I imagine it’ll pay off in some form in Lords of Infinity, if you choose to pursue that path
@Ninja1 it’s an excellent series, one of the strongest interactive fiction stories IMO
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Observation sidenote:
I believe so far each of these threads sooner or later came round to some guy saying he can’t play as anything but male and is then getting upset when people say they dislike male-locked games.
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Nobody is upset here though, i saw both opinion on this thread and nothing happened
Isn’t there constant upset from both sides?
Someone dislike male-lock, and someone female-lock. 
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@Ninja1 I would highly recommend this series too, despite it being gender locked. The choices matter a great deal, the writing and plot is superb, and there is no one ‘true’ path per se especially for the second book.
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Some thing that annoys me is when the game feel’s lazily done and rushed. What makes a cyoa feel like that? When different routes are the same and the author only changes a couple details. It makes replaying it way less fun. Same goes for the romance options. If there is little difference between the romance options and the same things happen in each route it again defeats the purpose of replaying routes.
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I pretty much agree with most of the things brought up especially when it comes to stat heavy games. I recently finished The Magician’s Burden and the amount of stats there are combined with the thresholds needed to pass checks…combined with the fact that some times when there is a choice to make, all of the choices could totally not be any of the ones you picked to specialize in pretty much left a bad taste for me by the end. That and also I dont like that the game seems to want to enforce the whole archetype style of thing where the smart person isnt supposed to also be the strong warrior…even though Mabelin seems to be that…as well as being fawned over by alot of people so she is also charismatic as well. But the second my smarty pants character decides to throw a punch their charisma is lowered and even sometimes intelligence or diplomacy.
On another topic, I never really understood the decision some people make to totally not play a genderlocked game. Maybe its because I am a bit of an roleplayer so I have played as and created many different characters of different races (fictional and non, some I even created myself) of different orientations and genders and have gotten great tales and experiences out of all of them. I understand having a preference (personally I prefer being able to choose my characters gender) but to totally ignore/miss out on a potentially great story just because of something like that mortifies me! I see the point of relatability be brought up alot but personally relatabilty has always been a personality/character trait/ideals thing for me and not anything to do with gender and even double when your talking about a world where gender doesn’t matter anyway. Also, I don’t need a character to be relateable in order for me to really enjoy becoming or be around them. I would think (or atleast hope) most people don’t relate to villains but people still enjoy them and the critical role they bring to most stories.
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I just don’t enjoy playing a gender-locked male game as much. I do still try. I still buy the things, but I’ve never been moved by a cyoa game or even a main-stream video game with a strictly male protagonist. I’ve tried the infinity series. I’ve tried objectively great games like The Witcher 3 or Red Dead Redemption, and I just lose interest. At this point I have kind of given up on them.
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There is totally nothing wrong with that. If you haven’t liked them that is totally fine. I guess my issue is more with people who do not even try or care to see what the story or other details are and just go “The main character/s are not (insert gender/orientation/religion/ whatever else here) so its an automatic no for me”. Like I said, do whatever makes you happy, but for me missing out on some stuff cause of just that kind of makes me sad for storytelling in general.
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A lot of choice games have a fairly heavy focus on romance. (Not all of course, but a good amount. Most have at least some.) As such if the MC doesn’t match up, or there are few to no romantic interests that suit your preference…Yeah. 
Not everyone cares enough to keep them from playing, but for those who do…
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I´m not so fond of genderlocked games, because of the Romances, they are an important part of each cyoa game for me and because of this I don´t like to play as a straight male mc or on the other hand a lesbian female would not be my thing either. It is more a romance and not a gender thing, but not so easy to explain^^. In other games I´m not so picky, but when I get the chance to choose, I want to play things I Iike. 
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Because I had to roleplay male characters basically for my entire gaming life. And it have became tiresome.
I have no problem playng a well defined male character in a game without choices. Is like reading a book or watching a movie. But the moment I have branching narrative, my mind can’t stop: I have to roleplay, and I can’t even roleplay the character I want.
Because female protagonists aren’t all that common, and even less straight ones outside otome VNs.
If it wasn’t so hard for me find straight female protagonists who save the day and get the guy, probably I would not be so unflexible. But since is still rare, I play what I can find.
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The thing I dislike the most is the way stats are handled most of the times. Very often the way to increase stats is to constantly use them. I think that takes a lot of freedom away from the player. It sometimes gets so bad that in order to survive a critical moment you have to pick the choice that boosts that stat in almost every other situation in the game. But even if such extremes are not present, I like to play characters that are very competent in their chosen field. So I feel myself compelled to use the stat I want to improve even if I don’t agree with the way that stat would be used in that particular situation or I want to pick the choice that doesn’t use any stat or that avoids the situation entirely.
