That's the thing, artists indeed ARE restricted in what they should portray – girls who are "10s", sexually very appealing. You don't see many obese female protagonists or skinny male heroes, so there's not much variety. Few games still retain the concept of "Everyman" in portraying their main character. An everyman is supposed to be someone with whom the readers/audience can identify. Since most people are average, heroes should be average as well. Besides, the dramatic potential is much more pronounced when we have an ordinary individual thrust into extraordinary circumstances than when there's a superman in larger-than-life situations.

In LotR, people find it much easier to identify with Frodo and Sam than with the supremely wise and powerful Gandalf.

Therefore, if artists could choose to portray characters as they see fit without regard to current aesthetic standards, we'd have much more variety in video games, and perhaps they wouldn't be labeled as "sexist" then.
I can't believe I made that mistake after so much reading on the topic. :p

Every game? When I think of "women in games", usually Mirror's Edge is the first game to pop into my mind. Is that a sexist game?

When I think of "scantily clad big-breasted women", I can usually think of only Duke Nukem Forever, which is supposed to be some kind of parody I guess.

Maybe I am playing wrong games, but I don't see big-breasted pr0n stars in my games for some reason. Even GTA San Andreas had a sister who seemed to hold her own quite well, or one girlfriend which dressed like a tomboy and whose favorite past time was shooting at rival gangs from the speeding car.

Or playing Spec Ops: The Line... is it sexist? The heck I know. I think the only female characters in that game were some scarfed arabic women running for cover from a firefight. Seemed pretty realistic to me, I didn't even see their nipples. Or was Spec Ops sexist because there were no female spec ops rangers in your team?

From my point of view, the people who are crying about sexism in games are overblowing the whole thing. But as said, it could well be I am playing the "wrong" games, and that's why I don't see the constant sexism and big breasts in every game. I must admit I haven't played e.g. Wartune, or some other Russian MMOs.

You know what? Ask an artist. Better yet - ask him to show you a picture of his. What are the chances of it being pretty? I guess that depends on the artist...
Sure - aesthetic value doesn't always lie in beauty, we have moved beyond that, but it's still a fairly straightforward quality to grasp. Not dissing Duchamps and Picassos here...

Good grief, the nerve people have. They should be average and modest, shouldn't they?
No, screw that. I like pretty things, I like pretty people, I like pretty games, I like pretty words. Our civilization conflated Truth, Good, and Beauty... Not only that - they basically became aspects of the perfect being known as God.

Thank Logos. If I wanted to see ugly, obese women, I'd move to America.
Also - go look up Helga from Loadout if you dare.

That's THE POINT. I don't WANT to play an "everyman".

Whenever introduced, they also tend to be the most hated characters, because they're usually clueless, helpless idiots.

Fuck average people... but that's somewhat beside the point, I simply feel antagonistic enough to mention this.
Screw the average. Average people suck. They're not original, they're not interesting, they're not remarkable. They're AVERAGE.
They also mostly exist as a theoretical construct of statistically-oriented minds. There is no "average person", there are only individuals that roughly fit into certain categories.

As respectful as I love to be, I simply cannot glance over this egregious contradiction and politely argue against points raised.
THIS MAKES NO SENSE.
"Heroes" are not "average". Heroes are goddamn HEROES. There is something special and unique that sets them apart from the common clay. They can be charismatic, inhuman, endowed with magical powers, chosen by a prophecy... they are NOT average.
You can have an "average" protagonist in a story. This goes hand-in-hand with the literary styles of "realism" and "naturalism" that have produced some of the most revolting novels known to man.

You can have a character that starts out as seemingly average, only to learn that it is not so. You can hardly have a character that starts out as average, is average, and doesn't really evolve beyond that. That's not a "hero" story. A hero has a path to follow, as pretty decently outlined in literature. You don't have to follow "The Hero with a Thousand Faces" to a t, but heroes are, by definition, special. If they weren't special, THEY WOULD BE CALLED SOMETHING ELSE.

As reasonable as this seems - being an outlier, a freak with access to immense power, is dramatic enough in its own right, great peril only intensifies this. When you're helpless, there isn't really much "responsibility" to come with "great power", since you don't have that in the first place. Options begat choices.
Let's leave that, however, in peace. There is a much viler thing that your reasoning seems to rely on. Namely - what the hell do you mean by "ordinary" and "superman"? What was the entire basis of this discussion?
Oh, that's right - looks. Since they're so pivotal, since they define what sort of person you are. Yeah - screw personality, intelligence, views, wit, actions, history, social relations, and motivations - let's focus on how a person looks and establish whether that's kosher according to some standards of modesty (since the avoidance of extremes is exactly that - "modesty"). Sure, that's a civilized and refined way of judging a character.

