Out of 48 plants, only two are actually listed as female. (Some have no gender listed. Many, many plants are explicitly male.) And one of those two female plants is the useless Marigold. (It generates coins. It does nothing in terms of the main gameplay.) Fanon suggests that the sunflowers are female (and even draws porn of them) but the game doesn't say.
Out of 26 zombies, none are female. Not all are explicitly listed as 'he', but many are, and the others give the distinct impression of being male.
Peggle Nights somewhat sheepishly added a female character, since the original apparently had none. Rather than simply make one of them a girl (It's not like we could have told any different, probably) they made one with Lips! and Eyes! to set her apart from the others. Peggle also suffers from the problem of pre-filled high score lists, filled almost entirely with male names. (Although at least they don't *intentionally* put girls at the bottom of the pile. A female name shows up in rotation now and then.)
Out of games originally developed by PopCap, do any of them focus around a female character?
I am not in the slightest suggesting that PopCap hates women or anything like that. Just that it seems like, without some strong external force prodding at them, they tend to forget they exist... 'Default', here, will always be 'male'.
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which is especially weird, considering that many females seem to like their games.. XD
This same concept can also be observed through Saturday morning cartoon shows. I studied animated media over the course of 40 years and generally, the same trends of women have remained rather consistent. Male characters outnumber female characters almost always, and when male characters are absent in scenes, the female characters' conversation is usually centralized around them. The female character is often highly idealized as well, similar to what you mentioned. I had actually written about pages on this in one of my classes and posted a summary on my blog for people who are interested in the representation of women in various media (or lack of). I also read your post about the over-the-top ads by Evony and other game developer copycats, and I agree, these are a disgrace. I'm not sure if there is a nicer way to put it. Unfortunately, when these ads pop up on my website, my clicks go way up. In other words, the saddest thing is that these ads are working.
It's similar to how yellow-skinned cartoon characters with bulging eyes and Lego toys are automatically caucasian.
Adding an extra definition of race or gender is too much work.
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