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Off topic: Why does it always have to be a girlfriend? Why not... I don't know, his dad or son or gay partner, or why does it have to be a male main character? Wouldn't it be possible to have a heroic female rescue their boyfriend? It's kinda annoying how every single game with a plot like this involves saving the female, making them the reward or object of the game. Aka removing agency. Harumph.

Because 95% of people playing this kind of game will be male. Because 95% of said males would rather rescue a girlfriend than a gay lover or a janitor.
It sucks if that fantasy isn't one that appeals to you, but you have to remember art is usually made to appeal to the artist themselves, or to what the artist considers their audience. The overwhelming audience for this would probably prefer it just the way he has it.

I'd imagine it's because "I want to create something that I'd enjoy!" is what most artists think, not "how can I appeal to the LGBT/minority/handicapped/otherwise fringe consumer?", and there's absolutely *nothing* wrong with that, in my opinion. Things get made a certain way because they're popular. There's nothing malevolent about it. People just make what they want to play, hear, or see. =)

Of course, there might be some monetary incentive for tapping into the smaller, less catered to markets, but a small 2D maze game is probably best with the simple, old-fashioned story...

My two cents, anyway. My game's going to have a female protagonist, just because I think girls are adorable and dudes are gross. But again, I'm doing it for myself, not for the females out there. If I'm going to spend a million hours making something, I think I deserve to make it the way I'd like to see it made...and I'd argue the same for everyone else!:3

95%? But half of gamers are female. 8l And how do you know how many male gamers are gay?
Furthermore, how do you know whether they'd want to rescue their girlfriend, father or mother? I never said "make it some random person", I asked why can't it be something else than just girlfriend. Why can't the reward be something else than sex for the main character? I'd imagine a lot of people can relate to rescuing their beloved family member than a love interest, as everyone has had a parent figure but not everyone has a significant other.

Of course they think "I want to make something fun!" You don't normally think about social issues until someone tells you, because it's always been like this. Humans are naturally really good at sticking to rules and tradition, but rules and tradition can become corrupted or old-fashioned, they can turn out to be damaging and need revisement. Culture provides these revisions to law and traditions, because it permeates everything. Thus, raising awareness is the best thing that can be done in a forum like this, when we aren't making laws but culture.

I don't believe male gamers are so inhuman that they can't relate to a female main character. Females can find it in themselves to relate to a male character, homosexuals can relate to heteros. Why can't the opposite be true?

Claiming people won't be interested in female heroes is a self-fulfilling prophecy, as that makes people less inclined to make heroic female characters and thus there are less good female characters to choose from. Do you see the cycle?

Notice that I'm not perfect myself. All these years I've hated my own gender in games, because they have always been portrayed in a way that I can't relate to. I still don't think to make female characters.
However, having become aware of these issues, it's actually making me -want- to do a female-main char game just to try and see if it can be done well.

I can't even imagine how gaming would look like outside of this situation, but I damn well want to find out.

edit: Also, I think this discussion needs to be branched into its own topic. It's too big and will derail the topic at hand.

• I'm making the game for the company I work for as a tie-in with our website's mascot, so the main character is non-negotiable.
• None of my opinion on hetero- vs homosexual relationships matters since I'm making it for a work project. My boss is conservative. I consider myself lucky just to be able to get paid to draw pixel art and sling code, and the LGBT battle just isn't worth it in this scenario.
• I'm gay, and I've always complained about Harvest Moon-type games only portraying hetero relationships.
• Rescuing a female companion just seemed like a better objective than "collect all the coins in the maze because I said so."

• I've tried to keep it to as few colors as possible, but in a few cases I used my pencil tool at half opacity.
• The coins and character are currently scaled down from vector, but I'll be redoing them as pixel art later.
• The game generates maze levels randomly, and the two full-square tiles are randomly placed.
• I'm open to adding additional tiles to each of the sets for a better end result.

• No more lame tool-assisted brushing.
• Character redrawn as sprite.
• Vastly redone grass/hedge tiles after re-reading this article series.