They should have called the game Emo Princess Peach.

I think Princess Peach was a cute game

1.  Yeah they would, she's called SAMUS.  (And she is NOT an objectified woman any more - maybe once, in that bikini shot on NES, but now she doesn't take crap from anybody.)  And OMG, wouldn't Samus and Master Chief be like, the HOTTEST couple?  (No, not really.  Please, somebody stop the FANFICTION!)

2.  Might have something to do with the HUGE disparity in male to female PLAYERS.  Personally, I think it's rather creepy that a number of those "female" characters are actually played by males!

3.  Some of them are, look at FFVI, which is still regarded as one of the best (to some, THE best) FF.  The lead character in that one was Terra, and she had a GREAT story/backstory.  I'd say that RPGs are one of the STONG points of female characters, both in terms of heroism and accesability, but also (unfortunately) in the form of creepy exploitation (FFX2 anyone?)

Granted, 1 and 3 are exceptions to the rule, and I do generally agree with you that women are either marginalized, or objectified in most (but not all) video games.  Unfortunately, it's part of the modern condition and needs changed on a level FAR deeper than video games (which, like TV and Movies, are just syptoms, and not the disease).  One of the worst things to happen in the last 20-30 years is the failure of the women's lib movement.  Yes, they did make some impressive achievements, but now the mere word "feminist", like "liberal", is a slander.  (That part sickens me, and is indicitive of just how powerful and influential the Neo-Conservative Theologists [American Taliban] really are)

Moot point, but technicaly FFVI didn't have a lead character (one of the things that makes it stand out) and if there was, it would be Celes or Locke.

With a majority of male developers and male players, of course the video game is kind of sexist.

Yet, you can find some great female characters :
Kerrigan from Starcraft.
Jade from beyond Good and Evil.
Nico from the Broken Sword saga.
Zoe & April from Dreamfall and TLJ.
Carla from Fahrenheit.
Kate Walker from Syberia

I also think Lea from Experience 112 is going to be an interesting one.

Many adventure games here, a genre women usually like.

Almost everytime there's a female character, she has huge boobs (that in reality would give major backpain) and has skimpy clothing... -__-' Sexual object used to attract males in need to buy the game and drool in front of their tv screen.

Can't there be a female character who isn't like that and kicks ass?

Oops, I misread your question about MMORPG.

While I don't play MMO's I have played lot's of D&D, and I can tell you, without fear of reprisal, that MANY of those players had a really difficult time relating to the other sex. I don't know, or understand, the depth of the problem, but it has a great deal to do with social interactivity. Maybe, the whole "geek" and "nerd" labels prevented dates and casual conversation in school. (They sure did for me, but I was lucky enough to find a girl or two equally geeky.)

Part of the problem lies in girls not really playing many pen-and-paper RPG's to begin with, which, considering D&D's origins (ripped directly from Tolkien who was as comfortable with female characters as hobbit is with trolls) is not entirely surprising. I think D&D kind of excluded and objectified women early, girls saw that, decided not to participate, so there weren't enough girl geeks in circulation to pair up with the boy geeks, so boy geeks began considering girls as mysterious, sexually distant and unattainable creatures, their real-life fantasies went unfufilled, but guess what, they were playing the ultimate "fantasy" game, so they played out those fantasies in D&D, the objectification became WORSE (chainmail bikini anyone), and the cycle continued.

Now we have MMO players who think of female beauty as a bouncing-breasted, scantilly clad elf temptress. (You can also blame artists like Luis Royo and Boris Vallejo - sp- for that.)

And I'm really going out on a limb here, but you know how a large population of male rats will turn homosexual without any female rats, or how some amphibian creatures will change sex if the population becomes slanted too far towards one sex? Well, think of geeks like that, and how some geeks will take on femine roles because there aren't enough females to fill those roles. (Also think of Greek drama and many early theatre styles where ALL parts, male and female, were played by males.)

One last thing, try and find an MP3 "Dungeons and Dragons Part II" by "The Dead-Ale Wives". It will make everything I said here make PERFECT sense.

"Goddess of War" was a cute little nickname bandied around for "Heavenly Sword"

Point taken, but Terra did play an enormous role, as opposed to say, Gau.  Celes and Locke did have a great love story, and they were kind of the "heart", but the primary plot action was the espers and Terra.  FFVI did make a lot of room for everybody though, which, as you said, was part of its popularity.

I suppose where I disagree with several here is concerning the fact that most female characters in games are largely eye candy. It's been noted that they're being treated as objects, etc, and D-Fens pointed to this as a symptom of the failure of feminism.

I simply don't think that the point of feminism was to change male instincts. To my mind, feminism has done its worthy job when a woman who wants to be taken seriously can be taken seriously. This is why 'feminist' has become something of an insult nowadays - modern neofeminists have moved far beyond this to much more questionable social engineering projects - projects that many reasonable people can think are wrongheaded.

It is both pointless and wrong to try to convince men that they don't like looking at naked or near-naked women. They do. Society and ethics can suppress primal urges and prevent them from being acted upon, but they don't just go away. Video games are not sexist for providing the largely male market with what they want, just as Playboy is not sexist. Neither acts to teach males that women are objects any more than video games teach players that real violence is acceptable. I would argue that the vast majority of men are perfectly respectful of women in everyday life while still enjoying a glimpse of skin in the movies or on television. Concerns that videogames feed sexism seem to me to be about as serious as claims that they feed violence.

That said, I would expect this to generally change as more females enter gaming. Selling games on sex does wonders for the current young male demographic, but an increase in the number of families and women involved is going to create market pressure for something a little tamer.