Genders in Gaming Target Audiences.

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The argument is over before it even begins if you ask a question like that. Once the human mind has an agenda, its propensity for interpreting things in its favor are almost boundless (otherwise known as confirmation bias.) Therefore the question: "Is this sexist?" does nothing but divide. In the absence of obvious sexism, social justice warriors will just appeal to the most obscure subtextual interpretations and at the end of the day there is no winning with partisan disputes like that. It's entirely self-refuting to argue that sexism (specifically discrimination towards women) appeals to men and that boys are only interested in boy things and girls only interested in girl things. Does anybody here actually pigeonhole themselves like that? Do you watch Schwarzenegger movies while pumping iron, play football, drink beer and think of women as objects? And women, do you bawl over shallow romcoms, spend all of your money on clothes and talk to your friends about dreamy men? No? Then what are "feminine games" or "masculine games" except poor games? These ideas may appeal directly to a sizable minority but it's my experience that real and honest people don't buy into the BS. Not that there is no difference between the sexes, but there is no such thing as a great work of art that only one sex can enjoy. If that's the case, it's shallow end of - it has only surface elements with no depth.

So in my opinion the question should not be "when will the games industry abandon sexism?" but rather "when will the games industry abolish laziness?"* Because let's be fair, a game that has quality writing with three dimensional fleshed out male characters and yet cardboard box female characters is an extreme rarity (I cannot think of any such game.)

*Even this is not a serious question because there will always be an excess of mediocrity as per Sturgeon's Law (if I may reference it informally.)

EDIT: And certainly no case can be made with Amnesia. When they made it they thought of people. Fear is universal, it's something most of us share, and while some people may have their own personal fears (phobias especially) they are so hopelessly obscure that it would be hard to make a horror game out of them that would be scary to a large amount of people. There surely aren't any gender-specific fears though that aren't artificial constructs, and most of these can be extrapolated into a common form which applies to both sexes anyway. Maybe the fear of males to have their genitals brought to harm or something like that? … yeah. Go make a horror game out of that, I'm sure it will be awesome. [/sarcasm]