Absolutely. There’s a tradeoff here between two things that players like – high MC customizability (generally though not always because they want to be able to readily imagine themselves as the MC) and a distinctive, non-generic character to the MC (rather than having the MC be the least interesting character in the piece).
The more you aim for both, the less likely you are to ever finish your game. It’s a huge amount of work in my WiP to code the differences between serf and noble MCs, even though the main plot is the same for both. Guenevere’s extraordinary degree of customizability when it comes to orientation, personality, and relationships is both what makes it so beloved and why it takes so long to write.
I’d recommend any aspiring new CoG author to decide from the outset whether they want to come down on the side of high customizability and accept that the MC will be a bit generic as written, or write a set personality whose actions but not identity are under the reader’s control. Either way, you’ll alienate some readers with a strong preference for the other kind of IF… but you’ll finish!
One of CoG’s goals is to promote inclusive fiction, so as a company they privilege games that allow a choice of gender. But that doesn’t mean they (or the forum as a whole) deny the value of gender-locked games. Note that both Heather Albano and Becky Slitt, core CoG contributors, have now written games on the Hosted label because they felt those stories called for a more defined protagonist.
Oh, and a bit more on the “generic as written” point… I don’t think a generic-on-the-page MC is necessarily generic where it counts, which is in the reader’s head. IF invites readers to consider themselves co-authors, contributing to their characters as well as the plot. So I think it’s appropriate to judge interactive fiction MCs by a different standard than the protagonist of a standard novel, where writing an “Everyman” is a major sin. (This is also why I’m not anti-fake-choice… the effect of a fake_choice on how the reader imagines the character can be just as significant as a change tracked by stats).