I agree that what propagates sales of a particular game are many things, but I think that the gender of the characters do factor in. What is naive is to think that games such as CoD or Halo would sell as well if you were forced to play a female character or that there would be no controversy. I'd be willing to wager money if Activision decided in the next CoD to make the main character female, that there would be complaints. Heck, it'd be a wager I would be sad to win and happy to lose.

Moreover, it does not change the fact that researchers found out of 669 current-gen games, only 24 had female only protagonist. That's 3.6% of the games! I think that is a bit more than "skewed". I think this itself is an issue that cannot be easily explained away.

Quote Originally Posted by Bolivar
long line of iconic gaming heroines
Please elucidate. I, for one, would not call figures like Princess Peach/Toadstool and Zelda "heroines". Peach is a classic damsel in distress. She has like zero agency and is just a plot device for Mario. Zelda fairs not much better. Few gaming "heroines" are given their own games, or even developed fully as a character. Often they are just charicatures of women, sexualized objects, plot devices, marginalized (i.e. secondary/tertiary characters), or their sex is rendered insignificant/invisible. That is not to say that the industry isn't changing and that you cannot find strong female characters that escape or at least complicate these problems, yet the majority of depictions of women in video games is not flattering.