When you have the choice, do you play as a male or female?

I'm male

Depends of the game... but usually as girl.

for example...

In summon night: Twin age (ds)... if you play as the girl you are more magic oriented... and i don't really like magic characters...

but in pokemon black & white... the main loli has such a nice ass that makes you want to enter in a battle...

I am a male and for any genre but the RPG or MMO genres, it completely depends on how the character looks on screen though I do tend to stick with female characters more than male. When I play RPGs, so long as my character fits the role-playing description I have given him or her I could care less about how difficult or easy it makes the game.

When I play an MMO, I will almost always choose a female character if only for the enjoyment I get out of seeing what kind of people will hit try and hit on me. It's even funnier when you get a large amount of gold or gear (I literally whored my way through Silkroad.) for cybering, or, rarely, the guy actually thinks he's going to get some IRL BJ and then plan out the whole scenario to eventually lead up to some kind of "And then I shoved my cock in your ass!" or "Yeah, try explaining to a GM that you got scammed by someone you asked to suck your cock for money. I'm sure they'll laugh in your face with me. Oh, by the way, I gave your name and address to the FBI because prostitution is illegal, you might want to drop some thermite on your hard drive."

Depends. On WoW, I tend to mix it up in terms of gender and how I feel toward a certain race. For example, with the Forsaken, about 90% of the time, I'll make a male because most Forsaken characters are hard-asses and that typically doesn't fit into the female mold[not saying Women can't be badasses, so chill out]. On the other hand, with the Blood Elves, almost 99% of the time I'll make a female because they make for some good eye candy when playing.
It could also boil down to class, as well. Melee classes like Warriors, Paladins, Rogues, and Death Knights are usually male while casters like Mages, Priests, and Druids are female. Hunters and Shamans seem to be wild cards, as well as Warlocks.

TL;DR: I'm a male and I'm usually 50/50.

Let's upset these numbers! F, and I play as F. I will dabble in male characters that look like Asian popstars. I will not with characters such as those in Gears of War.

Gentleman and I play as both.
Usually bias to a girl character if they look cute.
It's rather hilarious how many guys try to hit on you when you play as a cute biochemist on Raganarok Online.

It depends, on Pokemon as a male; reason is I want to show the PK world the amount of ass-grinding time I put into raising my team, until a wild pokemon kicks my ass or my friends.

So it will be a 50/50, depending the game.

Good point...like the girl in XBlades (she was the only playable character) She had a great ass

I pick the girl character, logically.

In rare cases the guy if I think he's cute.

Most always the guy, unless it's WoW then a girl for free gold.

Almost most of the time I play as a girl...

Seriously depends on the character design and the game, but, most of the time, I play as a female, I'm male.

I'm male and it depends on the game, but recently I tend to pick female as I'd rather admire the shapely curves of a girl from behind than stare at the bum of a guy.

I'm a male and my MAIN character in any game has pretty much always been male. Then all my alts are female.

I'm a man dammit, and I play like a man!
With women!
Preferably younger ones!
Well, that's fighting games. In RPGs I play a dude because I AM a dude. Sure I'd rather look at a female for the bajillion hours I'll be playing, but I enjoy accurate representation. It allows me to make manly passes at NPCs on my TV.
Does anyone else self-commentate while playing a game when nobody else is around, or am I odd?

I'm a male.
If choosing different ingame gender means new dialogs, quests, plot twists, etc. i will clear the game with both female and male characters(and it's random for me, for example Mass Effect 2 i completed with my male character from ME1 and then cleared the game with female char, and i started Fallout New Vegas with female char)
But in average i usually choose male characters

<--- Male and I usually play as female on rpgs/single player. Mostly because they look sexy.

If i'm playing online however I usually pick the male character.

Usually I play as a male on my first playthrough, and a female on subsequent playthroughs, though it all depends on the aesthetics, really.

I'm male, by the way.