If you can't write about anyone who doesn't look like you, then you are a shitty writer.
It's a legitimate point of discussion for a lot of mediums, but not video games IMO. With film, television, literature, etc. the medium is at a deep enough level where the fact that a person who: A) Is not X ethnicity and B) Has NEVER had
any meaningful interaction with X ethnicity - will create characters of X characters that make those two tidbits completely obvious (ie. they tend to fall back on what little they do know, which almost always ends up being stereotypes). I wouldn't expect a black man who grew up on the South Side of Chicago to be able to write effectively about teenage suburban white girls in Connecticut for example. Having said that, that doesn't doesn't apply to everything. There are obviously
a lot characters within these mediums that don't thoroughly embody an ethnicity and/or culture, and with these characters, you can basically do what amounts to a palette swap without disruption. I think that is the case for 98% of video games. The medium simply isn't deep enough narratively or thematically. Like the typical Summer Blockbuster, you could swap out the protagonist's ethnicity for X, Y and Z in 98% of games and the integrity of every element of the game will remain 100% in tact.
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