Quote Originally Posted by Azar View Post
Quote Originally Posted by Skyblade View Post
For example, first person shooters are incredibly popular and sell well. They also feature mostly male protagonists, which skew the numbers. If you played a girl instead of Master Chief or the Rookie in the Halo games, would they sell any less? No. Heck, you could gender swap the main character and not tell anyone, and no one would know the difference. Did Metroid Prime sell any less because Samus was a girl? Hell, no. The gender doesn't matter, it's far more about the mechanics and the gameplay style, and a male protagonist is used simply out of habit and the fact that companies don't like to experiment.
You're ignoring the point, which is: Why do they all have male protagonists? In the vast majority of games, a male protagonist is default. It's expected. It's "normal." I think you're being naive if you think a Halo game with a female Master Chief would have sold as well to a mass audience as the games did with the gravelly voiced male lead.
MC's sex has nothing to do with the sales of the games. Heck, he could be a girl, just like Samus, and we'd never know it. He never talks or removes his armor, we only have other people's word for it.

You clued into one very important point here. Games have male protagonists because its normal. The male protagonist is an artifact carried over from a bygone age, kept because people, especially businesses, tend to play safe and conservative.

Similarly, a lot of other examples don't do much to disprove the fact that female leads are pretty marginalized. The Metroid Prime games each only sold a bit more than a million copies. Maybe something like two million lifetime, far lower than the ~10 million Call of Duty sells annually (obviously it's one of the most popular franchises on the planet, but the point is Metroid is very small in comparison). Heavenly Sword was pretty much a flop. Mirror's Edge is well-loved, but only sold about two million. That is pretty decent. Bayonetta wouldn't have a sequel if Nintendo didn't step in to publish the second game as an exclusive for the Wii U.[/i]
Again, you're missing the point. Do you honestly think that Metroid Prime would have sold more with a male protagonist? Do you think that Heavenly Sword flopped because it had a female lead? No. These games stand, or fall, on their own merits, and characterization doesn't enter into it.

Marketing, writing, gameplay... These are what make or break the sales of most games. As long as 90+% of games made feature male protagonists, yeah, they'll sell better and probably have the top sellers on their list. Especially since there are still games which feature female leads as nothing but sex objects. But that doesn't mean that having a female lead is even a minor factor in the sales figures of most games. It isn't.

Wings of Liberty featured James Raynor, a male lead. Heart of the Swarm featured Sarah Kerrigan, a female. Compare the numbers and get back to me on how much that change hurt the sales of the expansion.