I'm not sure if the stats are painting the accurate picture the author wants. We've already shown a lot of the games with the biggest budgets can feature definitively female leads or games where the gender is up to the player like The Elder Scrolls and Mass Effect, the latter of which spent a good deal of time marketing the game based on the female character. I think they say it's "less than half" that have a female lead or allow the player to choose the gender, and that might be ok with me. We don't need a perfect 50% because that would create a synthetic environment that subverts creativity. I'm sure there are some publishers out there that will refuse to greenlight a game based on a woman protagonist, but I don't see the game industry and its marketing teams as a whole being terrified of female leads or at least subconsciously colluding to keep them out of gaming (they haven't been doing a good job if that's the case).

I think the more interesting point he brought up is how many games with a female character show her expressing affection in a relationship. I do see our gaming culture having a problem with that, even if none of us on this forum do (except BoB :P ). I do wonder if that's a cross-gender issue, though, given how few games I actually see a male lead in a relationship. That might have to do with our culture getting in an uproar over explicit sexuality, but having no problem with explicit violence, and the video game industry perhaps embodies this principle better than any other medium. I've heard George RR Martin call this a uniquely American thing, I'm not sure if it is, I'm curious what our European members think.