Protagonist gender matters to few

Rosalind Wiseman and Ashly Burch were able to distribute a survey on gaming through school systems. One of the questions they asked was "Does protag[onist] gender affect your likelihood of playing [a game]?" They got over 1,400 responses, and on this question the answers leaned very strongly no (20/78 for boys, 28/70 for girls).

I wondered how people involved in Gamergate compared to this sample and resolved to poll them. I would ask the same question, offer the same answers, and get a somewhat directly comparable result. (Although bear in mind that my effort relied on volunteer responses, whereas it sounds like entire classes and grade levels at participating schools were required to answer the Wiseman/Burch questions.)

A recent Gamergate poll conducted from a controversial Twitter account got 1,807 responses (as of this writing). I thought I might be able to get a number around 1,400 with a single yes/no question, but I hadn't reckoned on poll fatigue in Gamergate, particularly in the immediate aftermath of a ten-question poll by Oliver Campbell. Many replies in a thread I made on 8chan about the poll complained about polls and data mining. As I write this, my question has only 336 replies. This is less than I'd hoped for, but still enough to talk about.

Responses to my question are 23 votes for yes to 313 votes for no, a 7/93 split. Wiseman/Burch already saw a strong lack of decisive gender preference in game selection; here it's absolutely overwhelming.

If I had to guess, I would say that people in Gamergate are likely to be making very informed decisions about which games to play, and putting genre, subject matter, word of mouth/user reviews, developer track record, and how a game looks in demos or Let's Plays over gender of the protagonist. Games don't even consistently have protagonists. Demonstrating this, here's a rundown of my installed games by protagonist gender:

• Age of Wonders 3: either/both
• Atom Zombie Smasher: neither
• Aurora: neither (I think)
• Children of the Nile: neither
• Cloudbuilt: female
• Democracy 2: neither
• Desktop Dungeons: unclear
• Dishonored: male (expansions: also male)
• Dwarf Fortress: neither
• Final Fantasy 13: both
• Football Manager 13: either
• Hunie Pop: either
• Incursion: either
• Killer is Dead: male
• Long Live the Queen: not sure, haven't played yet
• March of the Eagles: male
• Minecraft: either
• Mirror's Edge: female
• Napoleon: Total War: male
• Orcs Must Die! 2: either
• Panzer General: neither
• Progress Quest: neither (this is what sets PQ apart from a modern MMO)
• Red Faction: Guerrilla: male (expansion: female)
• Sanctum 2: either
• Skyrim: either
• Smugglers 4: either
• Spintires: neither
• Star Control 2: male
• Sunrider: Mask of Arcadius: not sure, haven't played yet
• Transistor: female
• Unity of Command: neither
• Valkyria Chronicles: male
• Victoria 2: either/neither
• Wargame: Red Dragon: neither
• XCOM: neither

35 games, 7 male protagonists, 3 female protagonists (4 if you count RFG: Demons of the Badlands or consider Lightning the protagonist of FF13), the rest indeterminate. In none of these cases did I select a game to buy or play based on the gender of its protagonist, but I did generally choose female protagonists when given the choice.

I want to share some quotes from replies to my poll thread on the Gamergate subreddit, KotakuInAction.

UberAndrew: "I of course don't speak for them but I have had friends that really preferred playing as males only because they liked being immersed and pretending they were their characters, so it would have been weird playing as a female."

Lusketrollet: "I voted "yes" because I overwhelmingly play action games. Few things look more fucking ludicrous than having a woman running around in a warzone while easily killing multiple muscular men. [...] I'm surprised there are so many people here who consciously choose to play a female character over a male character."

Grimlock2014: "could you imagine playing GTA 4 as a woman? It would be ridiculous."

Glorious_PC_Gamer: "Usually I pick male if I feel like the avatar is supposed to represent me, but I'm not against creating a female, either. [...] No big deal."

SpawnPointGuard: "If it's a choice between male and female, I almost always pick male, but the question is asking if it would change our likelihood of playing a game entirely. That just seems ridiculous to not play a game because you don't get your gender preference."

Broken_Pixel: "I answered no, but i feel and obvious, so why object to all the protagonists being woman etc. Well i object to this because i think that the designer should design what he/she/they want. Not forced to do what someone else wants."

wwoodi: "If a female was forced in to make whiny cunts happy then yes it does [influence whether I play]." Lusketrollet: "Exactly."

Raraara: "I always play females in games where I can choose. But I ain't gonna go cry home to mommy cause I can't. Just something I don't think about."

StayingOccupied: "Don't even care if they're human if the story is good and gameplay is fun."

j0eg0d: "Gender has no basis for the games I play"

UberAndrew: "If it's fun I don't care what gender the main character is. If I'm given the option of choosing my characters gender I usually pick female, but again, the gender doesn't really matter to me."

Furikuri_flcl: "Never Playing FFVI, Parasite Eve, Silent Hill 3, Metroid, Resident Evil, Okami, The Longest Journey, Mirror's Edge, Drill Dozer, Beyond Good and Evil, or Castlevania:OoE because of such a dumb reason? I think not!"

SigmaTheDJ: "I couldn't care less and I find the people that do a little baffling. For instance, is there really someone out there who'd say something like "I would love to play Tomb Raider, but I'm not playing it unless I can play as a man!"? I can't relate to anything like that." Glorious_PC_Gamer: "Me either, but it's funny that there are people who complain about the opposite. "I would love to play Dude Raider (Uncharted) but I'm not playing it unless I can play as a woman!""

Starkmoon: "In MMOs I prefer to play female characters because they have prettier rear ends. In Mass Effect I play fem-shep because of the quality of the voice acting. In other games I don't care, and not having a female option would never put me off."

katallaxis: "I've long had a policy of playing as a female character when given the option, because most games where you're not given the option are male, but otherwise it's not something I care very much about."

caz-: "If there's a choice, I always play as a female character. If it's first person, it doesn't bother me as much when there's no choice, because most of the time it makes no difference. If it's third person, I'm disappointed when there's no choice. If the game is good enough, I'm okay with it (e.g., Wild Hunt), but it definitely influences my likelihood of buying a game if I'm already on the fence about it."

castillle: "I voted yes because i do not want to play male characters in rpg/adventure games till i get out of saudi. Ive been here for 2 years. I had to stop my hrt to come here because I can save and help my family out. I have been playing a guy every time I have to leave the house out of fear of lashing/jailing by religious police or worse from other people. 1 more year and i can gtfo."