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It's not that there's a big difference, it's that people perceive big differences.

Kiel's an expert on gender differentials.

(... Either that was an odd compliment, a confusing insinuation, or sarcasm.)

I've written about both guys and girls. I don't find either gender more complicated or simpler. A human being is a human being.

Sarcasm haha. Your writing doesn't mean much and certainly doesn't necessarily represent an accurate portrayal of male/female experiences. Just because an author can write vague enough main characters doesn't mean ?e's doing service to either gender. Happens to be men and women in most (if not all) cultures grow up differently due to both natural inclination and gender roles provided by environment. It is thoroughly understandable why a female would be more regulated to writing female characters (as she has her own experiences to mark on) and the vice versa as a male. Interesting characters are more than their genitalia, sure, but they also grew up with those genitalia, with appropriate hormones and public reaction due to it.

You thought I referring to my writing on here? I wasn't. Though "your writing doesn't mean much" is a tad rude. That said, your opinion is your opinion. If you prefer to think of women as mysterious and difficult creatures just because they don't have dicks, that's your prerogative.

Snerk! Point to Kiel. Sorry, Tans, buuuut you're also really damn young. The opposite sex grows less mysterious with age, I promise. And yes, it's a little rude of me to say so, buuuut I'll blame the insomnia. Sorry (not sorry). 

Moved comment over here.

Re: Choice of Games giving you a "choice" of genders.

Im my experience, it's an utterly meaningless choice.  Your gender is completely irrelevant to the story/character.

This is just me, but there's no point at all beyond self-congratulatory smugness in allowing the player to choose their gender when it has zero effect on the story or character.

You're not actually playing as a female.  It's the equivalent of letting the player select Robert or Kyle as their name and acting like it matters.

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Re: tan's comment re kiel's writing:  I can't presume to know for sure, but the way I read it was afaict, even though kiel's games let you choose genders, it doesn't impact the story beyond pronoun choice.  (ie: Nikki is still Nikki whether s/he's Nicole or Nicholas.)

What I've been told is that the assumption is that women will read/play male protagonists, but men don't like to be girls.

Guess I don't fit the norm because I read/write both.... But I do find it interesting that men don't like to read/play as females. Is that true? If so, I may need to rewrite my current story lol. (Not really  :P)

There are multiple male and female characters who do not change with choice in my games (Layne, Melissa, Vidia, Arabella, any and all parents, Lance, Fang, Lilia, and ... actually, it's easier to just list the only people who do change, and that would be the protagonists of both games and Nikki) and he still stated my writing here "didn't mean much" so ... apparently they only count as relevant portrayals of gender if they're playable characters, I guess.

I'm def not trying to neg kiel's writing or gender savvy. 

Separate point:  I mean, check my privilege here, but it seems like when women ask about games with female leads, sometimes they seem to mean, like otome games.

Who made you the man card card man, man?

Re COGs

Something I feel people are forgetting is that, yes, having a penis/vagina might not change much naturally, but certainly it changes a lot via culture. Like, imagine if Secret of Daphne was written from a males prespective. It'd be incredibly different, and if it wasn't, it'd feel off, flat. Part of building a proper character is realizing what and how society shapes people. Just like how being born rich will alter your perceptions in culture, so to will being born gay, straight, bi, male or female or trans. Giving a choice and saying "yo look at this" is absolutely meaningless if it doesnt actually change anything but the pronouns. So re Morgan, yes, the woman is not a mythical creature, but shes not built the same way a human male is. Fantasy lets things slide a bit, but even then, good quality writing won't ignore the subtle (and not so subtle) differences. 

Astute as always, Aman. ^_^

I'll just add this: The reason it gets easier to write cross-gender as you get older, is because as you get to know the men/women/whatevers in your life better, you get to see the commonalities beneath the differences.

The More You Know, et cetera.

There are owls of every age, from egg to elder. If we have secrets, well... no one's told me them yet. ^_~

I see your point, but keep in mind that you are a male and the majority of games do have a male protagonist. As a female I definitely like being given the option to play a female character. ^_^

I do, too... buuut I want it to matter, too. Which is greedy of me, and I KNOW how hard it is to do cross-gender stuff well... but I do think there's something to what CoG is doing. Even if I'm not convinced it needs to be universal across their entire Choice of Games label. 9_9

One of the main things that bothers me in the COG lineup, aside from the cost, is the duplicity involved in their marketing. As in, they advertise the ability to choose sex and sexuality as their top point, but in reality it's a sham, and they really shouldnt be acting like it's one of their top qualities. I mean, I can't even think of a game where people even noted anything. Everything was basically done like Broadisdes, as in, gender/sexuality flipping everyone. Which is a bit silly. 

