63 Posts
So I wanted to start off by saying, I think the development team has done a pretty great job with the cast of female hero's in Overwatch. They are diverse, interesting, and compelling. From Mei to Zarya to Widowmaker the female cast reflects a large spectrum of personalities and player fantasies.
With that being said, lets talk about Tracer. From a marketing standpoint, she's the star of the show. She's a great hero. When we look at the way she's portrayed in promotional media, lore, and art in game we know a few things about her..
She's Fast.
She's Silly.
She's Kind.
She's a good Friend.
Her body seems to be comprised of about 95% spunk.
Almost all of her art reflects this. She's got cool skins: http://static.mnium.org/images/contenu/actus/Overwatch/Heros/overwatch_skin-tracer_11_hd.jpg
She's got fun poses:
http://cdn.blizzardwatch.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/Tracer_waving_header.jpg
She's got amazing victory animations:
https://youtu.be/MFbXd3KIvhQ?t=224
All of this art reinforces the great character you've built around tracer.
Then out of seemingly no where we have this pose:
http://overwatch.blizzplanet.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/tracer-victory-pose-2-over-the-shoulder.png
WHAT? What about this pose has anything to do with the character you're building in tracer? It's not fun, its not silly, it has nothing to do with being a fast elite killer. It just reduces tracer to another bland female sex symbol.
We aren't looking at a widowmaker pose here, this isn't a character who is in part defined by flaunting her sexuality. This pose says to the player base, oh we've got all these cool diverse characters, but at any moment we are willing to reduce them to sex symbols to help boost our investment game.
Getting art into a triple A game isn't a small task, it has to go through an implementer, a team lead, an art director, and a creative director. This is a team effort. And I believe the team is responsible for upholding the great example overwatch can set to the rest of the industry for creating strong female characters.
I have a young daughter that everyday when I wake up wants to watch the recall trailer again. She knows who tracer is, and as she grows up, she can grow up alongside these characters.
What I'm asking is that as you continue to add to the overwatch cast and investment elements, you double down on your commitment to create strong female characters. You've been doing a good job so far, but shipping with a tracer pose like this undermines so much of the good you've already done.
Well, that escalated quickly…
While I stand by my previous comment, I realize I should have been more clear. As the game director, I have final creative say over what does or does not go into the game. With this particular decision, it was an easy one to make—not just for me, but for the art team as well. We actually already have an alternate pose that we love and we feel speaks more to the character of Tracer. We weren’t entirely happy with the original pose, it was always one that we wrestled with creatively. That the pose had been called into question from an appropriateness standpoint by players in our community did help influence our decision—getting that kind of feedback is part of the reason we’re holding a closed beta test—but it wasn’t the only factor. We made the decision to go with a different pose in part because we shared some of the same concerns, but also because we wanted to create something better.
We wouldn’t do anything to sacrifice our creative vision for Overwatch, and we’re not going to remove something solely because someone may take issue with it. Our goal isn’t to water down or homogenize the world, or the diverse cast of heroes we’ve built within it. We have poured so much of our heart and souls into this game that it would be a travesty for us to do so.
We understand that not everyone will agree with our decision, and that’s okay. That’s what these kinds of public tests are for. This wasn’t pandering or caving, though. This was the right call from our perspective, and we think the game will be just as fun the next time you play it.
If it isn’t, feel free to continue sharing your concerns, thoughts, and feedback about this and other issues you may have with the game, please just keep the discussion respectful.
Thanks,
jeffrey
(btw, unlocking this thread. please continue the discussion here)
Just turn the camera to see ass, you glorified bonobos. Problem. Fucking. Solved. You are god damned welcome, now pay me.YOU ARE MISSING THE POINT!
Just turn the camera to see ass, you glorified bonobos. Problem. Fucking. Solved. You are god damned welcome, now pay me.YOU ARE MISSING THE POINT!
It is not enough that they can look at ass, all others must also be forced to look at ass. Otherwise the feminists will win. And that's bad ok?
Do these people really have nothing better to do with their time than rage over some video game character not showing her ass off any more?
Honestly, these people are totally useless, cheeto-stained humanoid crumbs.
