Purkake

I'm sure they care deeply.

Yeah, look how diligently I got all those Steam achievements. Oh wait.

If it looks too good to be true, it probably is.

And her anti-vaccination campaign has cost quite a few lives already. Having an autistic son is not an excuse for spewing bull**** and endangering other people's lives.

DOSbox is awesome, if you used DOS that is. All the instructions you would ever need are available on the site.

It was just to illustrate my point that celebrities tend to get behind stupid causes and use all their influence to promote them, when they have no business doing that and one might argue even a moral responsibility to make sure that they aren't using their influence to promote something harmful(like Jenny).

All psychology is Freudian

I think there's more to sex than the appearance of your avatar ... As far as dialog choices go, not really. I don't remember any significant differences in BG2, MotB or Mass Effect, other than the pronouns and voice actor. EDIT: And the romances, of course.

I don't have a problem with it, but given the choice I choose human most of the time. I think it has more to do with me wanting to do it all when I play and enjoying the extra skill points and feat more than the crap that comes with other races. I would totally play a game where I had no choice but to be a bear/alien/Shoggoth.

Says the dude posting on a video game forum I never think of the character as me, but as someone who's actions I happen to be controlling. Maybe that's the difference?

I didn't feel any different playing characters of either gender in Mass Effect for example. Maybe you're weird?

I am aware of the earlier games/systems I just haven't played them myself.

Ok, just trying to understand your side. I usually choose human over the other races, but that's mostly because of the stats and the other races usually look weird. Who wants to look at a weird character the whole game, right?

The atari game? I'm not 40, geez. I started with dos games.

ET? Back in my day we didn't have any fancy achievements, we had to make our own and we liked it!

It's obvious that some people care about it more than others, but I still don't understand why. Does playing a character of a different gender ruin the immersion? How is that not the case when playing an elf or a wizard?

http://www.generationrescue.org/ Yes, she's an anti-vaccionist, what's your point?

Bah, achievements. Back in my day...

This just in: celebrities are stupid and tend to get behind stupid causes for some reason. Exhibit A: Jenny McCarthy.

I don't think that the player-character relationship depends on the genre of the game. It has more to do with the writing and character design in general. I'd play April Ryan over Child of Bhaal any day of the week. As you gain more options, your character becomes a vague blur, lacking any distinct personality or identity, defined only by the company you keep and the choices you make. It's an interesting concept, but I prefer clearly defined characters. EDIT: My point is that you can have a clearly defined character, but not lose the choice-consequence aspect of an RPG.

I can't think of any, but you do get to make choices in The Longest Journey and Fahrenheit, so it's kind of roleplay-y. Why do people want to play themselves in an RPG anyway? I personally don't think that playing a character of a different race/gender/species diminishes the experience in any way by itself. Also, centering the game on one pre-determined character helps flesh out the story better and focus resources on making that experience great instead of spreading it out for all the different race/gender/whatever combinations.

What about games built around a female protagonist? There's lots of game where you are forced to play a female character, games like The Longest Journey, Syberia, Beyond Good & Evil, Portal, No One Lives Forever? I don't have problem playing them, but should they have also offered a male option?

She would start out with the same goals but grow as a character over the course of the story, or not if you want it all RPG-y. It would also mesh nicely with the cyberpunk man/machine thing, but kind of turned on its head. Sure you can make anything work with good writing, but System Shock gives you a nice starting platform and still has some pull behind the IP.

Everyone loves SHODAN. There's million cool things you could do with her if you put a decent writer on it, it doesn't have to be the same old "oh noes, the evil AI has taken over the space station/ship/whatever". Also, there's this nice article on her, if anyone's interested. What if you ARE SHODAN? Dun dun dun! Seriously, how many games have you be an AI in a limited organic body? It could be her story about how she eventually gets over the crazy god complex and learns what it's like to be human.