It is also an extremely unrealistic way of representing the way learning new skills works. Becoming good at something is from studying and practicing that something for extended periods of time not from randomly using that skill in a couple of occasions. That may be a minor detail to some but it often completely breaks my immersion in the game.
I’m also bothered when you get a myriad of choices and they are only to decide which stat will be checked to resolve a particular situation. Since most of the times you have one, maybe two good stats it’s not a choice at all. Worst still when the stat getting checked is not immediately clear and you find yourself watching your character fail horribly at something while wandering incredulous what could possibly posses someone who never picked up a sword to go charging into an army.
Now since its not in my nature to complain about something without presenting an alternative I’d like to do just that. Sorry if this is outside the scope of this thread.
A couple of premises before I begin: I’m not a writer and I have only a very rudimentary understanding of programming in general and of Choice of Games script in particular. What follows is merely what I would consider ideal as a reader and a player.
As far as stat improvement goes I think the best way to handle it is to introduce in the narrative moments where the player has “free time” and you decide witch stat to improve. I realize many games already have something like that but it’s often secondary to the “continue picking the stat you want to improve” method.
About deciding what stat gets checked I think the best way to do that is indirectly. What you should choose is the direction in which you want your character to go and then your character decides how to go about it based on your stats. I’ll provide an example.
Your character runs into a hostile group of people. Your choices are to fight them, to talk your way out of the situation or to run. If you choose to talk your way out of it then an intelligent character would try to sway them with logic and reason a charismatic character could try to bluff or manipulate them and a dumb brute wouldn’t be able to do any of the above and would be forced to fight.
There are other things that annoy me a little (like the game telling me how I feel or what I think about something instead of making me say it) but this problem with the stats is by far the thing that as the most potential to ruin or at least render less enjoyable games I would otherwise love.
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Honestly if I only played games that included me as playable, I’d be locked to one triple A game (Overwatch), and a few indies. I wouldn’t be here either. So yeah. I get annoyed when that comes up. And that’s on one end, I already have other obvious minorities (but the first is generally the one I care most about). Though when genderlock is involved I usually am willing to play a game either way and at the very least try if it seems interesting. I do remember hesitating to play Pendragon because we forced to be Arthur and couldn’t rename them but I still did it because… it seemed ok.
Poor David Cage.
You know my pain. I did love @Lucid’s games though. But games that lock choices or encourage you to be good at one thing? I want to be a renaissance man.
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He is still better than most. At least he put some female protagonists in his games, even with all the different problems he usually can’t seem to leave behind.
But is true I never finished Heavy Rain, and I’m still on the fence about Detroit.
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Confession time: As a straight guy, often when I do play as a female character in a COG game, whether it’s a choice to or happens to be gender locked, I tend to romance the male characters who are most like me. Not out of narcism but because I probably like the idea of imagining myself as the dated character if my POV female character is based on the sort of lady I would be interested in. Hence why I opt to romance Arthur as Guen (because he’s nice and upstanding) or Benny as a female character in Monsters of Haven High (because he’s as nerdy as I probably am). So that’s something I think I end up doing a lot when I play a female character in these games. 
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Like making all fat people evil, heavy handed discrimination that doesn’t make much sense and relies on people to view androids as people in the first place (and is trying really hard to force sympathy even out of unreasonable things) , really forced romances, too many white protagonists (especially Detroit, all the heavy handed symbolism and they give the affected party story to the white girl and one slip and the revolution will be lead by a white girl), being creepy to Ellen Page, game overs are a failure of game design and SHAWN!
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Yeah, I wanted so badly to like Detroit. It was kind of a mess though in the end.
The menu android woman was the best part.
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I mean I bet lots of people like it but openly visible personality stats just annoy me. I am not going to drop a game because of it, but I’d rather it be hidden or something.
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This made me not finish the game! I bought Study in Steampunk because of the title and the beautiful art cover, then realized (too late, I might add) that I couldn’t play as myself (as a woman). Really, it couldn’t have been more off-putting.
I even tried modifying it with mods, so I would feel like playing it, but I didn’t find anything, so I simply accepted the fact that I wasted my hard-earned money (I have to pay 4x more because I live in Brazil and our currency is “reais”) on something I’ll never read.
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