Tag: Blizzard

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Tidy Up Tuesday #85

Redesign streams are very likely to come back this weekend! Stay tuned till Friday for more info!

Some elaboration on the obviously contentious topic of Ashe being the next Overwatch heroine:

  • Arguing over whether she’s a “true” albino or not completely misses the point of the whole discussion. Even if Ashe was (and her design, even when accounted for makeup, makes a shitty job of conveying albinism in person of any ethnicity), this changes absolutely nothing about Blizzard electing to give another pale, thin conventionally attractive woman spot in the cast rather than finally creating a playable Black woman. Especially since she’s clearly not a PoC albino, as many rebloggers pointed out.
  • People claiming that racebending a supposed albino to be Black is somehow taking away from albino representation are concern trolls. 
  • Literally all “arguments” about Overwatch “already having” playable Black female representation are neatly listed and debunked in this handy masterpost by @geegee-wellplayed​. Please go read it and hand the link to anyone who claims that Symmetra/the Amaris/Sombra/Efi/Lucio is all that Black women need to identify with in the game. 
  • “Ashe is a gang leader, so making her black would be a bad look” rhetoric makes as much sense as any Thermian argument – she doesn’t have to be made as an antagonistic gang leader or to be (extremely) white. It was entirely Blizzard’s choice to release a character like that instead of literally anyone else. 
  • For some more detailed commentary about overall blandness of Ashe’s character design, please read this writeup by our reader @red-queen-on-the-heathen-throne
  • If you actually think that @darthputa​ or anyone (particularly PoC) doing race-bent redesigns of white characters from predominantly white media is the real racist and you still follow this blog, please unfollow immediately. Or at the very least tell us, so we can block you. 

Since it wasn’t the first time we discussed the matter, with the Ashe post we introduced the representation and diversity tags. We’re still working on re-tagging old posts with them, so if you guys spot in our archives something related to those topics and not yet tagged, please drop us a note!

~Ozzie, – wincenworks & – Icy

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darthputa:

scp2008:

trilllizard666:

darthputa:

What could have been if Blizzard and Overwatch had women of color on their teams and cared about their black fans…

….i don’t know how to break this to you

but that’s clearly a character with albinism of some kind

she could feasibly be any race, but with albinism

which is a remarkably rare medical condition

albinos of every race exist

also….isn’t it kinda very racist to put bigger lips like that in a “black” racebend? lmao

that is true op why did you make the person have bigger lips?

because im a black woman and I have big ass lips and wanted her to have big ass juicy lips

[click on images to see them, if you’re not viewing from Tumblr dashboard]

So let me get this straight…

  1. Overwatch churns out like third white chick in a row.
  2. Fed up fan of color racebends her to show what it would look like if Blizz actually cared to have black female representation.
  3. And, according to rabid Blizzard fanboys, now SHE is the racist one, because this albino character might as well not be intended to be white?

If you don’t see anything wrong with that logic, unfollow our blog immediately. 

Seriously. We don’t want you here. 

~Ozzie 

Firstly, I definitely recommend everyone read this piece by Black Girl Gamers.

By far the most common certain demographic response seems to have been to claim that it’s fine that literally none of Overwatch’s 25 playable characters is a black woman because line up includes robots, an ape and a hamster… so naturally is the most diverse range possible.

That of course, is not even vaguely what “diversity” is about and even Blizzard executives Chris Metzen (now retired) and Jeff Kaplan (definitely not retired) understand that:

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The problem is: Overwatch got prematurely rubber stamped for “good diversity” primarily for having higher than the (abysmal) industry standard for female, brown and old lady characters. (ie, some characters exist).

Now they’ve got that kudos, they’re not interested in actually delivering on promises or even maintaining the baseline. 

Well it’s either that, or they decided that a key demographic who needs over representation is conventionally sexually attractive white women.  Specifically ones who are almost identical to Widowmaker. [link]

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(Again, I remind you – it is a stated goal of Blizzard to make this game about better representation for everyone, especially women, and they have leaned into every ounce of the abundant of praise they have received regarding representation and diversity in the past three years)

And if all of that wasn’t already bad enough:

There is seriously no way that anyone can believe that Blizzard, as a company, have any interest in good representation and making everyone feel welcome beyond sound bytes and quick stunts they can do to seek publicity boosts.

– wincenworks

BABD highly recommends you consider supporting:

Black Girl Gamers ( www | twitter | twitch )
I Need Diverse Games ( www | twitter | twitch | patreon ) 

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Cool for the Summer Skins (NSFW)

Our first (and definitely not last) foray into redrawing Overwatch. Their summer 2017 skins were a strange mix of bland and safe, cosplay, and a single actually good idea (grill dad 76). We decided that wouldn’t do, and so picked two of the more unsatisfactory skins in the collection to redesign and actually have some fun with!

