On the one hand, you have prospective female players that will feel alienated if all the interaction is very strongly gender-neutral.
OTOH, as per another commenter, some female players want to be treated in a gender neutral way, because they’re not fond of the gendered treatment they receive IRL.

On top of that, there’s a risk that if I do introduce non-trivial differences, I’ll get it wrong.

This is not to say this isn’t something a valid concern, something which should be addressed, but more that, answering “How do I reliably address that without offending people?” is difficult.
I think that’s a lot of why you see games which are anti-sexist, but not feminist.

This post has got me thinking, and I’ll keep thinking about it later.

I suspect there is a force in the industry that pushes for games to act this way, despite the massive success of the more inclusive Wii. Who wants to think up conspiracy theories?

I wasn’t shocked by Chell being female at all. I was shocked by how artificial she was, now that I could see the unrealism of the first-person-shooter conceit.

OK. You’re not really selling me on our disagreement, though, because I think this is pretty right on.

I think what I’m saying is, I like the artificiality of Chell because she really is just a skin, a representation. I could roll with that artificiality because the game was only telling me, “Hey! This is what you look like,” instead of “Hey! Here’s who you essentially are,” and so I still felt authentically like me, myself, me, hence my whole argument about projection and the seeming authenticity of blank-slate characters. While I think I get where you’re coming from, for me, the trick works, rather than being a tacked-on gotcha. (Above, a couple folks note that the reveal maybe isn’t a ‘gotcha’ at all, or that the game shows its full hand from the get-go, which I’d stupidly never noticed.)

So Portal’s conceit—that’s a good word for the reveal, and I’m filching it from you—really does ring truer, for me as a female player, than maybe a female avatar might in a gigantic Bethesda world, in which everything is so anti-gendered as to become disingenuous. (I know I’ve started repeating myself, so I don’t think I have too much more to give; over here, someone makes an articulate comment I really appreciate about NPCs and “othering.”)

A feminist game is Dragon Age, where NPCs are constantly ignoring or flirting with you, but you can still accomplish the exact same story-wise.

An anti-sexist game is Mass Effect, where nobody seems to care that your character is male or female, except the marketing department.

(Great article, btw, Jenn)

You know, I think your point still holds valid.