Why thank you. I will take care it will not smolder into anything resembling genitalia

This guy sums up my thoughts on the subject quite well.

If that day pops up I`ll let you know, m8. A beer would be nice after dealing with some of these people. Serously I feel like the world has turned crazy over the last few years.

In fact I`ll get myself a couple of beers now!

Yes, that can be an issue (I haven't encountered a blatant example of this, but what I played of Arcanum felt like this.)

On the other hand, Ultima 6 actually has appropriate dialog if you make your main character female, which is really nice. (Of course, with Ultima 8 the developers decided to drop the female character choice entirely from the game; that is the main reason I haven't tried Ultima 8 myself.)

Dragon Quest 3's GBC remake (and I am guessing this happened in the SFC version as well) also included extra dialog for female characters as well. When you become the king of a certain castle, there's a remark that the castle hasn't had a female king before (IIRC). After defeating Baramos, if you go to the all-female pirate town, there's a special celebration you can be included in. While not major, these are nice touches.

Too bad Dragon Quest 4, even in its remakes, didn't do anything like this for its all female town. In fact, even if you enter that town with a female hero and the three female companions, the townspeople still don't say anything different. (Missed opportunity here!) (Also, it's a shame that they got rid of the option in DQ5 and didn't bring it bat until DQ9, and I hear DQ11 only lets you play a male character.)

All that's missing is chocolate and graham crackers. I nominate Smores be renamed "Diversitreats".
Sonofa...

No, and I haven't said otherwise.

I can't help but feel though that you're fishing for simple "points" with which to "defeat" nuanced arguments on this issue. This is not a black and white issue (oh, wait...). A single game not including groups isn't inherently discriminatory, but that doesn't mean that it can't be, NOR does it mean that there can't be a pattern across a large field. If an industry has a million members and all of them are only of a single demographic, it is SUGGESTIVE that discrimination, intentional or not, MAY be a factor somewhere along the line.

IOW, a single game with only whites isn't racist. A million games of only whites suggests a problem of racism somewhere. It isn't any individual game that's the issue, it's the pattern. And that pattern becomes more concerning, the more we see other examples of discrimination in other areas of society.

EDIT

Just be careful.

IIRC, Kult aka Heretic Kingdoms: The Inquisition does that.

Not trying to make any point here, I just couldn't resist the challenge of finding such a game for you. ;)

Tbh, I find this issue even weirder. So if you choose that your character should be a "he" and you select a portrait of a male looking dude, you still feel ambiguous about his sex/gender because you're missing the "male" stamp? Why? Are you afraid the character you created yourself is secretly someone else than what you imagine him to be?

I've been watching Enter Elysium's lets plays, and one mechwarrior's voice couldn't sound more of the "grizzled cigar chomping war vet" type if it tried. Give it a rest. There's no agenda here.

You can call a woman 'he', that doesn't make her male. A woman could look like a male, you could call her 'he', but if she has the physical characterstics of a woman, she's technically and biologically a woman. The pronoun used to describe someone is based on their gender, not the other way around. There's an agenda behind their use of pronoun instead of gender, an attempt to make genders malleable somehow, as if one could change their physical characteristics and reality at will. And they're trying to force that idea on to others by not giving you a choice of gender.

Sorry, but I still don't see the problem with this. If you decide your "he" is biologically a male like you imagine him to be, why do you need the game to spell that out for you?

Well, in a videogame during character creation you can. ;)

That's a different story. So the actual problem is not a lack of choice in the game but that you don't agree with what you assume is the devs' agenda behind this idea. You're free to not support ideas that you don't believe in by voting with your wallet. But I believe this to be a very personal issue, not something that ruins the game for the average player.

Ok, if you state it like this that - MAY be a factor - I agree that it's reasonable. I just thought that you were one of those people who see discrimination as a reason for EVERY statistical bias and consider EVERY single "provileged" person to participate in that bias elimination. I'm glad that I mistaken.

King's Bounty Crossworlds
Tangledeep

Where did you get the idea that I am indifferent about racism and/or sexism?

Because I do not subscribe to an overreaching agenda which results in the demonization of another part of population?

I am so happy that you are able to determine somebody's personality and worldview through projection. /s

Of course it does not.

These are just characteristics that can be used to build the story, but are hardly required for it. As long as the presentation is internally consistent, anyway.

Demanding any kind of special addition based on specific characteristic is not how you create a good story if it does not purposefully tie into anything else in it.

I find it silly that people would put value on entertainment experience based on the gender of character presented.

Either it's a fun experience, or it's not. Aside from some serious neurosis, I really don't understand the purpose of such differentiation.

It's like somebody claiming that Ms Pacman is an inferior experience because at the time it came out there was still a lingering societal apprehension toward independent women.

It doesn't help that the "Female Protagonist" tag is being used in a powerful campaign of divisiveness (but I guess that's where the money is).