No one has said this one yet:
I play a mix and generally want to create a distance between me and the character. I’m not thinking “what would I do?” I’m thinking “what would this person do?”
Having said that, if I pick a girl I won’t pick a heterosexual romance option. Romance in games is strange.
There were a bunch of game company closures in Australia in the 2000s and now there are a bunch of Australian indie devs, as an example. The cycle takes a long time though.