It shouldn't have an effect, and doesn't, at least to people who see video games as being told a story.
However many many people see video games as inserting themselves into a story and if the main character is sufficiently different from themselves this simply does not work well, so they avoid games with protagonists that have certain traits (gender, age and more), which creates financial pressure on game companies to target the most profitable demographics, which in turn often has the result of excluding less profitable demographics.
Thus the struggle between companies trying to make a living and under-represented audiences trying to become represented.
Comments
It shouldn't have an effect, and doesn't, at least to people who see video games as being told a story.
However many many people see video games as inserting themselves into a story and if the main character is sufficiently different from themselves this simply does not work well, so they avoid games with protagonists that have certain traits (gender, age and more), which creates financial pressure on game companies to target the most profitable demographics, which in turn often has the result of excluding less profitable demographics.
Thus the struggle between companies trying to make a living and under-represented audiences trying to become represented.
Further reading:
http://www.itinthed.com/16328/what-taking-my-daughter-to-a-c...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nier_(video_game)#Development (second paragraph)