"More people played as the male version of X character, so that means people prefer to play as a man" is a flawed statement and represents a huge misunderstanding of markets and marketing psychology. (1/?)

Presenting a male/female binary to a largely binary-ID'd market creates a psychological bias that you "should" choose your own gender. Consider how many products are needlessly gendered and must create alternate gendered options in order to sell the same stuff to different ppl.

The same applies in games. Our biases mean that men are more likely to choose the male character and women the female character because the action of presenting the choice actually creates an subconscious assumption that that is the "right" thing to do.

This is easily misinterpreted as "preference" when it's actually the result of social conditioning. I don't "prefer" to go to the women's room, nor do I truly "prefer" the pink razor. I have been conditioned to assume that this is "for me" and so I take it.

Let's also add systemic biases around gender to that, and understand that for a male player, society says "It is undesirable to be a woman, you do not want to be this", whereas non-male gamers playing as men are faced with no such barrier.

So, take Horizon: Zero Dawn, which I see used a lot as an example of "See? Female protagonists sell". And it is! But chances are, if a binary gender option was offered, a majority male market would skew to a male character and we'd be having the same discussion.

Now, sticking with the Horizon example, if the people making the flawed argument were right, then the player base of Horizon should skew majority female, right? Spoiler: it doesn't.

What DOES happen, though, is that non-male players become more likely to take interest-- including those who would ordinarily dismiss the genre of the game as "not for them". So now they join the market, and as newcomers are actually more likely to evangelize the game.

We can actually see this with Assassin's Creed Odyssey. Yes, Alexios (male) was played more than Kassandra (female) IN THE GAME, but even a quick Google reveals that Kassandra is significantly more popular in terms of the discussion surrounding the game.

That cultural, critical and conversational value is HUGE, and is what a lot of folks ignore in the development process- mostly out of fear and old ideas. They look at game data and hugely biased market data, draw the wrong conclusions, and then spend millions on a flimsy premise.

When the game then sells and a majority male audience chooses the male character, they take that as proof of the NEED for a male lead to sell the game. And that cultural/critical/conversational stuff is dismissed as having no monetary value, when it's actually hugely influential.

The amount of male gamers who get loud about how they "hate playing as a female!!" and then actually follow through for those reasons is surprisingly small. Often, a lack of perceived interest just reflects the fact we classically spend less marketing female-led products.

Ultimately, the discussion we SHOULD be having is about who is being allowed to make these decisions, and how many stories and characters are written authentically by people who share those identities and perspectives. Enough armchair market analysis. Go deeper.

(Also, I have a degree in this.)