My short item yesterday on Homosexuality and Gaming elicited a mixed bag of responses, mostly positive, but one reader seemed to take quite a lot of offense to my last sentence.

Here s her angry letter in its entirety:

Oh please! Just flippantly saying " Heck, who hasn t played as a character of the opposite sex in at least one video game? " doesn't mean a single thing.

A guy playing Samus in Metroid Prime or Alice in Resident Evil does not feel "feminine" in any way. His actions are not limited. The other characters in the game do not behave differently towards him. At the most he gets a kick out of watching the character's boobs bouce, or the chance shot of underwear when she kicks (Sophitia in Soul Calibur).

A girl playing *any* video game where she takes on a male character doesn't feel more masculine or testosterone driven. She doesn't feel stronger or more physically able. Any in-game "in-character" comments made by the character are not echoed by the one holding the controller or pressing the keys. There's no gender switching going on. It's like saying that someone is reliving their youth if an elderly person were to pick up a Zelda game.

Game like Siren, where you switch between male and female characters - there's no difference in gameplay for who you're playing. They can run equally as fast. Their hand-eye coordination is equally as dextrous.

Even when people swap sexes in MMO's - and actually role play as their avatar - rarely does it go so far. Role playing in most MMOs means fending off the twinked assholes making stupid comments. Sure, someone could be pretending to be a girl - maybe saying what they think a girl would say - but once a personal relationship is made with another character, the truth comes out and their behavoir changes. In all my years playing MMOs, I only know one person who kept their 'real' sex a complete secret (female avatar), and one person who insisted on being treated in all ways like a male despite being a girl in real life (ie, talking about cars & technology & women, and other stereotypically manly subjects).

If we really wanted a gender-swapping game, it'd deal with some of the issues Jess talks about in her rant that Gamasutra picked up a few months ago:

(The site she pointed to seems to be temporarily down.)

Theresa

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