[QUOTE=cim]Oh come on, what does the race matter? I am personally tired of all the retarded political correctness when every movie/game has to have black guy, asian girl, and someone whose sexuality is ambigously defined. [/quote]
What you're really saying is, "Why should I care if anybody who is black, Oriental, female, etc, doesn't get good representation in a game? I'm part of the majority of people whom the game was designed for, and I couldn't care less." Problem is, most of these "other" people enjoy playing games, too. And the fact that you don't care about their opinions can hardly be countered by claims on your part of "political correctness."
Do you seriosly think that availability of female main char was intended for females? The idea strikes me as rather humorous. No offense meant to all the feminine gamers out there but gamers are predominantly male.
The fact that some companies add black, Oriental, and female avatars and party NPCs shows that smarter companies are aware of all the revenue lost when they ignore these large groups. In fact, studies done with the last three years show that females play games nearly as much now as males, across all genres.
Even pvponline made a joke about most "female" roleplayers being male in rl.
Ah, Folk wisdom, like the copper bracelets that will cure cancer.
True, there are some male RPGers who play female characters, and there are also some female RPGers who play male characters. I worked for four years in a popular MMORPG. The figures we had were identical to those I mentioned, above. Roughly 55% of our players were male, and roughly 45% were female. Most played their own sex in a game, and some didn't.
Bioware, Lucasarts and Obsidian are savvy enough to release the added value of selling a game that allows women to find an avatar they can relate to. They wouldn't put the code in if they didn't think it important to make more money--you can count on that.
