This has been the case for years now, but it still boggles my mind. Gaming is an overwhelmingly male hobby. 90% of the people playing enthusiast level video games are male. Yet the clear majority of protagonists in these products are female.
New resident evil? Female protagonist.
New Ghost of Tsushima? Female protagonist.
New Hollow Knight? Female protagonist.
New Silent Hill? Female protagonist.
New World of Warcraft expansion? Female protagonist.
And that’s just the biggest trailers of the night. Gay ass indie is almost entirely female (or queer coded) characters.
Is there another industry that hates its own core customer base this much?
My experience while hardcore raiding in WoW 15 years ago, across multiple servers and large guilds:
90%+ of players chose characters matching their gender
literally zero women played as male characters
every female character who refused to use a mic ended up being a dude pretending to be a girl
on the contrary, women were eager to confirm their gender because simps immediately helped them grind gear and consumables
dudes who openly played female characters and were not obvious proto-trannies were exceedingly rare and usually very open about manipulating people into giving them free shit
every female in every guild ended up forming intimate online relationships with multiple male guild members, almost always class leads or officers who could advance you (or capable simps who would provide in-game resources)
almost every female player was already in a real-life relationship when she began messing around with dudes in our guild, and more than one of them had real life husbands in the same guild lol
multiple dudes got absolutely crushed when they attempted to move their online relationships into the real world because the girls either lied extensively about their situations or lost all interest in the men when they retired from the game (situational alpha syndrome)
Women in raiding guilds were easily the worst part of my WoW experience. They caused nonstop drama while constantly underperforming.
They were there for the drama and attention, not the game.
In PWI, I played a female character... Because Venomancers were a female-only class. And since they were kinda OP, Veno-man-cers were pretty common. But gender-exclusive classes is pretty rare in even the old MMO days.
This is such a radically different experience to what I had back when I ran with a World vs World guild in Guild Wars 2. I don't recall any of our women causing drama. The closest we got was one grandma leaving her mic on when she went to the bathroom and we all heard her flush the toilet and teased her about it all night.
My main character was a female belf death knight around the same time. The only time I got directly mistaken for a girl (by someone I knew for more than a day) by a desperate dude, I just said "wtf, I'm a guy". I don't think guys choosing female avatars with at least one character was rare, because most functioning people don't overly project and seek representation, relatibility or whatever they call it, from the media they consume. Guys pretending to be girls, however, were rare and notable.
In general tho, I always found it off putting when people are too eager to immerse into an online setting, distinct from deliberately role-playing into fictional settings. Not that far removed psychologically from those who attach too much identity into their professional sportsball team, with a low situational awareness and ability to compartmentalize.