Widowmaker 

When I first saw Widow’s boring, predictable summer skin, I was mildly annoyed. But after giving it some thought, I became hugely disappointed that they didn’t make her into a fisherman! The fishing rod that looks like a sniper rifle? She even has a grappling hook that could be made to look like she’s throwing a fishing line. What a missed opportunity.

So I made try-explaining-those-tanlines Widow into fishing-day Widow, complete with plaid shirt and huge rubber boots. Because her legs are so fricking long, I should probably have given her hip waders, which are rubber boots that go up to your thighs or higher. They’re actually appropriate thigh-high boots, for once! Given more time, I could have also given her more accessories on her belt, like a bunch of lures and containers with bait.

This is one of those ideas that I may come back to and actually design properly

in the future.

-Icy

Mercy

I found the “Nike” Mercy skin utterly uninteresting and kinda overdesigned. to fight that, I changed her tunic to have a shorter “tabbard”, expose one breast (because why not?) and cover up more of her butt. 

Got rid of those sandals with weird, borderline impossible to wear straps, and replaced them with winged Nike sneakers. 

And to make more serious attempt at portraying her as Nike, the goddess of victory, I put the laurel in her hand, instead of head, which is this mythical figure’s most basic attribute, right after the wings. And one more in her mouth, to make her more cheeky.

~Ozzie

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Red is for the High Inquisitor skin, Blue is additionals from the Celestial Empress skin

Clickbait Title: You Won’t Believe What Character Blizzard is Adding to Heroes of the Storm!

Having blocked out most of my memories of playing World of Warcraft (and I didn’t do raids), I didn’t remember Sally Whitemane, so boy was I surprised to learn she led a religious order!

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I’m not sure how anybody took this character seriously as an authority figure of any kind. Her outfit looks like something out of a fetish lingerie catalog. The HotS design is almost exactly the same as her original WoW model, which really highlights how much effort Blizzard is putting into doing women better.

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Not to mention, her first alternative skin is some kind of scissors accident, rather than, for example, her Horseman version? Yeah, she became one of WoW’s Four Horsemen (the only woman in the current lineup, of course).

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I mean, give her some padding on her exposed stomach, and that would be a fine alternate skin! But she does have a lot of skull motifs all over, so maybe they thought it would be too similar-looking to Sonya’s Death Knight skins.

-Icy

h/t: @evjazurian

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bikiniarmorbattledamage:

(submitted by Jury) 

Whoah. The absurd of Tera, the universal example of logic-defying female battle outfits, advertising itself to have “practical armor”… that is skin-tight and boobsock-y on women leaves me astonished. 

This armor is so totally practical that even Erik Larsen, the devoted anti-practicality in women’s costumes guy, probably wouldn’t mind it. 

Dear Tera’s Creepy Maketing Guy: Just because boobplate and figure-hugging metal cover more than what you usually call “armor”, it doesn’t mean you should label it as “practical”. 

~Ozzie

I feel it’s time to bring this back, not just because laughing at Tera’s idea of quality armor never gets old, there’s a funny thing I noticed.  I feel like I’ve seen this… somewhere recently… 

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Yes to everyone assuring us that Blizzard is really trying… we have confirmation they are trying about as hard as Tera was last year.

Hooray.

– wincenworks

More on Overwatch on BABD | More on Tera on BABD

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the-midnight-doe submitted (and Ozzie bingo’d):

And on today’s episode of Doing Women Better™, Blizzard finally granted us the much requested Magician Symmetra. Only instead of going for something super classy like the many fan interpretations out there or even just ladies in suits from real life, they went with…this.

Lack of pants and framing her bust (what is even with those metal plates) aside, the fact that this is a legendary skin and costs 3000 credits when it’s so close to her default skin makes this whole thing very disappointing. 

Thanks for submitting this highly requested post, including some quality scathing commentary! The Saga of Pantless Symmetra continues. 

This would be insulting enough just by the virtue of being a fetishy leotard instead of a suit, but what the hell are those boob-holder bars?! 
They’re some sort of garbage afterthought slapped on to make this look more “sci-fi”, I guess? Why would a costume need that? Because you can’t be science fiction without framing the tits with random pieces of metal? 

Since the bingo lacks a “What the fuck am I looking at?!” square, I marked “Boobplate” instead.

Here’s some closeup, to see their full absurdity, provided by @red-queen-on-the-heathen-throne:

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Fun fact: a convention I attended last week had an Overwatch: Character design done right! talk that I just couldn’t subject myself to come to, both out of the fear of my brain melting on sight and because I didn’t want to rain on some enthusiastic fan’s parade when the time for Q&A comes. 

I’m still amused that at the same time Blizzard made THIS, easily disproving the “character design done right” claim. 

But sure, Overwatch is totally ready to do women better. Anytime now.

~Ozzie 

#GiveSymmetraPants2k18