> how "race" ever came to be the word we use instead of "Species" in nearly every video game I know of that has a character creator
The character creator does not let you roleplay as a tree, bacterium, moss, fish, vole, etc.
It lets you roleplay as an anthropomorphised, sentient, sapient, language-using creature, with minor visual differences - a human, an almost-human that looks like a lizard, an almost-human that looks like a cat, an almost-human that looks like a bird, an almost-human with hooves and horns, a short human, a very short human, a tall human with pointy ears, a dark-skinned human, a blue-skinned human, a green-skinned human, a purple-skinned human, and so on.
If you're Commander Shepard, you're going to have sex with all of them. I suspect the progeny, if any, would be fertile. Claims that these are distinct species that all colonised different parts of the galaxy are a thin veneer. True "alien" life would be hyperintelligent shades of blue like in HHGTTG, hiveminds like in Ender's Game, or the amazing fauna in Scavengers Reign. They would not be a human actor wearing a Cornish pasty, even if you say they're Klingons.
I put it to you that your character creator choices are all the same SPECIES, and their differences are minor genetic and cultural groupings driven by geographical isolation, which we call "ethnicity" or "RACE". And all the stories you make up playing RPGs are, in fact, human dramas. You're pretending that the story tensions aren't just ethnic tensions, but that's what they are. And when you kill orcs, drow, revenants or other "baddies", you're actually just killing stand-ins for humans. Humans that your ethnicity/tribe of humans looks down on (if you fight non-sentient monsters or plants, I'll let you off with that)
The character creator does not let you roleplay as a tree, bacterium, moss, fish, vole, etc.
It lets you roleplay as an anthropomorphised, sentient, sapient, language-using creature, with minor visual differences - a human, an almost-human that looks like a lizard, an almost-human that looks like a cat, an almost-human that looks like a bird, an almost-human with hooves and horns, a short human, a very short human, a tall human with pointy ears, a dark-skinned human, a blue-skinned human, a green-skinned human, a purple-skinned human, and so on.
If you're Commander Shepard, you're going to have sex with all of them. I suspect the progeny, if any, would be fertile. Claims that these are distinct species that all colonised different parts of the galaxy are a thin veneer. True "alien" life would be hyperintelligent shades of blue like in HHGTTG, hiveminds like in Ender's Game, or the amazing fauna in Scavengers Reign. They would not be a human actor wearing a Cornish pasty, even if you say they're Klingons.
I put it to you that your character creator choices are all the same SPECIES, and their differences are minor genetic and cultural groupings driven by geographical isolation, which we call "ethnicity" or "RACE". And all the stories you make up playing RPGs are, in fact, human dramas. You're pretending that the story tensions aren't just ethnic tensions, but that's what they are. And when you kill orcs, drow, revenants or other "baddies", you're actually just killing stand-ins for humans. Humans that your ethnicity/tribe of humans looks down on (if you fight non-sentient monsters or plants, I'll let you off with that)