Original post: https://bsky.app/profile/rebeccamwrites.bsky.social/post/3m6a62btty226
Here's the dataset and their website if you are interested, there's more games beyond Final Fantasy that they've looked at.
Main findings
- 35% of words were spoken by female characters.
- 29% of characters were female, which suggests the imbalance is driven by a lack of female characters.
- 94% of games had more male dialogue than female dialogue.
I don't think I can answer with any confidence, but my guess is that most of the minor NPCs with only a little dialogue are men. So even though men make up an overwhelming share of all characters, the women that are in the game play a more prominent role on average. I'd be really curious to see this recalculated with just, say, named characters to see how much the data shifts and if my guess is on point at all.