Gaming Stereotypes: Just like Anywhere Else

There are some in society who believe that political correctness is of the utmost importance both in the mass-media and in interpersonal society. There are others who believe that the PC movement is ruining everything. I find myself of the mindset that, while it's important not to go out of one's way to offend anybody, it's far more imperative not to intentionally aim to break a stereotype.
The gaming industry may be guilty of negatively stereotyping all people - male, female, and every color of the rainbow - but it's important to remain objective about these things. After all, most media outlets tend to depict men and women in one of two polarized ways, the stereotyped and the intentionally astereotypical: where one embraces any and all cliched behavior of different cultural demographics (with slight twists here and there), the other aims to break all established stereotypes while inadvertently reinforcing different, perhaps even more negative ones.
Specifically addressing video games, however, many games addressing visceral, ultra-violent situations tend towards male protagonists. These men, in general, tend towards either muscle-bound, armored titans (Doom, God of War) or masked, mysterious sociopaths (Assassin's Creed, Halo). On the off-chance that the main character is a woman, they usually tend towards the overdone femme fatale archetype: an impossibly beautiful murder-machine (Bloodrayne, Heavenly Sword). The unfortunate twist to this seems to lie mostly in the fact that while any character depth for men is revealed through either caustic one-liners (in the case of the former) or overdone flashbacks (in the case of the latter), most female characters in the action-adventure genre have little or no character development at all, instead serving as eye-candy for the player. Genres other than action games tend more towards character development, but women still fall victim to one of two niches in the story: either a young, troubled protagonist who still leans in the direction minimalistic fashion sense, or a somewhat older figure - either wise and ancient or mature and motherly - swathed from head to toe in a near-burqua like fashion. The only exceptions to this rule I've ever seen have been in adventure games, usually as satellite characters, but aside from basic appearance they don't receive much development simply because designing the main characters is more important.
Racial issues in video games don't phase me as much, but this could be owed to the fact that they simply don't rise as much. While juxtaposing male and female characters is a good way to create dramatic tension in a story through the overused-but-serviceable methods of romantic entanglement or feminist undertones, many designers see the mere suggestion of racial tensions in video games as a good way to shoot themselves in the foot... and, frankly, it's hard to blame them when you look at certain instances in the gaming industry: The black character in Gears of War speaks in heavily overdone ebonics and raps over the ending credits; Chancellor Tekagi in Freelancer monologues in a barely-understandable asian lisp before brutally assaulting the main character with a Katana; and nearly every villain, be they grunts or main characters, in most modern military FPS are either Arab or Latino. One thing I have noticed regarding race in games, however, actually recalls the issues regarding gender: female characters designated for a particular role, especially in games made by western studios, may be typecast as being of a particular racial persuasion. In many games I've played (Aquanox, Freelancer), the woman who will end up with the leading man of the game is usually Asian, the one who turns out to be evil is east-European, and the shy, scientific one who nearly always dies before the end is either Latina or Native American. Why these preferences exist I will never know, but I have kept my eyes open enough to at least notice them.
Ultimately, though, I have a bigger problem with writers who try so hard to stay away from stereotypes that they create characters who are completely unlikeable - for example, the brooding, remorseful protagonist of Haze who constantly questions the morality of his superiors even as he mows down legions of savage Guerilla soldiers, or the more action-oriented female characters who bypass the option of being a bit more rough-around-the-edges than most in favor of being so completely and utterly feminist that they cease to be believable characters... although they may still show an absurd amount of skin for whatever situation they may be in. Perhaps there's some sort of psychological element here regarding the player wanting something they can't have, but it still seems inappropriate.
That said, I think the gaming industry is no more guilty of stereotyping than any other media outlet, whether it be Law and Order in which the villain is either a die-hard street thug or an unscrupulous white-collar control freak, or the New York Times best-seller where the man is gritty and arrogant and the woman is clingy and insipid.