You make some excellent points, and end with an excellent question. The last I'll say about the matter is that context is everything. I've heard men use the word female in a derogatory manner, and I happen to be a man who uses it in exactly the way(s) it sounds like you do. I once had someone ask me, "Isn't the term 'Jew' derogatory?" I answered, "It can be. I've heard people of the Jewish faith call themselves and others Jews the same exact way that members of the Christian faith call themselves and others Christians, and I've also heard neo-nazis use the word in an extremely nasty, derogatory manner. George Carlin once pointed out that there are no bad words, just bad intentions. I strongly recommend his album "Parental Advisory: Explicit Lyrics". I believe it's available on youtube.

Oh... fun.
As to join in a little - no matter the implications, when saying "fellow female gamer" the word "female" is not, as far as I can see, used as a noun, but an adjective (as in "this club only has three female members").
Other than that, I suppose just about everything can be deemed offensive by one person or another.
Some anguish could probably be avoided by reminding oneself that in an international community, not everyone is an expert English speaker, so there are bound to be a bunch of things lost in translation - and in many instances the way a certain word "feels" does not translate 1:1 to another language
Giving people the benefit of the doubt (and, quite possibly, not getting up in arms about being called "a female" when it's clear the other person just wanted to indicate he believes you have the innie kind of gonads, not call you "a cunt" in a roundabout way) probably goes a long way.

The New York Times doesn't go with the times at all; their style guides are pure ass. In fact, a lot of style guides are pure ass. NYT resisted the Ms honorific for the longest time. They finally gave up when they had to refer to a politician who didn't change her surname upon marriage: they couldn't call her a Miss (because she was married) or a Mrs (because the surname was her own).
(I guess omitting the bourgeois honorific was too much.)

These days, some "librul" thinktanks still fight singular they -- because, they say, singular they is too awkward. Well guess what, repeating a person's name every damn time is even more awkward. "Pat went to Pat's house to pet Pat's cat." Don't do this -- it's exactly the speech pattern of primitive indigenous characters in [racist] fiction. It looks and sounds stupid because it was meant to.

Style guides are not an authority on correct language use except for the employees of their corporate authors. Recently, AP changed the preferred spelling of the word which means "airline passenger" from "flier" to "flyer": they looked through websites and other corporate communication of various air travel businesses and discovered the new (correct) spelling.

TL;DR:

- Never ever use "female" as a noun when referring to people (unless you're a lowly functionary who has to contend with a terrible style guide -- it should be changed, but not at the cost of your food security).

- Try to avoid using "female" as an adjective when referring to people. If you need to highlight someone's gender, use "woman" as an adjective instead, or a feminine form of the original noun if it's still used in common parlance ("abbess", "actress").

- If you don't need to highlight someone's gender, don't. Some feminists tack -ess onto normally essless nouns, supposedly to normalize the idea that women can be [profession] too. They're wrong. I won't give examples here so as not to add to google hits in favor of the usage.

- There's no equivalent usage for men; "man writer" sounds stupid. If it's necessary to contrast men and women, "male" and "female" are permissible as adjectives, but consider rephrasing:
"Male programmers report higher levels of job satisfaction" --> "Among programmers, men report higher levels of job satisfaction".

- Inbred cousin-boinkers who went to the neighboring farm that one time and are still reeling from the epic adventure need not reply to this post, at least until they learn proper capitalization.

An quality indie game with indie price but looks and plays like a triple A title game.

Definitely on my wishlist.

Enough with the transference, already. We get it. You're an ignorant, inbred cousin fucker who can't begin to comprehend the meaning of the word "female", even after the issue has already been discussed and explained at length and in great detail. Do yourself a favor and stop embarrassing yourself. Consider yourself schooled and move on.

Wait, I'm sorry. Referring to women as female is somehow derogatory now?

Would you like me to bitch every time people refer to someone as having schizophrenia as though it's a bad thing, or every time someone confuses schizophrenia with bi-polar disorder or dissociative (multiple personality) disorder?

You're taking away from a very real conversation that needs to happen because you want to make it about you. Once again, the mentally ill get locked in the closet and kept hushed.

Isn't it time we started frying some of the *big* fish that are, like, destroying this world?
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When your world is constructed out of insignificant triviality, I suppose that *other* world doesn't really matter anymore; but then again, neither do you. o.O

Wow... didn't expect such a response.

So... i_ni is a male. Got it. :-)

Only to people who are very, very stupid. People who just want to get outraged about something, anything, and therefore define ever new terms as 'derogatory'. So now 'female' and 'male' are derogatory to some idiots. Who cares.

Actually you HAVE to put these terms in official forms every time. In the field 'Sex' on such forms you have to enter 'male' or 'female'. If you enter 'yes please' or 'lots' instead, you get into trouble. Trust me. I tried. ;-)