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“ Focus-testing female gamers [was] something we had to specifically request. I hope this is a relic of the past that will soon go away.

In an interview with The Escapist , the company's creative director Neil Druckman explained how the studio stepped in after discovering the notion of polling female gamers for their take on the upcoming apocalyptic adventure game wasn't on the table.As Druckman tells it, "Another aspect that influences how a game is promoted is focus-testing. Players are rounded up and are asked to view materials and answer some quantitative and qualitative questions about it.Considering that the unnamed marketing firm wasn't planning on asking female gamers for their insight on a title featuring a male and female co-leads, it should come as no surprise to hear it also wanted to push Ellie off the front cover of the game and onto the back of the game's box art, as reported last year Naughty Dog's rebuff is an interesting example of a shift in attitudes. Recent titles like Tomb Raider, which offered a powerful experience spearheaded by a female protagonist, and Bioshock Infinite, which showed that female co-leads can enhance an experience just as much as a male one, have hopefully helped to move on an outdated industry perception that female characters can't sell games - as exemplified by Remember Me, whose developer Dontnod was repeatedly urged to replace the female lead with a male by anxious potential publishers.With recent figures suggesting that up to 30% of hardcore gamers may be women and that the majority of the gaming market as a whole could be women by the end of this year , kudos to Naughty Dog for helping to move things on.

Luke Karmali is IGN's UK Junior Editor. You too can revel in mediocrity by following him on IGN and on Twitter