More notices that wouldn’t make up individual posts, but are worth sharing wholesale here!
We’re sorry to inform our alleged readers that the previous Tidy Up Tuesday post requires to come in with basic reading comprehension. As does the entirety of our blog. Keep that in mind next time before responding.
We were sad to learn that not just Battleborn, but every other game we mentioned as a positive in our last throwback, is either dead (Gigantic), discontinued from further development (Dirty Bomb) or practically dead due to near-zero player engagement (Battleborn).
Makes it even worse that the only successful diverse mainstream hero shooter multiplayer out there is Overwatch, which seems to have concluded that they already met their melanin and body type variety quota.
skinny conventionally attractive female characters! Have Overwatch take responsibility for what it set out to do!
Praising media creators for doing things they should have been doing for a long time, let alone the bare minimum of it, won’t get us anywhere. There’s a difference between actual progress and finally getting to something that should be a given, like decent representation.
Same character class, same style of game, three different takes on it.
Stylistic choices don’t exist in a vacuum.
Dirty Bomb really doesn’t get enough credit for it’s walking the walk when it comes to egalitarian character designs and commitment to diversity. Every mercenary has a story, a personality and gear that is suitable to them – on top of that, they’re not afraid to let things get ugly. Have a look at how Proxy (basically their equivalent of Tracer in terms of personality) looks lately:
Needless to say Sparks as a white-clad medic who’s only thoughts on her profession is “Call me Sparks. I heal. I kill. Is ironic paradox. Yadda Yadda.” is a wonderful breath of fresh air in games.
Ambra from Battleborn is certainly not ideal, but as we’ve discussed before her design reeks of the Creepy Marketing Guy influence – but they at least made her a unique character and worked in no small amount of entertaining quirk.
Mercy… oh Mercy.
– wincenworks
Before anyone comes to say we’re taking things out of context or comparing apples to oranges, yes, all those games have their own aesthetic and we should should judge how each character looks within it. Dirty Bomb is quite realistic, Battleborn is very cartoony and Overwatch lies somewhere in the middle.
And we’re still not okay with boobplate on Galilea, even though Battleborn is more heavily stylized.
Speaking of ensemble games with cartoony aesthetic, let’s not forget about Gigantic, which while not boobplate-free (on their healer character, no less), does really good with gender and age balance among their cast.
~Ozzie
This week’s throwback: a reminder that Blizzard’s bland approach to female character design really pales in comparison to competition.
Also that Battleborn never had to be asked to deliver Black (or Black-coded, considering the sci-fi fantasy setting) playable women.
Okay, yes, baby steps, Blizzard has got a long history of being terrible and a lot unlearning to do. But they could at least try to show some self-awareness of this.
And it’s not only body diversity which seems to be a challenge for female Overwatch characters, so is their AGE!
D.Va is actually the youngest in the whole ensemble (19). Female characters don’t get older than 34 (Mercy), while male ones range from 20 (if you count Zenyatta, a robot) or 25 (Junkrat) all the way up to 61 (Reinhardt).
The overall design of D.Va is perplexing on so many levels, too. What new is she supposed to contribute? Yet another young, thin, conventionally pretty woman in a catsuit… something the game (and the industry as a whole) so totally lacked before! Even her silly pseudonym rubs in that she’s a diva. The idea of a Korean professional gamer-turned-mecha pilot is very cool (even if the backstory rips off Evangelion/Pacific Rim), but why make her look so generic… and paint her mech pink?
My most optimistic guess: one of many Blizzard’s CreepyMarketingGuys saw Zarya and said “So, we’re doing female tanks now? Okay, but next one is gonna be the SEXY tank! And make her more PINK!”
Remember when Blizzard was doing female characters better in Overwatch?
Yeah, me neither.
We will be doing a full post about the new Widowmaker skin, but until then, we just wanted to throwback to this post about all the effort Blizzard is putting into their diversity. It still doesn’t make sense for Widow to wear those clothes because,
a) she is a sniper and that top just screams nip slip; and
b) she’s a sniper, who’s she going to be ‘distracting’ exactly from 2 miles away?
It also just looks really ugly? It really looks like someone designed a practical suit for her, and then Creepy Marketing Guy walked in and told them to cut a third of it off, so they just did, without any design adjustment.
-Icy
edit: Since a lot of replies ignore that the original post is almost 1,5 years old and mentioning newer characters is beside the point Icy is making about Widowmaker, let’s quickly address this: We do acknowledge how Ana Amari is a cool non-sexualized old lady (even if squarely within OW’s established beauty standards) and Orisa is a cool female robot. That said, there are still problems with how old characters continue to be depicted and adding new heroes doesn’t change that.
~Ozzie
PS: Mercy is 37, not 34 – my bad. She looks neither age, regardless.
Same character class, same style of game, three different takes on it.
Stylistic choices don’t exist in a vacuum.