Too goddamn bad I'm not a person, since I'm the sort of guy who has the easiest of times identifying with demigods and heroes, characters like Obi-Wan.
That's also superficial - you're missing the big picture here. Why are people watching these movies in the first place? Why do people play games?
Isn't it BECAUSE they yearn something different, an experience detached from their own? Don't they want to see an epic journey, amazing circumstances, extraordinary characters?
Do grandmas who watch soap operas do so because of old, unattractive people that they can relate to? Do they want to listen to stories of failing health and impending death?

This is even more jarring, since I've been watching quite a bit of Heroes of the Storm recently. It's a mashup of all the absurdly powerful characters from all Blizzard universes duking it out in a nonsensical pocket-dimension. It's AWESOME. It has nothing to do with realism whatsoever - it's pure fiction. That's the appeal.
Why are there elves and dwarves in games? Hell - why are they PLAYABLE at times? Why do women play men and men play women?
Art transports us into another dimension, into a parallel world of fiction where things operate differently, where we are someone else, where we don't know what comes next... These worlds can be so unlike our own, and yet we can travel there and make ourselves at home. Why? Because we have imagination, and becoming someone else is part of this lovely make-believe process that can engross us thoroughly.

I can make claims about "people" just as easily as you. Here you go:
People WANT to play in worlds different from our own. People WANT to embody characters they WANT to embody... NOT necessarily ones similar to the ones they themselves ARE. Not everyone WANTS to be the person one IS. Sometimes this can be done out of pure curiosity and will to explore, other times it's a meaningless choice that is secondary to, say, game mechanics (let's play character X, he's got a lot of hitpoints). It can be a multitude of reasons, but when you bring a Japanese guy into Italy, you don't usually feed him sushi. He can have better at home.

Ah, yes, because we all know that artists, of all people, are the least creative and freeminded. If only they could find it withing themselves to create what they truly want...
Wait, scratch that, maybe they don't even WANT it, but should do it ANYWAY, since this is better than the current aesthetic standards.
Wait a minute - who gets to decide what these standards are? Is it what appeals to the majority? Oh, no, that can't be, since your original point was, I think, that people dislike the current art paradigm in fiction because they can't identify with outlandishly foreign characters... Do the artists decide? Are they forced by some mythical "Man" who chains them their drawing desks and tells them pixel-by-pixel what to create? Is it the mental climate of our world?
Are there really so few free minds that would break through this barrier to see the light? As much as intellectually unfulfilling "argumentum ad capitalism" is - why on earth ARE things the way they are, if they do NOT appeal to the majority?
In conclusion - your post is at least partially absurd.

I have an alternative solution to this conundrum: I propose that we label people who utilize the term "sexist" is such a fashion "fucking idiots" and instruct them to proceed to end their lives by letting themselves be enveloped by various exothermic reactions.

Vestin, I won't slice up your post because I'm not into proving you wrong one sentence at a time. Instead, I'll tell you how I see the situation. You got one thing right, I can't speak for everyone. I have my own tastes, you have yours, so we can only argue whose group is the bigger/louder one, because that group will dictate the trends in gaming.

I don't want to play as a supernaturally enhanced person or some dude wielding a "Holy Flamin' Frost-Brand Gronk-Slayin' Vorpal Hammer o' Woundin' an' Returnin' an' Shootin'-Lightnin'-Out-Yer-Bum" because that does nothing for me. I play such games purely on the superficial level, as a skill challenge, but I'm too far removed from any of their characters to care about them. Playing as an Average Joe provides a much more fulfilling experience. I never cared for superhero comics. What's the excitement in them if the hero is already stronger than most of his foes right from the start? Where's the suspense in that? Good literature has always been about the human condition. To quote Wikipedia, it includes concerns such as the meaning of life, the search for gratification, the sense of curiosity, the inevitability of isolation, or awareness regarding the inescapability of death. You may argue that choosing between the Two-Handed Sword of Doom and Warhammer of Utter Destruction comes close the "inescapability of death" or "search for gratification" parts, but I want something deeper. Many works of superhero fiction actually do a good job at dealing with the human condition, if you only ignore the superpower nonsense.

