While I do have to admit that I find this whole idea very sexist and offensive to women I have to also admit that there is a bit of truth in it too.
A bit.
You see I have noticed a common trend that when we imagine an action hero in a game, it is almost always male and when we do add a female to the mix we often do a complete swap from big and muscular to sleek and sexy and there's something very wrong about someone who is sleek and sexy going into a battlefield and it's hard to take her seriously as a character.
I have more respect for people who go the extra mile to make female characters look 'real' instead of ideal fantasies of female characters but at the same time part of the problem was never the 'looks' in the first place. Rather I think it was the way they get characterized or to be more precise how gamers respond to how they get characterized.
Yahtzee pointed it out already in his article 'on female protagonists' that often when we try to make a toughened female character the only way we know how to do that is make her really, really unpleasant. However recently I've given a bit of thought to this and while I admit I find myself agreeing with a lot of Yahtzee's points there is one other point that I and my sister actually discussed a bit recently.
Males seem to have difficulty accepting female characters in roles that are usually reserved for men. Let me try and explain...
To me personally one of the best female characters in gaming is Ashley Williams from Mass Effect, but I would have no difficulty finding people who disagree with me. Now subtracting all the ideas of 'racism' and 'religious fanaticism' (both complaints I totally think are full of shit I might add) and you'll find that a lot of people find her tough girl demeanor to be annoying.
But here's the funny thing, Ashley is in almost every sense of the word, a direct clone of the Ash J. Williams from the Evil Dead Trilogy.
Both are skilled in combat, both spout out macho one liners, both have an angry and aggressive attitude and a cynical personality and both can show that they actually can be sensitive under all that.
From where I stand if Ashley from Mass Effect is annoying then so too should Ash J. Williams be considered... but he isn't. He is worshiped for a lot of the things that Ashley of Mass Effect is hated for.
Ash does it and he's a badass, Ashley does it and she's a *****. I never got that.
That said I acknowledge that Army of Darkness was much campier than Mass Effect was so that could be considered the reason though I still think I have at least a bit of a valid point here.
Then I see who the most popular female character is in Mass Effect and it is Tali who is admittedly a very charming sweet sort of person but of whom ultimately only comes across as strong in a few distinct scenes and then spends the rest of her time being almost a lapdog to Commander Shepard (if romanced) and just sort of becomes a damsel in distress figure, which kind of annoyed me a bit.
But Tali's role was undeniably a 'female-centric' role, hence why people might have had more ease accepting her as the lead lady of the franchise and enjoyed condemning Ashley in the process to having to sit on the sidelines.
(I mean no offense to any Tali fans out there... please don't burn me)
This role demand in female characters in side roles might also explain why main female protagonists are also judged as 'bitchy'.
I actually think, if we look back, a lot of the hated 'bitches' of gaming would have been much more popular if they had been male. Let me give an example here, Rubi in Wet is a selfish, greedy, violent, nasty sociopath who laughs at the horror she inflicts on the world and ridicules it in the process.
And yet, so does the male protagonist in Saint's Row 2 and if you play as him, typically he's quite popular and considered awesome. In fact a lot of the great male 'badass' characters have had pallet swaps into the realm of the female perspective and a lot of the time when facing the exact same character but with different genders it tends to get bad press. When a man is badass and tough and doesn't show emotion we love him, if a woman does it, especially without being in a bikini the whole time, we call her a *****.
This also works in reverse, a lot of the male characters who are shown to be soft, flawed and kind and open with their emotions are often instantly hated by gamers and referred to as 'fags'.
(see: Kaidan Alenko)
It just seems like a lot of gaming culture is transfixed on set gender roles and often we only realize how irritating and stupid the 'toughened emotionless hero' really is when we see it played out in the opposite gender and out of its usual comfort zone.
I mean yes, you can argue the case for characters like Lara Croft and Samus Aran but remember that Lara has been a sex symbol essentially throughout her career and that Samus spends most of her time without a voice, trapped in a suit or armor that makes her not only not resemble a woman but also barely resemble a human being and once she gets out of that suit... we all know what she looks like then and it's a nerd's wet dream.
Even characters like Alyx Vance have the problem of being too emotionally likable and the uneasy feeling that we are idealizing the 'perfect female protagonist' to just be surrogate girlfriend figure, but still at least with Alyx they still give her a real personality and purpose even if she still undeniably conforms to a female stereotype.
That said, while I can sort of understand the reasoning why female characters might not be as readily accepted as males in the traditional action game setting but that's still no excuse not to try. Maybe if there are some more games with great intense game play that use an ordinary female character who is strong but flawed and under her tough attitude lies a soft spot that we learn about and grow to like as the story progresses similar to the typical roles of males.
Or better yet just abolish the idea of male and female role types in games altogether and just come up with the idea of multiple protagonists that can be tough or sensitive regardless of gender.
That said, to suggest that female leads can't sell games is just plain stupid. Even the big breasted ones that I don't approve of are evidence that girls sell games, we just need to know how to better characterize female characters.