Let’s take a moment of thoughtful appreciation for the fact that they devoted an article to concisely sum up a huge chunk of our “creative freedom” tag.
~Ozzie
The ongoing saga of people getting outraged that Blizzard uses their beta period as a beta period and adjusts the game. It’s worth mentioning that Blizzard also removed a tasteless masturbation joke at the same time.
Ordinarily we wait longer before we bring back posts but it seems that there’s been a recent event involving a certain product we post about from time to time, and the response by certain demographics has been woefully predictable.
In case you missed it: Blizzard has revealed via a comic for people who enjoy Overwatch and want more fluff (x): Tracer lives with her female romantic partner. How did the aforementioned demographic reply?
So yes, predictably it turns out that the people who are used to being pandered to constantly don’t actually appreciate creative freedom – they just think it makes a cool catchphrase (or magic incantation in some cases).
There was, however, a bright side: the response from women who celebrated that Overatch’s mascot character was confirmed to a lady attracted to ladies, and loudly reaffirmed their appreciation of as well as their right to representation. That was truly awesome.
– wincenworks
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The Rigged Slot Machine – Overwatch’s Female Character Creating Engine
Every time we criticize female sexualization in Overwatch, we’re sure to get at least a single reply along the lines of “What’s wrong with having ONE sexy assassin/pilot/etc. in the game?”, to which our answer would be “Nothing. But where’s that ONE person you’re talking about? We see a whole bunch. Also why no male character is coded unequivocally sexy with his design and/or clothes and/or posing and/or personality?”
I figured the best way to illustrate this is a rigged slot machine, in which slot devoted to describing character design lands on “sexy” 6 out of 8 times.
All heroes in the game have unique ethnic and cultural backgrounds, backstories and personalities. Most of them look quite diverse. The problem is that for women in Overwatch, more often than not,
the visual design compromises that in one way or another, in favor of making them conventionally attractive for the presumed cishet male gamer.
Breakdown of all the concerns we have with characters under the cut:
Symmetra, the Sexy Indian Architect: (yes, we know the in-universe word is architech, but isn’t really relevant nor is it our job to explain Blizzard’s convoluted lore). Everything about her pantless costume and non-dance related posing is devoted to accentuating her hourglass figure, especially the thighs and hips. Also she’s wearing thigh-high high heels for no reason other than to look sexy to the audience – even Blizzard knows this.
D.Va, the Sexy Korean Mecha Pilot: D.Va is a teenage gamer celebrity. She’s girly, flirty, flamboyant and confident. Being a sexy character suits her personality and backstory. Her biggest sin is that she was revealed very late in the beta, so among all the gratuitously sexualized women, her genuine sexyness doesn’t stand out. Overwatch missed an opportunity when they didn’t make her THE sexy female character in the cast of diverse women with varying degrees of femininity.
Mercy the Sexy Swiss Healer: She’s a doctor devoted to heal the wounded with the help of her high-tech suit… suit that is so skin-tight it involves a boobplate. We can assure there’s nothing high-tech about separate boob bumps in a rigid breastplate meant for protection. Also, angel-themed character just happens to be a pale, blue-eyed blonde? How subtle!
Pharah, the Sexy Egyptian Soldier: Personality-, animation- and story-wise, a professional and devoted soldier in every inch. Design-wise… her (obviously Samus-inspired) battle suit includes what looks like a metal thong. And funny how a female soldier character in gender-ambiguous armor just happens to have long, luxurious hair and perfectly made up face under that helmet. If she was a man she’d have the battle hardened, probably scarred, grizzled Male Protagonist™ look, including the buzzcut that conveniently cuts down on polygons while conveying military pragmatism.
Widowmaker the Sexy French Assassin: Some say she’s justified in looking sexy, as her design coveys a femme fatale. While it’s not wrong to have a femme fatale in the lineup (as long as it’s played as more than “good is chaste, evil is sexy”), we don’t see how that connects to this particular character, given her personality and story. Why someone who was kidnapped, brainwashed and turned into a perfect unemotional killer would dress in something that looks like bodypaint with impossibly deep cleavage and high heels? How is such look helpful for her job as a sniper? Why does every male character from this archetype look totally different than her?
Zarya, the Beefy Russian Gunner: The first attempt for a different female body type in Overwatch. Why does her suit includes boobplate, though? Much like Pharah, she doesn’t seem to have any of the grit we come to expect from heavy duty soldiers when they happen to be men.
