Original Commander Shepard was Female

MaleShep of FemShep...that is the question.

I ran into this article about a Tweet by a former animator from the original Mass Effect.  The initial animation tests for the Commander Shepard character were female!  As a big fan of FemShep I think that's pretty awesome.  Later he did clarify his comment by stating that it was always the intention that players could pick a character of either gender.  I'm still intrigued by the idea that they started off with a female character.  Would the series have been different if Shepard were meant to be a female character?  Would fewer men play it?  Do guys even care about having to play a female character?

Awhile back I posted about FemShep being one of my all time favorite lady characters.  Only 18% of players actually choose the female character!  That means that the other 82% are making a huge mistake.  The voice acting for the female character is so much better--I spend a lot of time cringing on my playthroughs with the male character.  Even though Jonathan Cooper stated that the intention was that Shepard could be male or female, I think the preferable character is the female version.

Does it matter to men if they have to play a female character?  In my World of Warcraft days many of my guy friends would play female characters.  When I asked them why many of them stated that they would much rather stare at a female character than a male one.  Others said that they simply wanted a change of perspective.  On the other hand, I very rarely ran into women playing male characters.  It's kind of weird.

Does the gender of the character you play in a game really matter?  I'm curious, but will probably never know.  I personally will pick a female character if given the option but don't have a problem playing a male character.  I don't know much about the decisions that studios make when picking the gender of their main characters, but now I'm intrigued.