This week's poll is a follow-up poll for the poll from 2 weeks ago. I'm actually going to start playing D&D 5e with some friends in a couple of weeks, and I've already made a female half-elf sorcerer.

You can submit poll ideas here (and try to keep them manga/anime-related)
http://www.mangaupdates.com/showtopic.php?tid=3903

Previous Poll Results:
Question: Do you feel bad or have remorse for consuming pirated content?
Choices:
All or most the time - votes: 485 (5%)
About half the time - votes: 2388 (24.8%)
Seldom or never - votes: 6754 (70.2%)
There were 9627 total votes.
The poll ended: August 1st 2015

That's what I figured for an audience of scanlation readers

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A just ruler amongst tyrants

Female and I pick female characters first time playing the game. If the game has multiple endings then second time I play, I go as a male character.

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Internet Lurker At Heart

Female will pick female if there is not much customization of the char but with games like the sims I'll make both. For me it really depends on what kind of game it is if it is only the avatar I'll pick female and otherwise it can be fun to play around with the gender.

I'm not much of a gamer, but if I ever do play anything of that sort, I test out several options and choose the best-looking one, be it female or male. Not because I want people to think I'm pretty, but because I love looking at beautiful things, whether they represent me or not.

I'm male and more often than not go with male characters, but that can vary a lot from game to game.
Pen & Paper games I usually (but not always) go with a male character.
If it's an RPG with romance options I'll go with male characters.
In something like the Elder Scrolls games or many MMOs it's pretty much a coin-toss between female and male characters, mostly depends on the actual looks of the characters then.

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I'm male and I rarely make female characters, just for kicks. I think it's interesting that 10% of females make male characters while 20% of males make female characters.

About half the time, female characters as a male.

I like to distance myself from reality as much as possible when I game. Making a female character helps because it's something I don't want to be in real life, nor will I ever be in real life.

Making a male character, being a male, takes away from some of the enjoyment for me. I like playing games to be something I'm not, something I don't want to be in real life, but wouldn't mind in game. Not to mention, in many games, female characters are much more aesthetically pleasing to watch as they run around and kill monsters and whatnot. The male characters tend to be hyper masculine freaks.

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Is this me in a nutshell?
Pretty much.

I will usually choose whichever character/gender looks better
The exception being games that allow marriages - I'll most likely choose a male character there. Having my character marry a male npc/another player (if we talk online games) just wouldn't feel right to me xP
Then again, if the game allows same sex marriage... ^^

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You can PM me if you need a temporary (freelance) cleaner/redrawer for some project. Especially if it's something with nice art.
Being the lazy person that I am, I'm not likely to accept anything long-term though.

Female and usually female characters. The female character model is usually much more attractive than the male ones. I wonder where the devs spend their times....

But really, I'll shamelessly admit I like to self-insert. If there's romance, I'll be making a female character 100% of the time. It breaks immersion if I'm playing a male character. (Though, there hasn't been a game where I could make a super attractive male character yet...)

In some games like the Witcher, where you actually can only play as the male character, there are moments akin to fanservice that I just don't like. Let's not forget literally collecting women cards after you have sex with female NPCs in the first game. (The Witcher series is pretty good in spite of those annoyances though.)

Eh I'm kind of 50/50 on this one. Sometimes I feel like playing as a female, sometimes I'll choose a male character. I guess I lean towards female generally when I think about it tho.

Something that helps make the decision quicker is whether romancing is involved. Seeing as romancing girls as a girl is practically non-existant, I'll choose to be a male character. If the yuri option is there though, I'm gonna take it.

I extremely agree with you. I'm a male, and I would choose male first, and choose female as a second go around to get more story experience.

The thing is - I don't know why but I don't play much games as I used to ever since I've been exposed to the ideas of virtual reality. I just see games of this century lacking. Ever since I watched media content like The Matrix, Tron, Inception, Ghost in the Shell, Sword Art Online, Dot-hack Series, etc.

I've started to realize that playing the games of today is a total waste of my time if I don't experience more than just moving some controller system while watching a video screen. Even the new Virtual Reality concept - that Facebook, Sony, and Microsoft seemed to have sparked serious investments into - isn't up to level you'd called 100% immersible virtual reality.

The more I realized the gaming generation I was born in, the more I continued to feel despair. And I've come to a conclusion that the gender system implemented in todays games is a pointless concept if you do not feel what the actual character is feeling (the pain, its hunger, its vision, its stress, the heartbeat, eye-tears, the air-pressure, the gravity, the temperature, etc.).

I know that the mentality of gaming is an illusion, but what fun is gender choosing when you are not completely connected with your character? It is only then, that a poll like this would have true meaning.

My opinion.

that's actually incorrect.

currently it is the following:
27.4% of females that play those games tend to create male characters
36.2% of males that play those games tend to create female characters

you forgot to condition on gender

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in need of romance?
uncommon, sad, sweet

Female and tend to make male characters. When I do try to play a female character in a game, I find myself running into characters that are either completely non-canonical (as is the case with the female protagonist of Persona 3 Portable) or wearable equipment makes her look like a fan service character.

I typically play as both. It usually comes down to which looks better in the end. If the game has mods though, I typically go female. Mods for female characters tend to outnumber those for male characters by a vast margin from my experience.

I've only ever played one game like that, and I picked a monster thing of unknown gender (probably assumed to be male? I don't know!), so it's none of the above!