I don't know, not many gamers got angry about the borderline ridiculous female-oriented fanservice in the Metal Gear games.
Also, I think it's ridiculous to obsess over a character's image and personality before the game is even released.
I don't know, not many gamers got angry about the borderline ridiculous female-oriented fanservice in the Metal Gear games.
Also, I think it's ridiculous to obsess over a character's image and personality before the game is even released.
On the other hand, there's no better time to obsess oflver things like this than before release, because if you wait until afterwards, any changes you might desire will be a hell of a lot harder to push through, and the characters personality is mostly set in stone by that point.
Yeah, it's almost as if he didn't even slut shame the vamp character!
That was explained in the quote I put in the OP. One of the beta-testers explained why he felt that pose to be out of character AND explained that he wouldn't have minded if a character like Widowmaker had instead been posing sexily. The difference is that Tracer is all about being cheery and spunky and whatnot while Widowmaker is seduces and then kills (sometimes just kills) people.
UP, wouldn't that be the best time to bring that up then? While they're still developing it. While they can still change it.
Right. I understand that. Which is why I'm not understanding your objection. Would it be better to wait till the game has been out a while before addressing inconsistencies in a characters personality?
Right. But again, bringing that up during development really seems like the time to being up inconsistencies. If maybe the pose was in fact in line with the character's character, then maybe the developers would have to clarify that. And before being released seems like a great time to do that. Not after the game has been released and has been out for a while.
IB, I know his objections. I was just wondering if he'd actually say it.
If someone doesn't know for sure that it's out of character, but they feel like it probably is, it seems to me like it would be better to bring that up than to remain silent, only to say later once the game is finished, "you know, I thought that was out of character in beta, but I said nothing for some reason".
And games get modified after release all the time. In League of Legends, for example, the titular league was retconned away because Riot found it unnecessarily restraining.
However, once the game hits the market, the ball's in the consumer's court. Changing a game's established content (aside from bug fixes and the like) after it's already been sold isn't just expressing your vision, it's imposing it on your customers, unless you give them a choice in the matter.
And games get modified after release all the time. In League of Legends, for example, the titular league was retconned away because Riot found it unnecessarily restraining.
You know, its interesting that you say this, implying that changing a game after release isn't a problem because it directly contradicts your previous statements in earlier cases like this.
Or did you forget how you were upset when Lab Zero Games removed frames of animation from Skullgirls because they didn't make the patch optional? Or when you were upset when Obsidian removed a transphobic joke from Pillars of Eternity? Or, most similarly to this case, when Capcom removed an ass-slapping victory pose from Street Fighter V?
Isn't it interesting how you can be perfectly OK with Riot changing League of Legends' entire premise because of creative freedom, but yet when a developer changes things because they, in their eyes, want to be less objectifying, they're suddenly just pandering and they need consumer approval before making the change?
Or, do I need to remind you of what you actually said about the changes made to Skullgirls? And I quote:However, once the game hits the market, the ball's in the consumer's court. Changing a game's established content (aside from bug fixes and the like) after it's already been sold isn't just expressing your vision, it's imposing it on your customers, unless you give them a choice in the matter.
If you're going to complain about content being removed from games, at the very least, make sure your reasoning doesn't contradict yourself.
And games get modified after release all the time. In League of Legends, for example, the titular league was retconned away because Riot found it unnecessarily restraining.
There's a difference between changing lore and changing the game itself.
Why do people even bother trying to explain the obvious to UP, politely at that? Do you really think that he's not smart enough to figure it out by himself? Is Ironbite really the only one who has figured out what's going on here? Do I really have to do this myself?
UP is many things, but an idiot he isn't. He doesn't need to be told why a beta test is the perfect opportunity to give a creator feedback, and why said creator doesn't typically commit self-censorship by listening to and agreeing with said feedback. These are pretty much the definitions of "beta test" and "feedback". Getting those meanings from these words is pretty much immediate. It doesn't even need to "cross his mind". He doesn't even have to actively think about it.
And that's precisely the problem. He refuses to even consider those trivial matters when he has a political opinion to defend, in any context and at any cost of his own intellectual integrity. If you're lucky, he will vaguely admit that you may have a point and then proceed to ignore it completely. It doesn't really matter to him, because his entire MO is to twist the actual situation into an imaginary one where the obvious can be discarded and his prejudices can be vindicated.
