Eve Charm said:
First there are only a few things that can brandish Triple A or at least Triple A sales. The problem tho, Big name FPS, Lumping all of sports together, and the occasional GTA/Elders Scrolls/Fallout are about the only thing triple A, and as far as their market data go, Are still bought more by men ages 14-35 and if a game is still going to be triple A, you have to target that.
Now that hasn't Stopped the Two big FPS's of last year and Titanfall to add a gender option for your character, Games like Last of us and Bioshock infinite story being more focused and about the Female character rather then the male player character, and your western RPG's not mattering what gender/race you are. Sports are still sports.
Sadly though no one praises any of that and want the all or nothing scenario. Like there should be "Female characters in gaming" reparations because of how dominate male characters were before in the past. I expect people to not be happy until it's GTA 6 with an all female cast which will most likely never happen.
I certainly praised Titanfall, and CoD for having a female option. Still, it's just the option, and I doubt it matter much at all to the game which you pick. I'm not saying the option isn't nice, but saying "mission accomplished, equality's reached" is still an overstatement.
Honestly, neither event was publicized much, either. It wasn't a huge event. Not being something of a splash kinda dulled the impact of these events, so people don't talk about it. It's hard to make a huge deal out of these events due to that, and the fact it's just gender select.
Bioshock never let you play as Elisabeth, so that's not going to help the matter much, IMO. No matter how good of an unplayable sidekick she is, she's still the unplayable sidekick. Moreover, one that needs rescuing.
TLOU added a DLC where you play as Ellie, and you could play as her temporarily in the main game. That's actual progress, but not entirely there. I doubt I'm alone in not wanting to play as the guy for most of the game just so I can play as the girl for a smaller fraction of it.
Pretty sure gender select has been in several sports games, but it's been so rare as I forgot which game. Still, lets not pretend NBA Jam doesn't exist, where there's several playable women who are in no way handicapped due to the fantasy world of NBA Jam. Peach is in mario sports to say the least. Frankly, we just gotta get the fantasy sporting game into more systems than just Nintendo's more often, IMO.
I've not heard much interest in "equality" in the front of fighting games since, IMO, the gender ratio's pretty decent in that single genre, and only that one for some reason.
As towards GTA 6 with an "all female cast" I'm guessing you're either aiming at extremes on purpose, or only looking at playable characters. The latter, if they abandon the multiple points of view mechanic from 5 (it could happen)and have one character, an all female cast would be sought after, yes.
If they don't abandon the multiple points of view mechanic from 5, I'm pretty sure at least one of them being female would be more than enough, provided she gets the same care as the guys get. Sure there'll be some demanding all of them to be women, but I doubt they'll be as many as the people sated for the time being on having even 1 badass female criminal in a GTA game.
Honestly, IMO, R* has twice over showed us a good candidate for a female lead (Unnamed woman from Read Dead Redemption's side quest "Who are you to judge" not to be confused with the promo art woman, and the female driver from GTA5, Taliana Martinez), even in a DLC side story, yet hasn't managed to capitalize on a female playable character beyond GTAO which is kinda halfassed. Sure female characters have their own swag, and customization, but picking up a prostitute shows obviously male interactions, and that dating site that says "free for women" still charges you, so that kinda hurts the GTAO case. Sure they're pretty trivial things, but they're still there.
In any event, gender select is assuredly not the end all, be all answer IMO. It's due to the fact that your choice so rarely makes a dang for the majority of the game. The equality is nice, but it forces a watered down, sterile, unisex personality for the most part. Few companies do the option any justice.
That said, people want a female playable lead with her own dedicated story. I can't imagine you're angry at people for wanting a playable female protagonist with her own dedicated point of view/script/plot. If it's too much to ask, then I dare say the people asking for a playable female lead are not the unreasonable side of the argument.
I'm not going to pretend progress hasn't been made towards a more palatable representation (at least for me) but it's still nowhere near the point I find acceptable, IMO. That point being nowhere near 50/50 gender ratio, mind you, just in a more common showing.
The more common something becomes, the less of a big deal it'll become, IMO. That said, the more common a female lead you play as from start to finish in a non-gender select game gets, the less of a big deal it becomes, and the less likely we'll see threads like this. Once some sort of equilibrium has been reached, and, frankly, only until then, we're going to see threads like this remain fairly common.
It'll stop being a big deal when it stops being a big deal.
Sorry for the rant.