues lol.

Anyway, the rogue class was always fun to play, but male dragonborn looked goofy as fuck in higher level armor for that class, so my main rogue was a female dragonborn. My paladin was male human because cheese. But when I was setting the character up, I would just flip back and forth until I was happy with what it looked like.

But, that even applied in table top games in a way. I’d pick sex based on the cool factor rather than playing what I am.

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You lost me at “to the point of skipping a game”

It’s 1 thing to prefer, it’s another to obsess over it.

Regarding MMOs in particular:

I’ll play male characters when the female model is more sexual than I’m comfortable with, always. The first that comes to mind is WoW where the male models had a lot more ‘character’ to me. If I’m playing an Orc or Worgen I don’t want to look like a green/fury generic female body that has a straight back so you can see the ‘goods’. For EQ I had a mix of Male/Female alts, but did tend towards Male.

I also tend to like the way male armor is modeled over boob-plate.

Single player narrative games will depend on if romance is an option as I’ll tend to play female, otherwise it’ll be a toss-up with consideration to my prior points.

Over the years I’ve found it easier to hide behind a male avatar/username as I’ve gotten some rough interactions over the years and will only join voice if I feel like the people I’m text chatting with are chill. Tried joining a guild recently and got more ‘onlyfans’ jokes than I was comfortable with, and I’m sure someone will say that’s my fault for being irked by it, but that’s why I take these steps.

I just pick the one that makes sense in the story

Cishet guy. Most male protagonists are too brutish. They look dumb. Female protagonists seldom have that issue.

Cishet guy; I play female characters more often than not.

One factor for me is that so many male characters feel… cheesy, like the game assumes I’m hideously insecure in my masculinity and need to be excessively pandered to by making my avatar Muscledick McFireman, and all the ladeeeez will just be aching to jump into my pants when they see my ridiculously huge arms.

It feels like really sad wish-fulfilment fantasy, to the point that it wrecks the immersion; it’s almost getting into AI Girlfriend levels of cringe.

There’s more to it and I haven’t fully worked out all the edges, but that’s a big lump of it.

I mean yes okay I also ferinstance play female dwarves in dragon age because my god Becky, but that’s both minor and very situational.

If I’m going to play an MMO watching someone’s ass run from point A to B for 40 hours a week, it’s damn sure gonna be a woman’s ass.