| Jaicee said: Horizon's commercial success is important for more reasons than just petty fan arguments about which console is best. It is very rare for female-centric video games to obtain commercial success, and less common still for ones that treat their female protagonists with actual respect to sell in the millions. The result of Horizon's success as a new IP will likely be the realization on the part of many other developers that there's a real market for games about women and the according creation of more as a result. (Sony does have some bragging rights in that connection at this particular moment though.) |
I think you're putting too much weight in Horizon's success. There's never been much doubt that a female focused AAA title can be successful, just if they'd be as successful as if the same title had a male protagonist instead. Horizon obviously can't answer that question.
Horizon might help strengthen confidence in the idea, but for the most part i'd credit the gradual shift as being down to publishers slowly realising that male gamers (who currently still make up the majority of the AAA market) really just don't care. In-fact if you give them a well written female character, such as Ellie in TLOU, they'll actively be calling for them to be the protagonist in the sequel (and we now know she will be).
Personally, i think the biggest hurdle for female protagonists is the media. They're quick to reinforce the image of male gamers as monsters who hate woman, and they're intolerant of female characters that don't fit specific moulds (a mould even Aloy quite firmly fits into it). The former reinforces the idea that male protagonists are a necessity, and the latter ensures any character outside of the approved moulds will be defaulted to male.
This is all just my opinion though. This is ultimately a purely speculation based topic right now :p
