Most of the things mentioned here have been tried before.
For example, people tend to forget that TSR released "Al Quadim" as a campaign setting for 2nd Edition AD&D, and that there was even a video game adaption. Like many such things, it did well for a while, but eventually fell by the wayside and was cancelled due to a general lack of interest. Various "Oriental Adventures" type settings keep appearing for the Pen and Paper version of D&D but few last very long. So far no oriental RPG setting has yet to see an OFFICIAL adaption, though there was a game called "Deathlord" for the Apple II which came pretty close.
George Alec Effinger wrote the "Marid" books like "When Gravity Fails" which were Arabic cyberpunk, while interesting, and even seeing a PnP RPG Adaption as a supplement for "Cyberpunk 2020" along with a book for "Hardwired" which was mentioned above. It didn't obtain much interest or ever see a video game adaption.
In general Western sword and sorcery is internationally relatable, as is "World War II" because everyone knows it. It can be argued that Western/American culture has influanced the culture of the rest of the world, especially places like Japan (who themselves have marketed internationally) to the point where the concepts pretty much work anywhere.
When you start messing around with some of these other ideas, you either have to mangle the idea to the point of being almost unrecognizable, or have a better than average chance of actually offending the people who the work is based on.
To put things into perspective, let's look at the biggest hot button issue presented here as an example (I know your looking at things beyond what was mentioned): making a game set in The Middle East. You go too many years in the past before the current Muslim culture and your going to slot them off because of the people they replaced (OMG! The Oppressors Of Muhammad). You show a picture of Muhammad and that could actually get you attacked. In most fantasy games we insert "women's sufferage" into things and re-imagine a european setting that way. Today Muslims freak out about foreign women wandering around uncovered (and stupidly we play along for diplomatic reasons in official functions). Do a fantasy Arabian-Nights thing with women not dressed in body tents or getting slapped around, and again they get offended. Simply put you make this game as described, especially nowadays, and your liable to wind up in a similar position to the dude who wrote "Satanic Verses" and his publisher. You can point fingers at "Aladdin" but understand that was before a lot of the current tensions, and there were both Muslim outcries to the Disney movie, and I believe Disney World still receives periodic bomb threats. If you do a search for "Aladdin" nowadays your liable to find that it's made lists as one of the most contreversial movies of all time (#25 I believe). People wonder why nowadays, but they forget about the furor it raised at the time, especially seeing as Muslim groups have other things to complain/threaten about right now.
See, even when something isn't going to result in violence and threats, it can still offend. What is "exotic, differant, and a change of pace" for the US audience, is how people actually live in other countries. To the people of India for example, Hinduism is not just exotic local color, it's how they live. People like to paint Christians as being intolerant, but for the most part if you make a video game about how The Devil is a good guy, and a bunch of teenagers are going to kill god (the plot of your typical Shin Megami Tensei game) little is going to happen. Do something similar with Hinduism, especially a AAA release video game and your liable to seriously slot some people off.
To put things into perspective India has (from what I've read) a city where Monkeys are sacred, and allowed to run free. It's a crime to harm, or even disturb one. So they pretty much have free reign of the place and do whatever the heck they want. I seem to remember an article about how one of them got into the governor's office and there wasn't much he could do until it left. To us this is nutty and exotic, to them it's a way of life. This is why your not liable to see any near-future games involving "ascendant nations" any time soon. You portray this kind of thing as being "overcome" and in the past, you'll offend people, you try and portray it accuratly but don't do it right, you'll offend people.
Understand, for all of of the navel-gazing, soul-searching, emo-rants about how we in the US are intolerant bigots, we and our closest allies are the most tolerant, and permissive places on the planet. People just don't "get" that people around the world are not like we are in those regards, or what actual society racism, bigotry, or theocratic/pseudo-theocratic goverment is like and how seriously these things are taken. It's not some colorful and
exotic game, or a bit of local color put on for tourists. I think one of the reasons why Americans have a bad reputation is that they don't "get" that and think that games like this would be a "nice change of pace" for example.
-
Otherwise when it comes to the idea of doing a setting like "Cthulhu By Gaslight" or TSR's old "Masque Of The Red Death" setting, I suppose that could be cool as an RPG. We've seen a few things akin to that with games putting say Sherlock Holmes against Cthulhu or Dracula, but they are invariably Adventure games. I don't think we've ever seen an RPG or survival horror game set in that period... except one portion of the old game "Waxworks".
