Hmmm, well I do have to say that I find it somewhat irksome that now that people are beginning to acknowledge that women were never really being neglected by the gaming industry nor was there ever a shortage of well developed female characters in a general sense (I've been pointing towards things like Hidden Object games for years), now people are presenting it as an issue that there has been some degree of gender segregation based on the two genders wanting different things (which is in part why the generas proving a lot of the sexism in gaming points false have been largely been invisible to those making the arguments... not being there for guys, the guys trying to make PC statements tended to overlook them and how many there were and what a big business they cumulatively represent).
Extra Credits is right in a general sense, but only in that the big budget gaming industry tends to stick almost exclusively with what it knows works, causing stagnation, something which has been being complained about for years. Trying to tie gender issues to it seems pretty much ridiculous... as well as the whole basic point of this video with all the complaints about how there were no games being developed FOR women, now that it's obvious that there have been, and for a very long time, having these girl games is suddenly wrong?
As far as people stepping over gender intent, that happens all the time in a limited sense. It's sort of like how anime is divided into Shoujo and Shonen titles and this extends to video games. Hardcore fans step over those lines all the time (less so for casual ones which is why the designation exists) however every so often something comes along that becomes a huge blockbuster in part because it winds up appealing heavily to a general audience as opposed to one gender. As much as people try and point fingers at the elements that caused this to happen and say "this is why" that usually fails which is why it remains exceptional, as opposed to something that happens all the time, as attempts to simply plug in a formula lead to failed projects. The same applies to video games, and within gaming when it comes to the hardcore gamers of both genders, you see people generally stepping over those lines with a hardcore gamer girls getting involved in the combat FPS games and so on, and various adventure and puzzle type games finding a male audience. Pointing to things like Puzzle Quest or Portal and how they appealed to pretty much all demographics is kind of pointless when you consider all the failed attempts to duplicate those successes, following the formula those games set down, there seem to have been plenty of games trying to knock them off one way or another, none of which seem to have become blockbusters.
As a general rule I see no real reason why men and women shouldn't have games and game types directed primarily at them with the occasional crossover successes happening. When it comes to the level development happens at I think in some respects it comes down to how serious both genders are about gaming. Women on average DO tend to be more casual, and the hardcore girl gamers tend to gravitate towards the boy games anyway. The important thing to consider here is the money being spent. Over the years people DID try and develop top dollar adventure games and such (Hidden Object being a descendent of them) and as a general rule they did not succeed or make the big bucks as girls generally do not dish out the same kinds of money on average even when the products are provided. As a result you see games developed for girls largely at the level the majority are willing to pay, while the dudes who will shell out $60 or so regularly and have proven they will pay see more in the way of successes. At the end of the day all the "academic" and political comments in the world mean very little, to change things you need to actually have girls show up in massive numbers and putting the money in more, provide the market with an identifiable revenue stream and it will be tapped, simply telling the market "well it's there, you just can't see it" doesn't work when it comes to investors, especially when people can look back to the days when adventure games were king and how many major crashes they had trying to do exactly this. All legal criticisms aside, back when CD Rom was "new", interactive movies/puzzle games with digitized actors and such were going to be king, and people spent tons of money on these things, even hiring people like Tia Carrera (who was a bigger name then, at the height of her Wayne's World success if I remember) to do games like Daedalus Encounter which became a sort of investment Titanic if I remember. The period's biggest success was probably "The 7th Guest" and it's sequel "The 11th Hour" which were basically dressed up puzzle collections, they did well with women apparently, and remain influential on the genere today, but otherwise investors look back on how many big budget cash dumps they were involved in trying to make AAA adventure games for women and general audiences while shooters and RPGs were kicking their butt at a fraction of the cost. That said every once in a while you see people go back and talk about things like "Ripper" or "Hell: A Cyberpunk Thriller" either mocking them or talking about how surprisingly good they were for their day and how the technologies were interesting (and wondering where it might have gone) but the thing is those games were pretty big failures commercially when they came out. For every "7th Guest" or "Gabriel Knight" there was a seeming truckload of spectacular failures.