Gaming Stereotypes

[Larb]

This is all my opinion but here we go.

I think humans are usually the primary antagonists because the people who are creating them and the intended "consumer" find it easier to identify with them and there are plenty of real world human civilizations from which to draw reference.

Other things you'll note is that most of the human civilizations are also white skinned and often set in a medieval european like world. Another common thing is the whole "relics of a past civilization". Because european civilisation grew amongst the old relics of ancient Rome.

The humans might have a range of cultures as well but they'll often draw on real world examples (in dragon age for example, Ferelden is roughly english, and Orlais is french).

On the other hand other races tend to be "mono cultures" following established ideas (elves live in forests, dwarves live in the mountains, etc etc. There's not much ethnic diversity amongst them).

I think it's mostly subconscious or a case of people writing what they know and I admit I am partly guilty of the same thing although I have made an effort to avoid many of the traps. I'm not aware of many non-white non-european/american fantasy authors unfortunately. Which is a shame because I bet they would add some fresh ideas to the whole genre.

In regards to the racism from humans against other demi-humans, I think it is something of a lazy crutch myself. It seems people want to put in an edgy element of racism but they want to avoid the potential controversy of having humans doing it to each other due to skin colour or culture. Given it is a heated issue in real life, it's easier to just have all in-world racism directed at the demi-humans.