Mei, the Curvy Chinese Scientist: Only problem with her is that we don’t know for sure whether she is significantly chubby/curvy (compared to all the thin women around) or if her thick arctic clothes make her look that way. She certainly doesn’t have her body type conveyed to the same extent as, say, Roadhog.
ALL OF THEM: They’re all young (19-34), with conventionally pretty faces (even Zarya and Mei, who are supposed to be somewhat masculine and chubby, respectively, don’t veer off any far from Western beauty standard). There’s very little body type variety. Literally half of the women are ethnically white, while two East Asian characters sport pale completions.
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The Rigged Slot Machine – Overwatch’s Female Character Creating Engine
Every time we criticize female sexualization in Overwatch, we’re sure to get at least a single reply along the lines of “What’s wrong with having ONE sexy assassin/pilot/etc. in the game?”, to which our answer would be “Nothing. But where’s that ONE person you’re talking about? We see a whole bunch. Also why no male character is coded unequivocally sexy with his design and/or clothes and/or posing and/or personality?”
I figured the best way to illustrate this is a rigged slot machine, in which slot devoted to describing character design lands on “sexy” 6 out of 8 times.
All heroes in the game have unique ethnic and cultural backgrounds, backstories and personalities. Most of them look quite diverse. The problem is that for women in Overwatch, more often than not,
the visual design compromises that in one way or another, in favor of making them conventionally attractive for the presumed cishet male gamer.
Breakdown of all the concerns we have with characters under the cut:
Symmetra, the Sexy Indian Architect: (yes, we know the in-universe word is architech, but isn’t really relevant nor is it our job to explain Blizzard’s convoluted lore). Everything about her pantless costume and non-dance related posing is devoted to accentuating her hourglass figure, especially the thighs and hips. Also she’s wearing thigh-high high heels for no reason other than to look sexy to the audience – even Blizzard knows this.
D.Va, the Sexy Korean Mecha Pilot: D.Va is a teenage gamer celebrity. She’s girly, flirty, flamboyant and confident. Being a sexy character suits her personality and backstory. Her biggest sin is that she was revealed very late in the beta, so among all the gratuitously sexualized women, her genuine sexyness doesn’t stand out. Overwatch missed an opportunity when they didn’t make her THE sexy female character in the cast of diverse women with varying degrees of femininity.
Mercy the Sexy Swiss Healer: She’s a doctor devoted to heal the wounded with the help of her high-tech suit… suit that is so skin-tight it involves a boobplate. We can assure there’s nothing high-tech about separate boob bumps in a rigid breastplate meant for protection. Also, angel-themed character just happens to be a pale, blue-eyed blonde? How subtle!
Pharah, the Sexy Egyptian Soldier: Personality-, animation- and story-wise, a professional and devoted soldier in every inch. Design-wise… her (obviously Samus-inspired) battle suit includes what looks like a metal thong. And funny how a female soldier character in gender-ambiguous armor just happens to have long, luxurious hair and perfectly made up face under that helmet. If she was a man she’d have the battle hardened, probably scarred, grizzled Male Protagonist™ look, including the buzzcut that conveniently cuts down on polygons while conveying military pragmatism.
Widowmaker the Sexy French Assassin: Some say she’s justified in looking sexy, as her design coveys a femme fatale. While it’s not wrong to have a femme fatale in the lineup (as long as it’s played as more than “good is chaste, evil is sexy”), we don’t see how that connects to this particular character, given her personality and story. Why someone who was kidnapped, brainwashed and turned into a perfect unemotional killer would dress in something that looks like bodypaint with impossibly deep cleavage and high heels? How is such look helpful for her job as a sniper? Why does every male character from this archetype look totally different than her?
Zarya, the Beefy Russian Gunner: The first attempt for a different female body type in Overwatch. Why does her suit includes boobplate, though? Much like Pharah, she doesn’t seem to have any of the grit we come to expect from heavy duty soldiers when they happen to be men.
Mei, the Curvy Chinese Scientist: Only problem with her is that we don’t know for sure whether she is significantly chubby/curvy (compared to all the thin women around) or if her thick arctic clothes make her look that way. She certainly doesn’t have her body type conveyed to the same extent as, say, Roadhog.
ALL OF THEM: They’re all young (19-34), with conventionally pretty faces (even Zarya and Mei, who are supposed to be somewhat masculine and chubby, respectively, don’t veer off any far from Western beauty standard). There’s very little body type variety. Literally half of the women are ethnically white, while two East Asian characters sport pale completions.
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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.
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.
