Genders in Gaming Target Audiences.

[Acies]

Sex sells, and they abuse that all the time.

No, but objectification does. If sex sold, you'd see more erotic content. Not to mention male characters being subjected to the same ridiculous tropes the female ones are.

Also, women and girls make up about 47% of the gaming market these days, so gaming companies need to re-think the stereotypes and tropes they use (although personally, they could have done it looong ago and NOT depended on such a crutch).

Honestly, I might look when I see a nearly nude women on a game cover, but it's pretty much immediately followed by an eye roll.

I might be completely off, but you seem to be implying that 'sex sells' is a literal referral or that it requires full-on nudes for the term to be applicable. Altough this just becomes a discussion on semantics, reading from the wikipedia article the expression 'sex sells' encompasses anything which makes the target market think of sex, be it larger than average breasts, skimpy clothes on a female body or 'a young-innocent-cute female character'.

I was surprised to learn that women represented almost half of the market. I tried to find the study in order to see what kind of games they measured - if games such as 'farmville' or other browsing games are included. Is the data based on purchases or surveys? I might have a skewed vision of the percent of females playing games, because I play the exceptions/games where there is a majority of men (Diablo 3, Counterstrike global offensive, heroes of newerth, amnesia/this forum). It might also be the fact that women play amnesia, but don't register themselves on this forum in the same extent as men.

The study:
http://www.theesa.com/facts/pdfs/esa_ef_2012.pdf

In the end I didn't become much wiser by reading the study. I'm still unsure of how they collected data or if internet games (on facebook for example) are included in the study. If, for example, the sale of games are used in measuring data - the whole demograph of boys under 18 playing COD/shooters are being represented by their mothers as they buy the games for them.

Well, on-topic: I believe a lot of these issues also stem from the fact that the gaming industry (the companies) is heavily represented by males. Even at a company aware of the gender issues in games, a majority of the workforce is male and their ultimate goal is to create something which sells/is fun - and they will do so from a 'male perspective'. I'm not saying such a company would create in-game women with opulent breasts or a male main character. There will be 'male undertones' to the other parts of the game though; be it game-mechanics, stylistic choices or pacing. A game might be 'female-friendly' on paper, but not so much while in-game - due to what I previously mentioned.

Take the above post as an example for pointing out these undertones:

There's a lot of marketing and critical 'praise' thrown upon those two games for their supposedly "progressive" characters. While I do see value in both stories (Lara's for providing a story about a woman overcoming adversity, and Elizabeth for a sheltered girl being exploited by paternal figures), there's still a lot of disturbing elements in their characterizations that I'm sure would not be thrown upon male characters.

And sure, I believe that males may very well create entertainment which may or may not take the gender-question into consideration and still provide great joy for either gender. I do believe however that there's a unmet need for games created by females, directed at females with female undertones and choices permeating the game. What I'm trying to say is that both genders can enjoy games with either 'undertone', but currently there are none with female undertones which makes the market one-sided in the choices available.