Exactly. It's through the lens of society. And gaming, like other forms of mass media skirts a fine line between art and being commercial. The best art often thought provoking and commercial. The same is true in movies and music etc.

From a business point of view, it makes sense to appeal to the most people possible. That usually meant having a cis white male protagonist, historically. However, as thearket grew, it made sense for some games to try to appeal to specific demographics. Those that were used to always having representation were upset. And continue to be so.

Now, the consensus of that type of person is that it's pandering, like the token black character of movies past. What they fail to realise is those that make the games are diverse too. So when they introduce characters that are different, it's not necessarily for commercial reasons. They also forget that even if those people aren't gay or black or Asian or female, they have family and friends that are. So their worldview can still be different.

There was an article on Lemmy recently about Stephen King owing his success with writing Carrie and getting help with writing a female perspective. Was he pandering as it was a female protagonist, or did it work better for the social dynamics and metaphors?

Often there is not effect in having the male character say husband, from a story or character development perspective. So, people think it's pandering. It's not. It's just representing someone different , off handedly. It normalizes normal people and helps eliminate bigotry. So, even if it's sometimes pandering, which is not often, it's still beneficial.