Whoa, this thread has exploded again since I posted 
and six replies to my post alone!
I also ran out of likes, so… um, there’s a lot of posts I would be liking here that I can’t right now 
I suppose I would be rather terrified if you did try to play me 
Oh, yeah… I’m right between the average male and female heights (in the US), so while I’m taller than most women, women who are taller than me are still pretty common.
With height customization, I also just find it makes it easier when writing interactions to know if it’s like “NPC looks up at you” or “NPC looks down at you,” though that may say more about what I describe in these scenes than anything else 
I think I mind mostly when it’s characters who should actually know the MC (if we’re old friends, say, they should’ve picked up on my talking about guys 
unless this is a historical 19th century setting or something). That, and when everybody is always assuming I must be into women and nobody is thinking I might be into men. I’m okay with the comments if they’re more even (I think this was the case in your own Totem Force?), or if they’re actually based on the MC’s sexual orientation. But I get sick enough in real life of people who don’t know me assuming I must be into women that that’s really something I don’t want to go through in my entertainment.
A related example would be in Sixth Grade Detective, which I mostly like very much, and is one of my favorite CoGs… but it has this bit where AJ—whose gender is player-chosen—AJ’s uncle will make some sort of awkward-embarrassing comment about the MC being AJ’s boy/girlfriend… but only if they’re opposite genders. At least if you’re going down a romance route with AJ, I think that line should be there for everyone; it feels alienating to be left out from that kind of thing. Equal opportunity embarrassing comments!
Preach. And I think that also helps answer @Natman1025’s following comments about how it shouldn’t matter to the reader… one reason it does matter is because it’s preferable to feel like you’ve been put into consideration, rather than being an afterthought or not included at all.
Well, and this is where I’d say that games where gender choice is just a matter of pronouns and word choice are useful. They do the work of swapping the pronouns around for the reader. It’ll generally be easier to have that handled on that end rather than making the reader do it themself. And, since it shouldn’t matter to the central story in most cases, it might as well be implemented, and make people who generally feel excluded feel more included.
I did try something sort of similar once when playing Alter Ego, which has a male version and a female version, but they’re both automatically heterosexual, so I preferred to try the female version… I decided to imagine my character was a trans man. It was an interesting playthrough, but there was often a bit of a disconnect where the narration was actually making gendered assumptions about how the main character felt or acted.
(Actually, just looking at the differences between male and female versions of the same scenes in that game, there are so many stereotypes applied not just to other characters but to the main character themself that it really just became an exercise in frustration 
)
I’d say the second person point of view is part of it, really 
Even when I read noninteractive stuff that’s in second person (unless it’s written in a letter format!) I can get pretty distracted when the character seems like a sort of “generic everyman” which just happens to always equate with a straight man, generally with a fairly specific literary character sort of personality, too…
I haven’t read more than the opening of Guinevere yet (though I do plan to eventually… there’s too many things to read compared to the amount of time!) but I feel like it being in first person helps, as well.
But then, those games can end up more attractive to boys than girls because they’re gender-locked. It perpetuates itself.
You know, it’s interesting you mention dragons specifically, because Choice of the Dragon is the CoG where my main character is female. I think this is because I feel a bit more of a disconnect when playing someone so far from humanoid (albeit, still a vertebrate; when do we get an invertebrate protagonist? 
), so it didn’t feel as important. And I just felt like it’d be cool for the awesome dragon to get to be female
Another factor would also just be, I mean, I like guys, I like seeing guys romancing guys, so I’m attached to and also just really enjoy having my male humanoid protagonists, but that factor completely goes away when playing a dragon, so…
Friendly female terrorizing dragon! 
When it comes to race, I do feel like it’s best not to assume the protagonist’s race (maybe with exceptions like Choice of the Petal Throne?). I suppose it is easier to write a game that doesn’t reference the MC’s race than one that doesn’t reference their gender, though, what with pronouns and gendered language, so I suppose this may be why it’s much less often an explicit choice.
Yep, that is why I’m even here; these also have the advantage that they lend themselves to stories with gay protagonists that aren’t entirely about being gay 
I do feel like it would’ve been valuable to me growing up… the fact that I didn’t really see gay characters in stories much led to me not really thinking of it as an option, despite not having had a homophobic upbringing… actually, I’d say getting to play around on the sims and realizing “hey, I can make male sims kiss each other” and “hey, I like making male sims kiss each other” were pretty instrumental in realizing I liked guys… so getting to romance guys in interactive fiction I’m sure could fill a similar role…
It’s mainly that I have incredibly fast-growing stubble (which is also quite dark).
But I tend to like the stubbly look on other guys too, so… chacon a son gout? 
Oh, yeah, my leg problem tends to be that even skinny jeans tend to end up kinda baggy on me, and “normal” fits are just… yeah.
I’ve been lifted by women considerably shorter than me
I guess part of the thing with that is that people will vary a lot as far as what they consider cute/attractive, so if there’s a guy being described as super-attractive who just doesn’t sound like my type, that could sometimes be a bit offputting as well (though not nearly as much as if the gender’s wrong, yes).
A bit, yeah. Not quite as much, I think, but it’s in there.
My understanding was that that label will include gender- and sexuality-locks, but that they’ll be aiming for a diverse range of those