Dirty Bomb really doesn’t get enough credit for it’s walking the walk when it comes to egalitarian character designs and commitment to diversity. Every mercenary has a story, a personality and gear that is suitable to them – on top of that, they’re not afraid to let things get ugly. Have a look at how Proxy (basically their equivalent of Tracer in terms of personality) looks lately:
Needless to say Sparks as a white-clad medic who’s only thoughts on her profession is “Call me Sparks. I heal. I kill. Is ironic paradox. Yadda Yadda.” is a wonderful breath of fresh air in games.
Ambra from Battleborn is certainly not ideal, but as we’ve discussed before her design reeks of the Creepy Marketing Guy influence – but they at least made her a unique character and worked in no small amount of entertaining quirk.
Mercy… oh Mercy.
– wincenworks
Before anyone comes to say we’re taking things out of context or comparing apples to oranges, yes, all those games have their own aesthetic and we should should judge how each character looks within it. Dirty Bomb is quite realistic, Battleborn is very cartoony and Overwatch lies somewhere in the middle.
And we’re still not okay with boobplate on Galilea, even though Battleborn is more heavily stylized.
Speaking of ensemble games with cartoony aesthetic, let’s not forget about Gigantic, which while not boobplate-free (on their healer character, no less), does really good with gender and age balance among their cast.
Okay, yes, baby steps, Blizzard has got a long history of being terrible and a lot unlearning to do. But they could at least try to show some self-awareness of this.
And it’s not only body diversity which seems to be a challenge for female Overwatch characters, so is their AGE!
D.Va is actually the youngest in the whole ensemble (19). Female characters don’t get older than 34 37 (Mercy), while male ones range from 20 (if you count Zenyatta, a robot) or 25 (Junkrat) all the way up to 61 (Reinhardt).
The overall design of D.Va is perplexing on so many levels, too. What new is she supposed to contribute? Yet another young, thin, conventionally pretty woman in a catsuit… something the game (and the industry as a whole) so totally lacked before! Even her silly pseudonym rubs in that she’s a diva. The idea of a Korean professional gamer-turned-mecha pilot is very cool (even if the backstory rips off Evangelion/Pacific Rim), but why make her look so generic… and paint her mech pink?
My most optimistic guess: one of many Blizzard’s CreepyMarketingGuys saw Zarya and said “So, we’re doing female tanks now? Okay, but next one is gonna be the SEXY tank! And make her more PINK!”
Hey, awesome blog! You’ve already made a post about Emily Kaldwin in Dishonored 2, but I just wanted to ask your opinion on this year’s E3 in general. Not only were there more women presenters than ever, but signs of real progress when it comes to representation for women:
As noted, Emily from Dishonored 2!
The shieldmaiden from Eitr!
Lara Croft from Rise of the Tomb Raider, having finally exchanged her 90s male-gaze outfit for something one would actually raid a tomb with!
Aloy from Horizon: Zero Dawn! I think there’s still a discussion to be had here about cultural appropriation, but at least she was designed as a hunter rather than eye candy.
The protagonist from Recore!
Evie Frye from AC: Syndicate! I’m still really cynical about the fact that she’s more or less an add-on to her brother’s story and that she does the stealthy bits while her brother does the punchy bits, but her outfit is very reasonable.
Rae from Beyond Eyes! It’s great to see more non-violent games on display too.
The mercs from Dirty Bomb!
And of course, Faith from Mirror’s Edge: Catalyst.
The majority of characters on display are still white and slim, but it’s a noticeable improvement from last year – and it was nice to hear cheers from the audience when it was announced that women were playable in FIFA and Fallout 4.
Thank you the line up. While certainly are issues with each individual game and depiction it is great that this year E3′s character line up included many badass women who are dressed to get shit done.
I sincerely hope this will become an ongoing trend in video games and one that lasts a long, long time. We shall certainly have more to say on various titles as time and further information is released.
Hey, awesome blog! You’ve already made a post about Emily Kaldwin in Dishonored 2, but I just wanted to ask your opinion on this year’s E3 in general. Not only were there more women presenters than ever, but signs of real progress when it comes to representation for women:
As noted, Emily from Dishonored 2!
The shieldmaiden from Eitr!
Lara Croft from Rise of the Tomb Raider, having finally exchanged her 90s male-gaze outfit for something one would actually raid a tomb with!
Aloy from Horizon: Zero Dawn! I think there’s still a discussion to be had here about cultural appropriation, but at least she was designed as a hunter rather than eye candy.
The protagonist from Recore!
Evie Frye from AC: Syndicate! I’m still really cynical about the fact that she’s more or less an add-on to her brother’s story and that she does the stealthy bits while her brother does the punchy bits, but her outfit is very reasonable.
Rae from Beyond Eyes! It’s great to see more non-violent games on display too.
The mercs from Dirty Bomb!
And of course, Faith from Mirror’s Edge: Catalyst.
The majority of characters on display are still white and slim, but it’s a noticeable improvement from last year – and it was nice to hear cheers from the audience when it was announced that women were playable in FIFA and Fallout 4.
Thank you the line up. While certainly are issues with each individual game and depiction it is great that this year E3′s character line up included many badass women who are dressed to get shit done.
I sincerely hope this will become an ongoing trend in video games and one that lasts a long, long time. We shall certainly have more to say on various titles as time and further information is released.
