My Gaming Mansformation

I’ve noticed throughout my fairly expansive gaming career that if I play as a male character, my behaviour is perceptibly different. I start thinking like a man. I occupy the odd transient position of omniscient overseer. I can split myself in two and come at problems from both gender angles. I take the relationships very seriously, even though I’m a woman wooing another woman but it doesn’t feel weird to me because I’m in the mindset of a man. And although games don’t really make it hard to initiate the romances (I think the differences between “Wow, you sure look beautiful with the moonlight glistening off your luminous cheeks” and “SHUT UP BITCH!” are quite plain to anyone…), in-game romances are a piece of piss for me because I can see both sides very plainly.

But in this position I have to admit to conforming to the most hegemonic roles of each sex. When I’m playing as a man, I tend to choose the more aggressive responses but as a women, I choose the more diplomatic ones. If I see a response that I would have gone for in real life but I’m playing as a man, I take a little moment to reconsider what a man might say and will sometimes tweak my response. It’s odd and I don’t really mean to but it has become very instinctive, especially for someone like me who’s very much a tomboy. Well, my girlfriends tell me that if I was a lesbian, I’d be the manlier one. So that means the same thing, right? RIGHT?

To give you a little example, I’ve just finished Mass Effect for the first time and had to go through a part where I was required to choose between saving one of my crew members, one a man and one a woman. I saved the woman and let the man die. And I’m playing as a male Shepard. I know that if I was playing as a woman, I’d have saved the man, I could tell as soon as I’d made the decision that I’d have done something different as the other sex. I remember feeling that: I was a man; I had to do the decent thing and save the woman. I felt like the male crew member and I had an understanding that saving the woman was the honourable option. That’s what men do. It’s like holding a door open, except that it’s taking a Geth bullet to the face. Same difference.
   

Shepard and I become one. He he he he...

I think this stems from many things but primarily because a) I suffer from crippling empathy and b) I put too much faith in games. I suck up peoples’ feelings like an overenthusiastic, sentient sponge; I see everything from everyone else’s point of view and it comes very naturally and extends into every part of my life, including video games. Which leads me to my second point; games aren’t as clever as I think they are. Whatever response I choose will ultimately make no difference, man or woman, yet who I am means that I want to be all that I can for my pixel buddies. Perhaps that’s a testament to how good games are these days; the writing is so emotive and the characters look and act so realistically that I feel the need to treat them like I would a real person.

Or perhaps I’m just utterly mental.

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