(To add something: not to mention, XIV-XVI is a bit late for “middle ages” but well, you can see all kind of stuff in fantasy, like plate armour knights going head to head with Roman Empire Collapse barbarians…)
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Nearly all the antagonists in the LoTR series are non-human.
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You would be wrong to put them as bad guys.
Or as heroes.
Read on the period of the Taifas, for example, and you have Christian kings going to battle with other Christians kings in defense of Muslim kings because holy shit, you see the tribute I get from those guys? HAND OFF YOU JERK, THOSE ARE MY MUSLIMS.
Then a Muslim prince would call a Christian one to help killing another Muslim prince because fuck that guy, his family usurped mine and …
Games of Thrones would have nothing on that, is what I say 
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What’s even more interesting is that there is diversity in Japan, which we’re just not aware of and I suspect it has to do with racism in Japan. The Ainu specifically come to mind.
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But aren’t you then saying that you disagree that every single game should change or for that matter that every single game should stay as is?
I get what you mean to say, but it is not at all what you’re saying, given that one of these options is already the default and the other is highly resisted.
They’re not equivalent.
In other words, in a fair world, you’d be right, given the actual circumstances of this world, you’re missing the point.
I don’t recall the colour of characters being mentioned at all in the Hobbit/LotR books. Good guys or bad guys. But then, that wasn’t really something I was looking for, either.
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I suppose I think that the point should be to make lots of more diverse games rather than eliminating the non-diverse ones. In my view the best way to do this is by making the games industry more diverse, especially at the levels where creative decisions are made. That way, hopefully we end up with more diversity in games without creating artificial, stifling, tokenistic rules for how games have to be made.
To put it in slightly silly terms, let’s introduce quotas for game devs, not for game characters.
Also, I’d love to play more fantasy games that aren’t based on Tolkien’s Middle Earth. (For example If I’m not mistaken, the 2008 Prince of Persia was based on zoroastrianism.)
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First; don’t read what I’m about to say as a defense or endorsement of the lack of diversity. Things, all things, need more diversity.
Sadly necessary disclaimer out of the way… This isn’t surprising, as most games are made by white people, so they default to themselves for characters. It is the easiest way, and they probably do it without thinking. What we need isn’t going to be shoe horning shallow not-white-males into games, but getting a more diverse crowd making games (and movies, and shows, and…). Also, I think there is a fear that if you write a not-you character, and innocently drop the ball a bit, things can go bad, and you can quickly be branded a racist, sexist, or any other ist.
I tried my hand with fiction, and found I had a very hard time with not-me characters, not because of any deep racist feelings, but because I wouldn’t be able to capture the nuance of someone’s life that I have never experiences. Great writers can do this; and most writers are not great writers, especially in the space of games writing. I also had the constant fear of accidently narrowing a character into a stereotype inadvertantly. Again, no racism, but for the lack of personal experience.
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Are you saying that additional, more diverse games need to be created but some games need to be kept all white?
I’m asking because I don’t follow.
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Don’t count on it.
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[quote=“tachin1, post:53, topic:58982”]Are you saying that additional, more diverse games need to be created but some games need to be kept all white?
I’m asking because I don’t follow.[/quote]
I’m not saying that there’s any need for “all-white” games, no. I just don’t see anything wrong with individual games which don’t have a racially diverse “cast”, if that makes sense in the world being portrayed.
Obviously, to portray present day America as if there are no black people there, for example, would be very strange and highly questionable. But I don’t think it always makes sense to “call out” individual games for not including a racially diverse cast. In some cases it does make sense to “call out” a particular game, but I don’t think there can be a hard and fast rule that says “every game MUST have a playable character of every ethnic group”.
There are some games where this wouldn’t make sense. To give a trivial example, if you have a game where you are an American spy infiltrating Nazi Germany, you’re not going to send a black spy, and you’re not going to see many black people in Nazi Germany either.
Ultimately, if there was a hell of a lot more diversity in games as a whole, would it matter if there were some games which were less diverse in their cast, if that made sense in the world being portrayed?
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The Southrons (I might have the name wrong) were definitely a cringe worthy racial stereotype as bad guys. Every time I read LOTR it shocks me, more than the fact that there is basically one female character in the whole book that is capable of doing anything.
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Great story I heard recently on NPR about racism in Japan:
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You know what they say – If you’re not angry, you’re not paying attention!
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A quick googling shows that you are indeed correct (and an interesting discussion of racism in Tolkien’s work can be found here). So, I blame my lack of recollection on the fact that I haven’t read the books in 20 years or so, and teenaged-me wasn’t particularly interested in the nuances of racial stereotypes in fiction. 
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There are a large number of games where the only protagonists available are East Asian. Although again, in many of these cases it’s the only playable characters being from the majority ethnic group in the country that made the game.
Not always, though- for instance, in Dynasty Warriors (which is a Japanese game) pretty much the entire cast of characters are Chinese.
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