Even when it's cosmetic, it matters to me. It changes how I imagine the character. And, well... CoG is like, two to three people, not counting volunteers. Plus whatever authors they can find, to write hundreds of thousands of words, in a medium that requires both writing skill and scripting skill. I may be biased (I do hope to publish with them, someday), but I think they're doing a decent job of it. Even if I disagree with some of their choices.

I respect your opinion.  I still say it's as cosmetic as letting me choose a character with my hair color.  

As a person with normal colored hair, you can never understand the struggle of being forced to play a brunette or a blonde.  It totally ruins my suspension of disbelief.

(Yes that was snarky, but I contend my opinion is & would be my opinion regardless of my biological sex or gender.) 

That said, if it matters to you, it's not like it should be that hard for designers/authors to add a purely cosmetic choice.

(Says a guy who will spend over an hour designing his characters face in Fallout or Dragon Age.  They *never* have enough good hairstyles.)

I also like choosing my character's hair colour. 

q.v. Ninja edit. XD 

Agree 100% here. It's not really a story with a choice of a female protagonist or any choice at all when it's just the matter of the exact same story with the option to change names added as an afterthought.

What Endmaster is planning to do with Rogues is the ideal solution, IMO. You have a choice of protagonists and they're both they're own characters too.

But what happens when Endmaster says you're very SPECIAL?

Thought the topic died but since it sprouted into several offshoots I'm inclined to note further. 
My point was an amalgam of Killa, Seth, and Aman's points, plus a little something else tucked into a reasoned and delightfully compact paragraph made in 2 minutes. Of course, reasons go nowhere online, as penis-size, ad hominem and patronizing follow. It's certainly wise to attack my age without even considering the contents of my post, because it throws off credibility without having to discuss. It's juvenile, but I'll elaborate a bit out of boredom and freetime without a laptop to do other stuff.
Kiel noted that he has "written about guys and girls." That is a meaningless statement in the conversation, period. Kiel saying he's "gender-blind" (to paraphrase, and I ask that you not take that term literally) is also pointless, since it does not suddenly mean that women and men are the same with only 'percieved' differences-- it's much more than that, in reality, because there really are differences that many seem to ignore.
So, assuming you read Killa/Seth/Aman's posts, put this in your shake-- differences between men and women growing up in any civilisation is not just something a male teen accused of finding women obfuscating believes-- it's basically why the Feminist movement exists. Women grow up in society and face different challenges than men (and vice versa), and translating that to writing and concocted worlds is more complicated than switching up genitalia, this originally refuting Kiel's original statements about there not being many gender differences and how it shouldn't really affect writing (at least, that's what I got from it.) I think/know it really does if you're a good writer (see Secret of Daphne or even semi-dreck like BuffyVampHunter): so COGs market of gender choice is pointless and meaningless; acting gender-blind ('a human being is just a human being'-esque simplicity) when creating characters is lazy and lends to 2-dimensional characters; and ignoring cultural trends and complexities is a disservice to whatever world you're representing, not to mention the characters. Basically.

After saying basically all that in one paragraph, the response completely ignored it to focus on patronization,
"If you prefer to think of women as mysterious and difficult creatures just because they don't have dicks, that's your prerogative." 
"The opposite sex grows less mysterious with age, I promise."

I'm just confused where that comes into play as a response. It misses the point thoroughly and is, as aforementioned, juvenile-- so Mizal prophesied correctly haha. 

As if a girl would understand :P

So classic fallacy-fallacy. Wasn't intentional but fiiiiiine-- conversation got out, so successful thread I guess. Huzzah.

I didn't think it was pointless, it was a fascinating display of the complex nature of the typical male psyche which always involves trying to aggressively establish one's dominance over the other so as gain the most power and respect of their tribe.

Obviously if Tan and Kiel were ladies, they would have settled their differences by talking it out in civilized manner, followed by a playful pillow fight and then making out with each other.

Lmao.  :D        That's hilarious. But also a typical male opinion, Endmaster. Some of us women like a good 'bitch fight' though, instead of talking it out in a civilized manner...  Especially when other people are blatantly rude for no reason. Just my opinion.

True, but the "bitch fights" usually involve pillows... Or mud. Naked mud wrestling is a wonderful pastime for females to settle their differences. ^_^

...I disagree! Vehemently! >:D

Very wise Morgan. All that mud can cause some rather nasty infections if you're not careful, but jello makes for a suitable alternative. ^_^

Oooh. I always KNEW jello wasn't meant to be a food, but I never realized that you could use it for such nefarious purposes! Delicious! ^_~

Lmao. (Guess I am mistaken.) Maybe I just don't fit into the norm standards... but I tend to be violent sometimes, well when I'm provoked... 

