Reminds me of this nonsense I saw recently. The context is the Mega Man devs saying they're adding more variety to boss designs in the upcoming game (first one revealed is named "Twinkle Girl") and that female heroes are common now:

text in image

The design is not the greatest. But I never thought of the Robot Masters as sex coded (I do now, thanks Capcom and moderm humans) but I always thought of them as humanoid robots of things eg Man=Human-Android not Man = adult human male.

As for popularity and special places in hearts and such.... Yeah I can predict that kind of marketing outcome. Capcom staff/marketing team are coming from a fundamentally different place than social media illustrators I can guarantee you that. That said this kind of marketing and signaling is NOT going to produce demographic growth, it just invites the kind of audiences niche struggling franchises should avoid. You heard it from me now, if/when it happens don't shoot the messenger.

[–] Damarcusart@hexbear.net 12 points 2 days ago

That is an awful lot of words for them to just say "go woke, go broke". I'd say the 99% of humanity who don't have an aneurysm when they see wamens in video games are probably a good demographic to target.

[–] Carl@hexbear.net 6 points 2 days ago

I never thought of robot Masters as sex coded

They literally all have the word "man" in their name, except for Splash Woman.