[quote=Sawovsky]Overwhelming majority of gamers are male and only 18% played as female Shepard in Mass Effect 3, which was the most mainstream marketed game ever. Can't they take a hint from raw data already?
Take a hint from the raw data? You already mentioned Tomb Raider, while you may not play it, it is one of the most popular franchise's ever, so from that "raw data" forced female characters don't sound terrible.
Also 18% is not insignificant, if those 18% of gamers decided not to play the game because they had to be male that would be a lot of sales losses. And Mass Effect is very mainstream and has a different target audience. Perhaps an fantasy RPG would be a better comparison. 54% of hardcore Diablo III players chose a female character (
source) so going by "raw data" it would be ridiculous to not allow them.
I know your argument is not to force them rather than disallow them completely but your data argument is flawed. And when you've two characters I don't think it's that bad, you can still focus on the male one.
