Right now? There's not really a motivation for people to start putting more strong female protagonists into games. Unless they look like Lara Croft. Then there seems to always magically be room for that.
The downfall of this argument is that no one even **** knows! It's not like there's a long history of varied gender/race/body shapes to come to such a conclusion, it's always been gritty white men and co. And selling or not shouldn't be a factor in wanting variety and diversity in a medium anyway.
You know why? Because they know it will sell. And a lot of the people who get upset at it either A) would not have bought the game anyways or B) will play the game regardless.
Sorry but that doesn't make sense.
Well let's call this quotes A and B and your responses A and B to keep it straight.
Let me handle quote B and response B first.
There are three main groups that get upset about this issue in video games.
A) People who don't play video games.
B) People who play video games but will still buy the games in question.
C) People who play video games and won't buy the game in question.
Now group A has almost no bearing on what gets done, even though they have the potential to be very large, because they aren't a target demographic. The people making games won't make money off of them reguardless. Their opinions thus just don't matter when it comes to sales.
Group B also has almost no bearing on what gets done, because they will still go out and buy the game anyways. It's not just on this issue. It's on every issue ever related to video games. Or anything else in general. If you don't like something, but you still buy it, your opinions won't get it changed.
Now Group C is the one that can actually get changes made. Group C is where they will lose money. The problem with that? It's not large enough to get anything done. Nothing ever gets boycotted ever because people really want to play that shiny new game. It is extremely rare for anything to even have a noticeable drop in sales that they can attribute to a flat-out boycott of their game. So while theoretically they would have to care here, right now it's not large enough of a group to make them do so.
What does all of this add up to? It means that the current system is safe and makes a lot of money. It means that the current system is a money-maker and they have no reason at all to change it. Because they are making money and they know they can sell what they are currently putting out.
Here is where your response A comes in. You are right. We don't know what would happen. And you are right, it money should not have an effect on the diversity of a medium. But you know what? Money has THE PRIMARY EFFECT. Whether or not you like it, companies have something known as the bottom line and they will do whatever is safe, makes them money, and has the least negative impact on their ability to make even more money in the future. That's how business works. Saying money shouldn't be a factor doesn't mean it isn't, and it's the direct primary factor for why video games are the way they are right now. BECAUSE IT SELLS. It's why we get COD every single year instead of some new series they could have been working on. Because IT SELLS.
Now why wouldn't the other kind of video games sell? I'm not sure about what kind you want to talk about or have done in particular, but 47% of gamers are women and that in itself means there is probably the target demographic there to do something about equality in video games.
Do you know what though? They don't do it because any target demographic that might exist is not asking for such things in large enough numbers, and thus it's considered
not safe. There's a lot of risk involved. And whether or not it's right, it's highly unlikely that the vast majority of companies in the business will take such a risk.
Which all circles back around to Quote and Response B again. You need to grow the group of people demanding change, who are actually a target demographic, THAT WILL BOYCOTT UNTIL THEY GET THEIR WAY, and that is how you will see change. Until then...... if anything happens it will be at the snail's pace it's always gone at.