Gender Ratios in City of Heroes

I just went down my spreadsheet of heroes and villains. I have 50 males and 51 females.

Lewis

Well, I'll throw my 2 inf in.
Gender: Male
Age: 28
I play almost all female toons. Just like the look of them better, and I always get a good laugh when someone is trying to hit on me (not my toon) and I toss out the, "I'm a guy" and just watch them flee in terror

You didn't make any mention of whether or not the characters were hero or villain. So I won't pay any attention to that either.

I the player am male. At last accounting, I have 53 alts in play, of which, 39 are male and 14 are female.

Whatever it is you are doing, I hope that helps.

RL: Male, 34.

Game: 35 characters = 30 females + 4 males + 1 huge (male). One of the females has a third costume that's a Huge, but the character is intended at base to be female

I always prefer to play females in any game. I just like girls, they look better, dress better, and are to my mind far too under-represented, especially in get-hands-dirty type roles, so I make more than my share. I think of all the action and horror movies where the girl acts as victim, and in my mind most games are essentially an action or horror movie in which I can take part, so I make females that actually do what I've yelled (or at least thought) at too many TV and movie screens: "STAB THE SON OF A *****! [Or who/whatever.] Punch his throat, face, ear, eye, stomp his instep, just ******* DO something!" (Yeah, I play mostly blue-side, I admit it.)

33 year old male, most of my surviving characters are female, and most of my newly created alts are female.

When I first started the game over 4 years ago, most of my characters were male, and over time new alts underwent a shift from mostly male, to a 50/50 split, to now mostly female. I can't explain the shift myself, I just tend to delete my female alts less often and just started making more of them.

Of my surviving characters, 6 are male and 15 female.

Male player, 7 of 24 characters are male. In fact, looking at the list, there really ought to be 8 of 24 as male, as one of mine is entirely uninspired as female and would work better as male. I may have just found a reason to buy the science booster...

I must simply just default to female, as of the seven, two are chat handles I've used, one is a real person, and three are, by concept, male. Leaving me with one (or two, soon) that I had an option on and didn't go female.

I would have expected there to be more female characters in game than male, as the women I know all run female characters, and the men vary a lot.

My ratio probably reflects my taste in comics. For every male hero whose presence in a series will influence me to pick it up, there are probably two or three heroines who can do the same.

Okay, if any devs are reading this, please note the consensus is:

1) Male run animation looks bad, bad enough to cause players to not make male toons.

2) Male costuming is uninspired and too limited.

At least it's not as bad as the female running animations on Guild Wars. For some reason they decided that the women should run with their hands swaying far from their bodies. There's feminine and then there's little-girlish. It feels like im playing as Pippi Longstocking, if you discount the whole throwing fireballs thing at least

Come to think of it, all my CoX characters are male. I do have one character, the Dollmaster, who is a female character model, but is by storyline a man controlling an android from a hidden location.

Though oddly enough, I'm the guy who almost always picks the female characters in stuff like fighting games, though that is typically due to the associated playstyle (I prefer Speed over Power). My most infamous MMO character outside CoX was female, origionally due to the bonuses given for that class/gender combination (Phantasy Star Online, FOnewearl for those familiar). She was later reincarnated in many other games due to how well-known she had become within my circle of friends, though I've yet to add her to my CoX list.

And for the record, I am male, 24 years old.

I have 25 female toons and 5 male toons - I am female. I would play more males, but I just don't like the faces for males. They are ugly in this game.

My husband has 22 male toons, and 14 female toons.

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I am female, and all of my 35 characters are female. The highest I've ever gotten a male was.. ah... 12 I think.

I play female because

1. I identify more with the character when she's my own sex.
2. I don't like the run animation for the male characters

BTW - the terms "Gender" and "Sex" are not interchangable. If you're asking if someone is male or female.. that is their "sex" not their "gender."

Gender refers to "the behavioral, cultural, or psychological traits typically associated with one sex"

Read my stories!

I have a pretty decent mix of males and females. It seems I play the females a little more, depends on the mood I am in.
It helps that females get some awesome costume parts like the magic bolero that the guys don't. I wish they would make a unisex version of that thing!

I am female, and all the characters I create are female. I have a male friend who plays as well, and all of his characters but one are male (and that one is a complete stereotype: breast slider pushed as far as it can, waist as thin as possible, and wearing this horrendous tiger bikini type thing).

(...He always says my costumes are ugly, though, so take that where you will.)

I'll plainly admit that it's partly because of a 'Yay, I get to play a female character!' deal, though. Games over the years have gotten a lot better at it, especially, say, cprgs. They've gone from 'no female lead character, ever' to it being around a 50/50 chance that only a male character is allowed compared to both male and female being an option. Probably has a lot to do with Bioware and Black Isle (and the companies the latter split in to), as well as MMOs, all which deserve cookies and all that.

To clarify: I've played Gothic, the Witcher, Fable, Planescape: Torment might be my favorite video game of all time... and I've played Mario and Zelda and Final Fantasy and Tales of (whatever) and so on so forth. Having only a male character is certainly not a deal breaker.

But having an option to play a female is just *nice*. So when it's available, I use it. Also, in MMO's... people are used to female characters wandering around. It's not like I just stepped in to my local comic/p&p gaming shop (in which 9 times out of 10 (that one tenth time usually only occurring when no one else is in the shop), I get looked at like I just tore down the door with an axe and am wearing a clown suit). In CoX (or really, any MMO), if I'm running around with a female character, I'm going to be invited to teams and talked with totally normally. As a girl who grew up liking video games and pen and paper roleplaying and war games and bad Drizzt novels (...I was young!) and got odd look after odd look, online gaming is lovely. Save for when voice chat comes in and '...woah, you're actually a girl? D: D: D: D: PICZ PLZ OR UR LYING OMGGGG', but that's why I don't use voice chat anymore.

As an aside, though, while I write backstories for all my characters and pick around for story arcs that I think suit them the best, I don't really roleplay. If I did, I'd probably have a more even gender divide.