Two cents on the progress

It's not like pubs avoid (avoided?) female leads because they're evil misogynists. They do it (were doing it?) because it's way easier to make a shitty game with a male lead and sell somewhat than to make a shitty game with a female lead and sell the same. We've seen *multiple* examples of that in the previous gen.

General increase of quality, positive examples from books/cinema, the wish to broaden the customer base open the palette up a bit. It makes sense that heroines do not lead most action games -- if we believe in player/hero sync, then let's not forget vast majority of core gamers are male (e.g. if one thinks that it's important for some women to see themselves in lead video game roles, then why wouldn't it be important for some men?) but occasionally such lead makes total sense for an action game (and that's how we get Tomb Raider) or for a type of game that women generally are more interested in (and that's how we get Michonne, The Walking Dead spin off). Plus most RPGs keep offering man/women choice for the lead character (and that's how we get Fallout 4 and ME: Andromeda).

Personally the two latter make me very happy, as this means broadening the palette of TYPES of games, and not just shoehorning women into space marines (although I accept this might be a woman's fantasy too, so it's cool to have female Gears, for example). Which is why I'm ecstatic about your "Having female leads is not a 'lecture on gender theory' it's just having stories from different kinds of humans" tweet. Exactly that, and I believe some types of games are more suited for it than others (especially from the player's perspective: a good writer would make an incredible female-led Call of Duty but it wouldn't turn male/female player ratio to 50:50), so the end result in more variety. Which is never not great.

But I think it's this tweet that is crucial: "It's also may have been helped by greater focus on narrative over the last decade. More attention to characters, stories and perspectives." YES. I'm sure we might disagree on SOME aspects of the whole "women in gaming and women in lead roles" thing but we would never disagree on this. The progress (with quality story-telling) is VERY slow in gaming but it is THERE. And having different perspectives from different humans, from all kinds of angles, is exactly what everybody wants and needs.

Just my quick two cents.