Alright, most of this has been discussed many, many times here. Just to summarize, no one is "attacking" your games for having large breasted women. They are criticizing the developers for unrealistic depictions of women, or calling for more diversity in depiction. As to your question of who wants to play someone who looks more realistic, why don't you ask Mario? He's hardly a supermodel yet somehow no one considers him to be a liability towards sales. For male heroes we get Mario, Link, and Sonic, and for female heroes we get Bayonetta, Peach, and the Dead or Alive volleyball cast. There's a clear distinction here between how these people are portrayed. There's no problem with sexy women, the issue comes when you ONLY portray sexy women, with no other kinds of women being depicted.
It's not the only portrayal of women and even if it were, I still wouldn't have a problem with it. I'm not sure what you want me to say here, I support the creative freedom of developers. Most GamerGate supporters are fine with feminists making their own games, that's why GG supporters have donated tens of thousands of dollars to The Fine Young Capitalists to help feminist developers make their own game.
All of the characters you listed don't have any serious character development, male or female. Also, haven't a lot of sex-positive feminists actually hailed Bayonetta as an empowering woman? There are plenty of strong women in games, I can name several off the top of my head: Ada Wong, Alyx Vance, Claire Redfield, Jill Valentine, Lara Croft, Meryl Silverburgh, Nova Terra, Rebecca Chambers, Regina (Dino Crisis), Rinoa Heartily, Samus Aran, Sarah Kerrigan, Sherry Birkin, Tifa Lockhart, Yuffie Kisaragi, Yuna (FFX) and countless others.
I'm glad you think this, but unfortunately many, many people have different experiences with game culture. I think part of the problem here might be that any time someone voices this kind of dissenting opinion you assume they're "manufacturing" or "faking" it.
I'm sorry you don't think gamers are an inclusive group. Sure there have always been 12 year olds accusing you of hacking and saying they had sex with your mom in Halo matchmaking, but that's no reason to think that gamers are "trolls" or "harassers." I don't like to say things like this, but there actually is evidence that Brianna Wu is faking her outrage. Brianna literally posted a topic about herself on the Steam forums, harassing herself using her verified developer account. She deleted the topic a few minutes later and reposted it using a secondary account. Why would she harass herself and refer to herself in the third-person as a "terrible person," then delete the post and repost it using an alt account?
As for the death threats she received, the first one (on Twitter) had nothing to do with GamerGate. The Twitter account in question had never made any references to GamerGate and Brianna responded just a few minutes after the threat was made; some speculate she made the death threats herself, but I haven't seen any proof that this is the case, so I won't say so. The second death threat she received was by a guy who was known to make troll videos on YouTube. He evidently wasn't associated with GamerGate and he had made several similar videos in the past. It was a stupid and immature joke, not a legitimate threat, yet Brianna claimed it was a serious threat.
It should also be noted that the only reason Brianna got involved in GamerGate is because she decided to start making fun of GamerGate supporters. Brianna isn't a corrupt journalist or a social justice commentator, nobody cared who she was until she <s>put on the mask</s> harassed people. The same can be said for a lot of the GamerGate opponents, like Sarah Butts and Chris Warcraft.
Some GamerGate opponents have even revealed themselves to be con artists, like Anita Sarkeesian. Sarkeesian begged for money on Kickstarter and claimed that she was a gamer, yet just before launching her Kickstarter she claimed at a media conference that she isn't a gamer and knew very little about video games. She lied and continues to lie about being a gamer, in an attempt to giver herself false legitimacy. She has also only released three of the twelve videos that she promised to release, despite having three years to make her videos and having received just shy of $160,000.
Sarkeesian claiming she isn't a gamer, then claiming she is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FW-69xXD734 Brianna harassing herself: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-vsYaBcZRw
So wait, are women a huge an endemic part of gaming as they've always been, or are they just Farmville fans who don't actually count? Which is it?
There have always (or almost always) been women in gaming, I absolutely stand by that. I was merely pointing out that statistics claiming that women represent 52% of all gamers are misleading. I assumed you were referring to those statistics when you used the term "mainstream." These two positions are not mutually exclusive. Also, let's assume for a second that females made up 52% of the hardcore gaming community, who is to say that they wouldn't want to play the same games they are playing now? If they were already hardcore gamers before, why would they quit playing the games that they are clearly enjoying in order to play games like Gone Home or Never Alone?
That's your perspective. Personally I think it's kind of horrible that anyone was scared off at all by GG. You don't have to like these people's games but I find it kind of sad that you don't think they should even be allowed to make them. I don't really know what to tell you, except for the fact that games have historically had an issue with how to deal with women, women are vastly underrepresented in the games industry, and many women are scared to enter the industry because they know all it will take is one pissed off ex-boyfriend to post their info on 8chan for an internet hate mob to park on their front lawn.
It would be horrible if people were legitimately scared off over misconceptions about gamers. Maybe I was too harsh on Wu, but I never denied her credentials as a developer. I do stand by my statement about Quinn though; calling her a video game developer for making something on Twine is a bit of a stretch. I think these people have a right to make video games if they want to and I'll support their right to do so, but I'm not going to shed any tears over them quitting.
I respectfully disagree with you, Wazula, I don't think there is some long-running trend of misogyny in games. Some of my best friends in high school were female gamers and we didn't treat them any differently. Sure a couple of the guys would flirt with them a little bit, but no lines were ever crossed and they respected their wishes when they turned them down. And as I've mentioned earlier in this post, I've had female clan leaders and am friends with a relatively popular female Twitch streamer who has received thousands of dollars for livestreaming.
Am I saying that there have been no women in the history of the internet who haven't had a bad encounter in a game? Absolutely not. I'm sure there are jerks, stalkers and even people who make threats online and within the gaming community, just like there are those people in real life. Such people are horrible and should be condemned by everyone.