I am woman, hear me roar.

Obviously the females are lacking a bit on the numbers side around here, but we seem to be doing better on this poll for some strange reason, the guys must all be asleep. Tomb Raider can manage 1/4 ratio in online presence, which pretty much matched the numbers in my local area, at least before the last game came out. I have met lots of male fans of the Elder Scrolls games, have yet to meet a female one around here.

I have no preferences to the six of the character I play, either will do. Not an online player, and multiplayer games will never entice me online, but had no trouble with the Tomb Raider (GOL) or Uncharted 2 players when I had fun trying out online co-op. No one has ever given me strange looks for playing games, although I used to get a few pitying looks and disparaging remarks from the EB guys for still being a Tomb Raider fan when I picked up the latest Tomb Raider game. Last game fixed them!

Female, 36. I usually play female characters, though in Fallout NV my main character is male...and he's a copy of my main Sims 3 character

I've been gaming for 30 years or so, and never really encountered any weirdness from other people until I walked into a computer shop one day 20 years ago. Ordinarily I buy my games online but my PC needed an upgrade and I thought I'd try local first. Bad idea But, compared to 20 years ago people don't really seem to care what gender you are these days, there's a bit more interest in what you play. But, I rarely leave my State so it could be different in other States, and countries

Anyway, I don't like, or play, MMO's, though TESO will be an exception.

Man, all this variety is awesome.

Female, 38. I didn't start gaming until I was about 30. One of the reasons I love it here on the forums is because my gender's not an issue here.

Nearly all of my hobbies involve computers, and I find it really hard to get comfy on a lot of tech / av forums. I get tired of having everything I say either overlooked or disregarded because I don't hide the fact that I'm a female. I recently posted a question on a forum because Windows was throwing an error that I had never encountered in that particular context. I very clearly explained the troubleshooting I had done so far, and every single response not only ignored all of that very useful info, asking questions I already answered, they were also worded as though I was an incompetent two-year-old.

There are a few sites that are really awesome, where I feel at home. On one, I think I'm the only female regular. But sadly, those are the exception.

Yes indeed.

You do realize that 1 of least covering armors in Skyrim is a shirtless set of male fur armor which is pretty much a fur kilt...just had to point that out
I don't mind revealing fantasy armor for either gender in a fantasy game and Skyrim doesn't seem to suffer from the sixy woman armor syndrome...boob plates are another matter

Anyway i'm a man and mostly play as men because I can relate and RP better.

I'm 48 yr male, but look 38 IRL...

Been PC gaming last decade... all custom machines... FPS/RPG - FTW!

Oh yeah, never play online but thats basically because I'm on a wireless connection, so that svcks in this part of Australia atm.

Would love to play TESO in co-op one day...

I started really playing games about 3 yrs ago(?) and it's all my husbands fault.... really. He had gotten AC and needed help with some of the Historical questions on the mini game, I had no problems answering them or putting the paintings in order. I moved his character around only when he seemed to have problems with something, my reflexes are better than his so I had an easier time of some things. Then he got RDR and I was in love... between FPS's which I don't like...except I did like Gear's of War, which he didn't like.

Now that's not to say I didn't have video games as a "kid", pong and then Atari, my brothers really but he let me play. My 1st husband was in love with Zelda and i had most of the lvl's memorized without ever once touching the controler. Of course my son had games growing up, both video and computer, his father set the pc's up.

Growing up I was an outdoorsy person Horses, swim team, fast pitch softball, camping etc. Except no matter where I was you could bet I had a science fiction book in my purse or saddlebags or backpack. I still like the outdoors.

Female playing as female here.

ColonelKillaBee had me shocked for a moment there too! But then I had thought that Michaelpk was female a while ago too because he often has a very pretty female picture (although not today).

Skyrim has a good diversity of things to do. I wouldn't play a game where all you could do was going around killing or destroying things, but I also would rather pull my fingernails out than play Sims. I am becoming increasingly interested in playing ESO, but think I might play that as a male to avoid potential issues...

Male. I've played female characters almost exclusively since I first started gaming though. I'm always welcoming of female gamers, it's fun to meet girls that get the same enjoyment from games as me.

Why I play female characters?

All started with Tiger Woods Golf 2005. It had lot of male players and not many female. I was playing male first then went into female and trying to even things up a bit.

Then games like Cods, Half Life/2, FEAR/2 and The Witchers games have to play male characters.

Thanks goodness for No one Live Forever games, Mirror Edge and Tomb Raiders.

Least we had a chose between male and female in Elder Scrolls games, AOC, Mass Effect games and TSW. In Mass Effect it is 50/50 and played them through out the series.

