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# Are you weird if you play as the opposite sex?
- URL: https://www.killscreen.com/are-you-weird-if-you-play-opposite-sex/
- Published: 2013-10-24T16:54:07.000Z
- Updated: 2024-07-26T10:36:10.000Z
- Description: Inside the awesome and crazy world of gender-swapping in games
- Author: Jamin Warren
- Tags: News, Game/Show, gender, pbs, #wp, #wp-post, #Import 2024-07-26 09:39

One of my favorite pieces ever on games was Tom Bissell’s profile of Jennifer Hale and [her performance as female Commander Shepard](http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/08/15/110815fa%5Ffact%5Fbissell?ref=killscreen.com) in the *Mass Effect* series. Bissell is always an astute cultural critic and given that 80% of *Mass Effect* players chose to be the male as opposed to the woman, there’s clearly a strange and telling dynamic at work in games.

So this week on Game/Show, I took a closer look at why we chose the gender or sex that we do when we play games. As it turns out, it’s more than just picking someone who looks like you, but actually gets at the heart of who we are and who we want to be.

Check it out and let me know what you think in comments!