Why not just pretend that gameplay and technical matters are the only ones relevant to discuss in the context of a video game, so that anyone who has an opinion that is liable to rattle you is automatically overstepping his boundaries by virtue of even holding said opinion in the first place?
Why not just pretend that one piece of feedback, given during a period dedicated to gathering feedback, by someone who has technically been offered early access to the game for the express purpose of feedback, can immediately constitute an amount of peer pressure tantamount to censorship?
Why not just pretend that an agressive victory pose
is somehow out of character for the gentle scientist UNDER THE EFFECT OF A FRENZY-TYPE ABILITY THAT LITERALLY TURNS HIM RED (that was the "point" TB was trying to make behind his unfunny sexualisation jokes, right?),
that this trope affects genetically-enhanced gorillas just as much as completely gratutitous eye-candy poses affects women,
and that every comment about the quantity and quality of female representation is literally Anita Sarkeesian trying to take away our naughty vidya games?
Doublethink is doubleplusgood. And just to be clear, I'm not trying to compare any particular ideology to Ingsoc here. The one thing that I'm calling Orwellian is UP's very own, very personal dishonesty. And Total Bastard's, I guess, indirectly and to a lesser extent.
Wait.....changing a victory pose is changing the game itself?
Ironbite-BWHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
Oh shut the fuck up. You totally do otherwise you wouldn't be this upset. Oh wait, it's another SJW making changes to a game you'll never play and never have to worry about again.
Ironbite-jesus why the fuck do you even give a shit about this?
After reading Murdin's post I started applauding.
Congratulations.
I think we all know why he's really doing all of this and it has nothing to do with any genuine interest in the thing that happened, the figures involved, or even the people who've started the controversy. He's starting this because its VIDYA and he's so, so very mad that anyone would dare change something even during beta testing and such.
Because the manosphere, to which he is beholden for many of his posts and points of view, is enraged about this. So he has to be enraged about it too.
He really has no opinions of his own, except what he is spoon fed and told to post.
I'm afraid UP is experiencing the results of spamming the threads with topic-we-do-not-name dogma for going on two years. Peter cannot discuss wolves in the abstract or as a general topic with the townspeople anymore. Done shit-piled the hell outta that watering hole, my hot blooded hippo.
Then just link him this in the future, ffs (http://www.pointandclickbait.com/2016/03/developers-creative-freedom/)
I just love the logic these fuckpumps are going with.
"SJWs censored this game by demanding that it be changed! Now change it back, we demand it!"
I just love the logic these fuckpumps are going with.
"SJWs censored this game by demanding that it be changed! Now change it back, we demand it!"
Hilarious they're up in arms over that skinny lil butt, too. "It's the principle!"
There's a kernel of truth in this, as with certain other issues UPs interest in the matter lies entirely in staying on message with issues of the day a certain faction have reached quorum on whether or not he personally gives a damn about them.After reading Murdin's post I started applauding.
Congratulations.
I think we all know why he's really doing all of this and it has nothing to do with any genuine interest in the thing that happened, the figures involved, or even the people who've started the controversy. He's starting this because its VIDYA and he's so, so very mad that anyone would dare change something even during beta testing and such.
Because the manosphere, to which he is beholden for many of his posts and points of view, is enraged about this. So he has to be enraged about it too.
He really has no opinions of his own, except what he is spoon fed and told to post.
You overestimate my investment in this. I think the whole thing is ridiculous.
Maybe this was Blizzard's plan all along. Controversy=attention, after all.
Maybe this was Blizzard's plan all along. Controversy=attention, after all.
And now you see conspiracies in everything that doesn't go your way.
THEN WHY ARE YOU IN THIS TOPIC!?
THEN WHY ARE YOU IN THIS TOPIC!?
Just wanted to give my two cents. I thought the overreactions on both sides were illuminating.
Your overlords who shall not be named only pay you two cents a whine? You're being burned man!THEN WHY ARE YOU IN THIS TOPIC!?
Just wanted to give my two cents. I thought the overreactions on both sides were illuminating.