...yeah. I mean, I'm not, but I can understand the impulse. I personally refrain from violence because I don't know how to hurt someone without killing them. I mean, I do in theory, but in practice? It seems too easy to me, to end someone.

Gonna take some tai chi and them some aikido, though. Because I want to know how to handle myself in a fight. Non-lethally.

I wonder if there are pillow fighting classes for a more traditional form of female self defense. 

So, British people don't carry sex toys on their persons for self-defense. Damn it, MadBrad, you lied to me.

That could work too, particularly the glass ones. You could always smash them over someone's head if things turn nasty ^_^

Snerk. No, for that you want Australia, I think. Could be wrong, though, I've never set foot on Australia. But you gotta figure with all the lethal-as-fuck critters, you're gonna want a way to deal with them... non-lethally. ;)

The Australians' preferred method of dealing with critters is to pepper the landscape with 1080, then break out the spotlights and machine guns.

Huh...

I actually have a domestic violence charge on me (sigh.) Not proud of it, but sometimes can't control the impulse to lash out... especially if someone is yelling in your face saying unspeakable things. (I haven't had the easiest life, though.) Ah well.

And btw its actually harder to kill someone than you might think...

Oh you'd be surprised actually. Pillows can also be used for smothering. ^_^

Lol... been there, done that. Hard to do trust me. (Especially when your opponent outweighs you by 150 lbs.) 

Oh, I know that too. But not in the same visceral way, because I've never been in a fight.

In our childhood & teenage scuffles, I was always the eldest. So nobody fought with me, even in play. Or if they tried, well... I'm 5'10, and my balance has always been good. Pain tolerance, too. So they weren't going to get very far with me... not without weapons. Which weren't sporting, of course.

Oh the joys of being an oldest sibling. I was small. My hair got pulled a lot. It hurt. 

Really? Man I got lucky. Being first born basically meant I got to basically trail blaze. Whatever I got in grades was awesome, whenever I'm surpassed it doesnt matter, and my siblings are supposed to treat me with respect ha ha. Its great so far.

Always got into fights with Tan, even when I was taller then him (for a very short peiod of time, alas). Also with classmates, and I Mean, I look intimidating. Never really helped with guys, ha ha. 

So long as nobody touched the 'tache ^_^

No offense, but I have actually seen more fights between two or more women than I have between two or more men.

Speaking as your friendly local "lesbian"...

...it's all fun and games until somebody chips a nail. ^_~

Lmao right.... (not that I have any. I keep mine short.) P.S.... didn't know you were a girl. Smh.

Oh, REAL lesbians all have short nails. ;)

Aaaand I'm kind of a woman, sometimes, I guess? I'm mostly androgynous-presenting, but a friend of mine has been coaxing me towards femininity. And despite my owlishness, I do find nail polish to be... fun. Even if it chips eventually.

Nice to see another female face, so to speak. It tends to be a bit of a boy's club around here, but don't let that bother you. They're mostly civilized. ;)
 

You first. ;)

I feel like I've just been other-ed a bit. :(

Sorry. If it helps, I think otherkin are awesome. ^_^

(No sarcasm. I know everyone punches down, and otherkin are the low man on the totem pole right now, right? Furries punch down at Otherkin. But I don't punch down OR up. I'm a fucking pacifist, right? ;P)

A non-human animal? As opposed to all the human animals? 

Oh yeah 

He knows I would mouth off if he said "animals", because that's one of the words that makes me cringe when I hear it misused, like "sentient" or "decimate" or "thaw".

For crying out loud, people, to "unthaw" something is to freeze it again. Damn!

I AM A GODDAMN SEXUAL TYRANNOSAURUS!

I am agnostic on the subject... but belief in reincarnation is a time-honored tradition.

Otherkin?Oh my God, they know I'm a fennec.

Yeah, you know, those guys that make it difficult to tell who is and isn't genuinely psychotic on the internet anymore. I saw that edit, you spirit-animal-holding-onto hippy! Who the fuck has a spirit animal!? I don't need one of those petty things! I know very well that I AM a horse! I am reminded of that fact every time these new T-patches cause me to rip my goddamn pants!

Aw geez Rick. 

Moved to clarify the OP thread while still allowing for discussion.

There's not much of a big difference if you don't change the choices base on the main character's gender.

I wonder whatever happened to Sky, she was actually in the ye olde Villain Lair at one time.

Our australians have a habit of mysterious disappearances.

@mizal historical revisionism be afoot lol

What a trip

just the "lol what an incredible faggot kiel is" edits haha

yeh end it really was

Kiel, Seth, James, and Melissa.

Christ, what a terrible era that was.