Well, yes and no.
It depends on the author’s intentions. For instance, Natalie Cannon wrote Moonrise with a specific audience in mind, so it wouldn’t make sense to appeal to wider audience because of that.
You also have to keep in mind that it’s a lot of work to write an IF, let alone including romance subplots for multiple NPCs. Off the top of my head, I can only recall three IFs that were co-authored: Highlands, Deep Waters, Breach: The Archangel Job, and Diaspora. Almost all stories are created by a single author who may or may not be experienced in using the Choicscript software.
As someone who’s been on the forums since 2012, I disagree. I have rarely seen this sort of positive reception to gender-locked games, even if it’s not gender-locked to male.
If you check out the gender-locked-female tag, the most popular WiP is Donor. But if you compare Donor to a gender choice game that was published roughly in the same time frame, such as Shepard of Haven, then it’s clear to see that the latter blows the former out of the water.
Now keep in mind, there could be multitude of reasons - besides the gender lock - that Haven is much more popular than Donor and that is a completely different conversation.
Keep in mind that despite being members of the CoG forum community, we’re not a monolith.
@Eiwynn phrased it best in this post. As evidenced by this poll, stories that are gender-locked to anything but male are met with a mixed reception at best. Overwhelmingly yes, gender-locking to female/nonbinary/etc. just because you can is accepted, but there is a significant chunk of people who believe that that is not above criticism.
For what it’s worth, I find this dissonance to be particularly peculiar. Perhaps it’s because people have different ideas of what is criticism and what is not criticism, but I find myself agreeing with Mary_Duffy’s post when it comes to this contradiction.
You cannot personally believe it is acceptable for an author to gender-lock because they can while also holding the belief that you should be able to say “it’s not for me”. If you believe it is acceptable for an author to gender-lock on a whim but then turn around and say the story is not for you because of that factor alone then I will begin to doubt that acceptance.
If someone refuses to bake me a wedding cake based on their religious beliefs, I am not going to waste my time demanding they bake me that cake and will happily take my business elsewhere.