With Cod I had heard originally that the historically inaccurate characters were only in the multiplayer and well, COD isn't normally that accurate in regards to multiplayer as they don't care about historical accuracy in multiplayer that much, so I didn't really care about too much, but I heard later that the inaccurate characters (either by sex or race) were also in single player? If that is true, that doesn't really seem like good writing since that isn't historically accurate and the single player is supposed to be at least to some extent. If it is like that in single player, I don't agree with that, but I didn't care so much either way about the multiplayer simply because they don't claim to make those historically accurate in the first place. I wouldn't miss it if women weren't there but I wouldn't care they were in multiplayer, but having women in what is supposed to be a historically accurate singleplayer game in a situation that didn't involve women just seems stupid. Issues aside I enjoyed the beta for WW2, but my partner recently got the full game and he says it seems worse somehow than the beta. I haven't hopped onto his and fiddled yet so I can't comment on the difference between beta and full game, but it is disappointing if it is because I had fun playing the beta with my partner and a friend of ours that hopped on for a bit.
I did remember the Gamergate stuff going on, and I remember the ETC people talking about it too, but kind of forgot about the details of it.
As for more males playing games, that still is true, but not by much nowadays when you look at adults. Last I saw those stats, it was getting pretty close to 50 / 50. It's definitely true about the categories though. Males dominate some categories and females others definitely and you are right about Overwatch being one that stands out for shooters since it attracts a lot more women than a lot of the other shooters. I quite like Overwatch personally but I like some of the others too.
I agree with you in that I also don't want people stepping in to change things because I believe that is the wrong thing to do the other people's art - I just want people to want to create things outside the box and sometimes that involves various character roles etc. As for how we reach that point I don't know - other than creating stuff myself - but I think those who interfere with other people's art are actually detrimental to people gaining the want to do this. I just like seeing things that are a bit different, whether that is in gaming or on TV or YouTube or in books so I would personally like more variation because writer's / creator's themselves want to create something a bit more varied.
I didnt play to much of that game I stick with Treyarch myself but I heard a lot of negativity towards it and with that game I feel couldve been a lot more if they didnt sit down Frequency to discuss elements of the game. I completely agree with you as I would like to see more creativity in all forms of media though with a lot of them wanting to go down a certain road and for others to not do so gets shamed over it is awful.