My avatar is one of my male Shepard in Mass Effect showing you that I am male.

edit: I 42

The guy with The Macho Man for his avatar is male.

BUT YA WEREN'T EXPECTING THAT, WERE YA!?

Anyways, I play both of the genders pretty equally in TES, I find. I have more female characters, I think, but I play my male characters more often. It's odd.

Now I'm craving a Slim Jim. Also, wondering whatever happened to my old wrestling t-shirts.

I've created a few male characters, but I can never get into playing them. Always stop after a few hours and create another female to play. So I've started turning the males into follower mods so I can still enjoy them in my game.

male 25 yrs mainly plays a male character tried female once got bored of the playthrough.
real question should be what gender your character is in TES games ? females will win it by a long margin

That including Chivalry: Medieval Warfare?

I have. Two. In a lan party four years ago during easter. A pleasure to meet.

Another reason why I keep my distance from consoles...

It's kinda funny how some of you never or rarely have met female gamers IRL. When I first started got Skyrim, the few persons I knew IRL who also played it all were female... (That changed however.)

(And you can't fool me Colonel. I know you've linked to your facebook page once, and it clearly was a male in that picture. And NO ONE is lying on FB! ) (Also, everything you see on TV is true.)

(And now I suddenly want to have a male avatar. But no. Aurora stays. She's the closest I've gotten to recreate myself. Ok, 15 years and 10 kgs ago! )

When it comes to mods there are some really tacky stuff out there. Most of the creators are male, of course. If I could make armor and clothing I'd be making it for the male characters, or course. Not that I play them much, but there are followers that could do with a new wardrobe . But, that fur armor I was surprised it was in the unmodded game. I knew I wasn't running any mods when I first started.

In my modded game there's probably only one or two outfits that are skimpy for females (due to the body mod I use that included it already) and all the male stuff are skimpy replacers. No underpants

Me, too. I'm on wireless (Virgin) and in your State. We're rural-ish and don't have a landline, so the NBN won't do us much good when it finally comes. I'll still use my terrible ISP to try and play TESO, though. If all else fails I'll just use my back-up ISP (Bigpond) which isn't much better really.

Playing Dead Island was sometimes difficult. You know, if you're going to join my game at least stick around for longer than 1 minute, and get off the roof of my truck, I'm trying to drive (with a keyboard/mouse) without crashing

The few times I've played an MMO or co-op has been fun, though. I just wish my connection wouldn't drop out at random.

Having just come back from the less savoury parts of the internet, I find it horrible how many people seriously still consider gaming is a "man's" hobby and harass female players enough that some even have to avoid revealing their gender.

My sisters actually game, and my older sisters have done it since they were little brats. I think it was through my influence that my youngest sister got into gaming. Couldn't get her into the Elder Scrolls, though, even though we started with Skyrim (her reaction to being arrested for crossing the border was delightful, though). I think if she got past the controlls, she'd like it a lot. She seems to like the more hack-and-slash type of games like Fable 2 and Dead Rising. I also have a few female gamer friends, all of which are into the series, too.

But yes, I do like that the forums has a large number of female players of all ages (that one goes for male players too).

Anyways, I am male, which you can easily figure out by checking my profile. Though I guess I could have easily lied and claimed I'm a female brat (like I sometimes do to hide my identity ). Also, since everyone else is saying it, I play both genders, but prefer male.

So, 100 votes.

75% Male and 25% Female.

The gender I choose depends on the game, for example:

Mass Effect, always male.

Skyrim, usually female.

Fable, usually female.

Dark Souls, always male.

L4D, always Zoey (o_o)

Male. Good to see there a bit more ladies playing VGs, in general.

*This is someone who use to be play sport VGs for a lot of years, thus was not sure about the M/F ratio, though glad to see it is not just "boy's escape" I remember about twenty years ago... now I am feeling old thinking about the adolescent years (grunge was tops at that time \m/, ) *

Some of my favourite and most heroic characters have been women. I don't overly think about gender when making a character, I would feel just as appropriate making a female character on a first run through for the MQ as I would a male.

Also major 1+ to all the women and 40 pluses enjoying Skyrim, I'm so glad people of all backgrounds are enjoying this series! I guess I'm just a baby at 22 yrs old ^^

Male and I play both genders at 1:1 ratio. Warriors are almost always female while my mages are male.

From my era (probably should say area), it was a male protagonist dominant POV, but will say, through "canon", KOTR II broke the female barrier for me. Glad it happened and not have a sixist/ego/whatever have been called names, but I did blamed major sports games/Mario Bros/Zelda/Double Dragon (you get the picture) that happening, and in a severe geekish sort-of-way "woke-up", but glad.