Since then, Sarkeesian and her team have done the same analysis every year and -- with the exception of 2016 -- games with exclusively female protagonists have only ever accounted for 7% to 9% of announcements.
In 2016 -- "a very dark moment for the industry" -- there were
only two female-led games: Horizon and ReCore, again. E3 2016 had no new female protagonists.
I think a potential uncomfortable truth for Anita is that the choices of those within the industry are vindicated by the success of said industry.
If you want to take things from the crash of 1983 to the present day, the videogame industry has grown at an insane rate over those 36 years.
PS sold 102 million. PS2 sold 155 million. Xbox 360 and PS3 sold 80+ million each. This was at arguably the peak "games are for dudes" years,
Even on the indie scene you could take, for example, Super Meat Boy and say "why wasn't it Super Meat Girl".
The thing is that it's irrelevant because they made Super Meat Boy and that's what sold a ton of copies. Their decision is vindicated.
Same with older games like Mario. Sure, the "damsel in distress" trope is tired and lazy but the games sold loads of copies and it is one of the most beloved series of games ever.
Uncharted. Metal Gear. God of War. All design choices justified by the amount of money they made, that was then invested into future games.
The only real argument I can see is that just because they could make money selling games to dudes doesn't mean that they should have.
It's a moral argument though. One that does not take note of history.
Back when I was just getting into gaming, if these developers were not actively appealing to me then they wouldn't be selling any games because, for the most part, girls weren't interested.
I suspect this is a similar problem today though maybe not quite so prominent as it was then. You want to sell a ton of copies of your game? Better make sure you understand the demographics you are aiming to sell to.
For established businesses it will always be a gamble.
If you change X to target a wider audience then you'd better hope that the number of customers you gain, Y, is greater than the number you lose, Z.
I think from the "video game activist" perspective the developers shouldn't care about that. They should be thinking "how can our game be a force for good in the world and help usher in an age of gender equality" instead of "let's make an awesome game that will sell loads".
Would the next Zelda game benefit from doing away with Link and just having Zelda as our strong feminist protagonist? Maybe. That's one hell of a risk though.
I feel like the only way Anita could get what she wants is if suddenly games started losing popularity specifically because there weren't enough female character.
So Breath of the Wild 2 comes out and it sells poorly and Nintendo looks into why and discovers people aren't buying it because they want Link to be a chick and be in a queer relationship with a non-binary Zelda. Probably then they would make the change.
New IPs like Horizon are always a risk but it did spectacularly well. So, just like before, the design choice was vindicated.
I just don't see a winning move for the industry at large here. The big games, the really big games, are only that way because they "connect" with their audience.
To just start messing around with that on the say so of political activists does not seem like a smart move.