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.