Similarly to when people call their significant others "baby".

That's because they call you "Daddy" in the bedroom.

There's actually sort of a real reason for this. In the traditional monogamous or even polygamous relationship throughout human history it's usually the Male taking care of the female. Women when seeking a relationship are sort of searching for a caretaker that has sort of father like qualities of having enough resources to take care of them, taking a dominant role... etc.

The relationship most similar to it is father and daughter I can sort of see why the linguistics have sort of merged.

Obviously, in the last century, things have changed and the etiquette of relationship dynamics need to be spoken of in a way that's more egalitarian.

But you can't completely deny millions of years of human anthropological behavior. If men usually played more dominant/caretaker roles in relationships in the majority of civilizations, then along that timescale certain behaviors become a bit ingrained biologically through natural selection. It's not surprising to see these attributes creep into language.

As the post I was replying to said - at least they were honest with their intent. They knew their audience and set out to target them. But there are far more people playing games nowadays, so when you're planning a game nowadays you'd probably not zero in on that specific audience.

This shows an inherent lack of understanding. Some men, starved of affection, feel nice when treated similarwly to women. I'd they have their ass grabbed, or they get car called, of whatever - it feels like a nice confidence boost.

However, it entirely overlooks the fact that for many women, this behavior is non-stop, and comes with the very important difference that men are inherently much stronger than women, which means that they constantly feel a lot more threatened and unsafe than men do in the same situations.