If gender specificity or option is your issue and only thing preventing you from buying a game, you have limited your focus on something so shallow that I wonder why you even bother playing games.
What should it matter whether the protagonist is male or female? Story is good, gameplay is good, MC is just ancillary data. As is character customization options. Really it doesn't make the game any better in the area of gameplay. So instead you judge the proverbial book by its cover.
If you feel shunned as a girl/woman because there aren't enough main characters in your games, perhaps you need to turn back the clock a bit to the mid/late 80's to a little game called Metroid for the NES, which the BIG HONKING SPOILER was that Samus is a GIRL!!!!
Arguably one of the best games of all time, I remember being in school and amongst the gamers I knew, this was a huge topic of discussion.
Also there have been a lot of great games where the protagonist is female or you have the option to choose. See also the Resident Evil series, Super Mario 2, and a whole host of other games I won't name off but are big hits.
But one thing I can't stand is hypocrisy, and you madam have hit that mark. YOu complain about the dev's being shallow-minded (thats a nutshell synopsis) while saying that you specifically target male-protagonist games as something you'll never buy, which is shallow-minded.
Also making male *and* female characters isnt' always the easiest thing, especially if the MC has long lines of dialogue.
Here's a great example: For anyone who played the Soul Reaver/Legacy of Kain series, could you imagine if you'd had the option to play as a female version of Kain? Talk about stretching out dialogue, he had paragraphs of words whereas Raziel would say maybe one or two lines in-between. The cost to voice-over double the lines (and reach the same level of voice acting from both male/female talent) would cost the dev's more than they could probably afford.
Plus animations for male bodies are way different than female bodies and thus take a whole different level of coding/meshing.
In the short run, its not cost effective to make a game to cater to gamer girls (who yes are a rarity rather than the norm). Sorry, but thats the way it is, and until the base grows from a majority of males, you won't see that as a standard.
But as I said before, its ridiculous for you to judge a game by the gender of the MC.
What should it matter whether the protagonist is male or female? Story is good, gameplay is good, MC is just ancillary data. As is character customization options. Really it doesn't make the game any better in the area of gameplay. So instead you judge the proverbial book by its cover.
If you feel shunned as a girl/woman because there aren't enough main characters in your games, perhaps you need to turn back the clock a bit to the mid/late 80's to a little game called Metroid for the NES, which the BIG HONKING SPOILER was that Samus is a GIRL!!!!
Arguably one of the best games of all time, I remember being in school and amongst the gamers I knew, this was a huge topic of discussion.
Also there have been a lot of great games where the protagonist is female or you have the option to choose. See also the Resident Evil series, Super Mario 2, and a whole host of other games I won't name off but are big hits.
But one thing I can't stand is hypocrisy, and you madam have hit that mark. YOu complain about the dev's being shallow-minded (thats a nutshell synopsis) while saying that you specifically target male-protagonist games as something you'll never buy, which is shallow-minded.
Also making male *and* female characters isnt' always the easiest thing, especially if the MC has long lines of dialogue.
Here's a great example: For anyone who played the Soul Reaver/Legacy of Kain series, could you imagine if you'd had the option to play as a female version of Kain? Talk about stretching out dialogue, he had paragraphs of words whereas Raziel would say maybe one or two lines in-between. The cost to voice-over double the lines (and reach the same level of voice acting from both male/female talent) would cost the dev's more than they could probably afford.
Plus animations for male bodies are way different than female bodies and thus take a whole different level of coding/meshing.
In the short run, its not cost effective to make a game to cater to gamer girls (who yes are a rarity rather than the norm). Sorry, but thats the way it is, and until the base grows from a majority of males, you won't see that as a standard.
But as I said before, its ridiculous for you to judge a game by the gender of the MC.