I'm the guy that likes fetch quests, trivial dialogue and other mundane tasks in RPGs, and grows bored of any game when it evolves to slaying dragons and saving the Multiverse. And the guy who had a blast going shopping with Octodad, but yawned after discovering that the main quest in Arcanum revolved around saving the world. Also the guy who enjoyed shooting rats with crappy weapons while scrounging for bottlecaps in Fallout, but got a bit disappointed after acquiring the plasma rifle and power armor. Finally, I'm the guy who found the weird chemistry between Thora Birch's and Steve Buscemi's characters in Ghost World much more intriguing than that Biowarean dreck that passes for romance. And let's not delude ourselves; there aren't many romances in video games that deviate from the following formula: "(after some initial antagonism) the hunk of a guy gets the female knockout character." The part between the brackets is optional.

So you probably can't understand where I'm coming from and why I'm against super powerful and blindingly beautiful characters. It's not about the fantasy and otherwordly settings. It's about the player-centric game philosophy. Everything is about the player – you're the Chosen One, you're the one with a beneficial mutation that gives you superhuman agility and strength, you're the ONLY one we're counting on to defeat the Big Bad Boss... And you as a character get the very best abilities and resources. I might have enjoyed that in my younger years as a gamer, but now it's become old. As far as what other people prefer, even BBC.co.uk ran an article on how Papers, Please became immensely popular despite its devastatingly mind-numbing core gameplay. I think it's quite telling; there are many who crave something different.

This isn't about sexism. I don't even care about that, other than that it's hurting the general perception of the electronic entertainment industry. It's the predictability of the computer game tropes that I'm more concerned about. Always the same formula. At least we have indie games... Yeah, give me an obese Helga anytime. At least I'll know that her designers used their brains when creating her instead of copying trends. Maybe her character is better written considering there's no eye candy to distract us from poorly chosen cliches.

EDIT: Ah, I've found the name for what I hate: Mary Sue! And her male counterpart. A person who can do anything and be on top of every situation, regardless of the odds. No wonder we all hated Wesley Crusher.

Ever been to a strip club? ; )

It's easy on a pole/stage, but grabbing a stone ledge and pulling herself up would cause her a mighty scrape wound. :)

Not if you are wearing the proper gear. A good tank top or sports bra can do wonders.

Technically speaking, the mechanical way to do this movement is to first utilize your back and then your chest, so when you pull up, you pull up and away from the ledge until your arms cross your nipples level - then you pull your chest in towards the ledge and push up. So even a chick with lara's boobs can do it and keep em safe :P

Is Metroid: Other: M in there?

That's probably the thing - I've always been a pariah IRL, so to me the idea of being fundamentally different from others doesn't come across as weird at all.
I also have a nearly invincible suspension of disbelief. For the purpose of a given work I can come to accept and understand pretty much anything. As long as a certain degree of consistency is present - things are peachy. I guess this comes with the territory, as otherwise I'd probably never have graduated ;P.

I have enough of that in my field of study. I'm not saying I don't welcome more, but I enjoy... variety.
I also enjoy works on inhuman condition. Lovecraft's works are, in a way, from both worlds ;).

I like pretty much everything.
Except Syberia; that game sucks.

Now that I think about it - I don't want my games to be like real life... I'd much rather real life be like my games - epic.
People are a lot more likely to call me delusional than boring...

I can image thinking this way, however eldritch it may not be to me as a person. There is absolutely nothing wrong with your stance and, as I've said, I enjoy pretty much everything, so in most cases I will probably be entertatained by same games as you... but also others. My taste is ecclectic, perhaps even unrefined, but I'm fine with this.

That's very similar to my experience of the world around me and my place in it ;P.
No, seriously, in some circumstances it felt pretty damn close to this. Might have had something to do with the people around me at the time, but still...

In that case - we're not really in disagreement, we merely enjoy slightly different things at times. I have not problem with that.
For all I know, I might be arguing against a strawman, but it is one worth arguing against.

As in almost all areas of life - it's REALLY difficult to come up with something original that WILL WORK. Things are done a certain way for a reason, and - as I have learnt many a time - if doing things differently seems obvious and everyone around is not doing so in spite of that... it probably does NOT work.

Having read the article the OP referred to with some reflection, I am sorry to say I rather feel it is more of a corporate statement actually than a provoking statement.

Fine that is was said, obviously, as it should, but I got a feeling there was as much conviction there as might go with a sermon of a beady-eyed bread-priest.

I should rather like to see the Top Organisational Chart behind the spokesperson, and I am wondering if we would see much diversity there at all??

I know what I like, but never has this made me wish that any lad or a lass; or a hetero or a gay; or any particularly complexion'd fellow gamer of mine should have nothing less than the enjoyment I find in great gaming and deep immersion. Why the contention, really?

Edit: grammar.

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the pinnacle of video game evolution:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=hHJotdFmcZY

he pressed Q :-(

Won't somebody please think of the pixels!?

Meanwhile, in Africa...