Ana Amari certainly looks amazing and greatly boosts representation for badass mothers and older women of color though I notice something.
Of her eleven skins: Five show Ana as her glorious mature-aged self, four show her with her face completely covered and two show her as young. In fact there are zero Legendary skins where you can see Ana’s beautiful older face.
And the skins with her as a young woman don’t really do anything surprising with her, it’s not like Genji’s showing him as pre-cybernetic, it’s just… well:
So while it’s fantastic that Blizzard has started to realize that women in their sixties are dramatically under represented in action games – it’s kind of a shame that they couldn’t commit to it the whole way.
– wincenworks
Ana is a very welcome addition to Overwatch’s cast (heavens know we’re in a desperate need for older women in media, especially games), though I can’t help but notice how, not unlike Zayra, she’s a very safe approach to diversity. While being 60, she’s at the “conventionally attractive lady with grey hair and a couple facial lines” side of old person design.
Also, the fact that Ana’s clothes look very realistic for a sniper make Widowmaker’s hypersexualization stand out even more. With changes Blizzard made so far, they’ve proven a couple of times how they can edit and add things to the game as they please, but are afraid to change all that much
~Ozzie
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The video as a whole is a really great introduction to character posing in animation and why Tracer’s “lookatmubutt” poseneeded to be replaced. But the last bit is the most important part for BABD, as Dan brings up how sexualization tends to compromise everything else that is established about a female characterinstead of being properly used as a character-building tool. Not surprisingly, twoheroines we talked about a lot on BABD are brought up as examples.
Regarding Tracer’s pose redo, while I agree the new one is technically more in-character and dynamic, I still think Blizzard did a half-hearted fix job by choosing posing that’s still gratuitously sexualized for the “improved” look.
Since Overwatch’s release date is pending, I’ve been seeing a lot of people getting excited about it’s diversity (particularly in comparison to it’s primary rival) and Tracer as a character – and I’ve noticed something.
Pretty much every favorite Tracer moment tends to frame her from the shoulders up for two reasons. The first is that her facial expressions are magic (hopefully Disney is taking notes) and secondly because most of the top half of her costume seems designed with her personality and role in mind.
The rest of it seems designed with the intent to make sure that there’s no confusion here, the plucky, fun female character is also definitely slim and ha great legs and butt.
Clearly her appeal is enough they really didn’t need to do that.
The video as a whole is a really great introduction to character posing in animation and why Tracer’s “lookatmubutt” poseneeded to be replaced. But the last bit is the most important part for BABD, as Dan brings up how sexualization tends to compromise everything else that is established about a female characterinstead of being properly used as a character-building tool. Not surprisingly, twoheroines we talked about a lot on BABD are brought up as examples.
Regarding Tracer’s pose redo, while I agree the new one is technically more in-character and dynamic, I still think Blizzard did a half-hearted fix job by choosing posing that’s still gratuitously sexualized for the “improved” look.
Since Overwatch’s release date is pending, I’ve been seeing a lot of people getting excited about it’s diversity (particularly in comparison to it’s primary rival) and Tracer as a character – and I’ve noticed something.
Pretty much every favorite Tracer moment tends to frame her from the shoulders up for two reasons. The first is that her facial expressions are magic (hopefully Disney is taking notes) and secondly because most of the top half of her costume seems designed with her personality and role in mind.
The rest of it seems designed with the intent to make sure that there’s no confusion here, the plucky, fun female character is also definitely slim and ha great legs and butt.
Clearly her appeal is enough they really didn’t need to do that.
League of Legend’s newest champion, Taliyah, the Stoneweaver, is another step forward towards more diversity and non-sexualized female champions for them. As usual, this was accompanied by a big outcry of some players about Riot Games not making sexy lady champions anymore, as seen in a lot of comments on her reveal video. Interestingly, Taliyah’s lead designer addressed this on twitter.
I hope they continue to fill the huge gaps in diversity first and if they make a sexy champion eventually again, treat it as the exception that it should be.
Good news:League of Legends, released another female champion, after Illaoi, who is neither objectified nor looks like a repainted clone of all the other characters. People who love Toph from Avatar the Last Airbender or Terra from the 2003 Teen Titans cartoon will likely enjoy her a lot!
Probably a good time to bring this back since, well we’re still having people assuring us that Blizzard – a company with literally billions of dollars and armies of talent people… is really trying! Just look at them trying so hard with Overwatch! Examples include going from this:
To this:
This is not, by any stretch of the imagination – trying. There is no classroom in the world where this would be considered a passing grade improvement despite the claims of caring by lead. (If you missed the outrage by… people claiming others are outraged, there’s a great summary here.)
Yes, it is scary for companies to change up imagery when working with an established brand – but making the actual changes is the only way that it still perpetuates all the problems. Ultimately, all they’re doing is well…
The only way they’re going to fix things is to really take an actual whole new direction with it – and they probably won’t get that right the first time either.
Neither of these games improved by trying to get credit for minimalist changes and writing nice quotes about how their game is for everyone. They did by actually digging into what was wrong and looking at ways to avoid doing that.
Probably a good time to bring this back since, well we’re still having people assuring us that Blizzard – a company with literally billions of dollars and armies of talent people… is really trying! Just look at them trying so hard with Overwatch! Examples include going from this:
To this:
This is not, by any stretch of the imagination – trying. There is no classroom in the world where this would be considered a passing grade improvement despite the claims of caring by lead. (If you missed the outrage by… people claiming others are outraged, there’s a great summary here.)
Yes, it is scary for companies to change up imagery when working with an established brand – but making the actual changes is the only way that it still perpetuates all the problems. Ultimately, all they’re doing is well…
The only way they’re going to fix things is to really take an actual whole new direction with it – and they probably won’t get that right the first time either.
Neither of these games improved by trying to get credit for minimalist changes and writing nice quotes about how their game is for everyone. They did by actually digging into what was wrong and looking at ways to avoid doing that.
