Wait, Mei is considered fat? I always assumed her bulk was due to the huge cold weather gear she wears. It's hardly flattering like the skintight outfits D.Va or Tracer wear.
Overwatch 2; The Electric Boogaloo
- Thread starter FakeSympathy
- Start date
LoL most notably and in smaller scale you have Twitch drop events that are Pride-themed along with other in-game items and whatever. It should also be understood that to big companies LGBT-characters are good marketing assets. UPlay can have an event with R6 characters (I don't know if there are openly gay operators, but the girl power definitely is there), EA Origin can have one etc.
I dunno. Sounds a bit cynical that it would actually be more about a culture war instead of companies making and marketing their toys. Imo, the typical "angry gamer" seething against diversity still does that because of genuine dislike for the marketing focus that shifted to unimportant stuff, while injecting woke lore and characters is done because it's a beneficial bottom line to have in the non-zero sum game these companies play with their biggest online service mp games.
Yes, to play a free online video game. Not take up heroin or join a terrorist organisation. Have some perspective.
Also, all this angst about various details being made canon or revealed or what have you in comics or cinematics, you all realise you’re getting angry over the stuff that would have been in the manual right? Like if Overwatch had a manual with the character roster in it, things like Tracer’s girlfriend and Reaper’s wife would be in there because that was where we used to put all the background fluff for these games.
This is Mei with winter gear:
And this is Mei with a stripped down version of it:
If she's "fat" in either of these images, then please tell me what's "thin."
So you've cited one IP, and various IPs that "could" have one.
I'll throw you a bone and say yes, absolutely, pride stuff can absolutely be used as a marketing tool, and it's silly, but these specific IPs haven't really used it much, nor is it really present in the IPs themselves.
There's plenty of people like Geeks and Gamers and The Quarterpounder in the world, the "angry nerd" stereotype is a stereotype that has plenty of reinforcement in reality. While it's absolutely true that companies do market "diversity" and "inclusiveness," at worst, it's irritating. Angry fanboys, on the other hand, are quite happy to resort to harassment, even death threats - we saw it in Ghostbusters 2016, we saw it in the Star Wars sequel trilogy, we saw it in Rings of Power, etc.
Also, what's an example of "woke lore" in the IPs mentioned?
I do have perspective. They're playing a shitty sequel that is worse than the original game with way less content, less features, characters locked behind shitty season passes and DLC, worse default costumes, punishes people with pre-paid phones, and yet is another "high quality AAA game" that is either broken, unfinished, missing modes with false promises that take longer than they should to complete and is only worth something because it's "free". Yeah, not worth this man's time. You want that shit, go right ahead. I am not going to stop you.
The kids and teens may not be drug addicts, but they may have addiction tendencies Blizzard will try to manipulate, nor had any problems doing so before, like many AAA companies. If those kids and teens start taking their parents/guardians credit and debit cards (like what happened with Fornite, FIFA, or many other AAA games with loot boxes and gambling mechanics), then history repeats itself, and there will be hell to pay. The families will be the one's paying, not the AAA corporate butt-fucks. Remember that.
Agreed.
Everytime they write lore that's more about its link to real world inclusivity/diversity politics than anything else. R6 has the girl power framing cinematic. LoL's roster is pussified to an absurd degree with most of the new champs being female or pretty boys (Bel'veth is a nice counter to this trend despite being female, tbh) on top of all the queerness. Apex Legends with its GSM characters and sexual liberalism. OW was set to do this as soon as cries for diversity were heard back in 2015 and they did push the envelope when it comes to globetrotting diversity rosters and the other games have followed suit.
Bear in mind that wokeness is a descriptive term here. People that want woke lore (non-traditional gender roles, GSM-representation, Afrofuturism and other uplifting of contemporary underdeveloped countries/regions) mostly overlap with people that want extended backstories to these characters and settings anyways.
The games talked about here are different, though. The lore-to-gameplay ratio isn't fixed and it's totally possible to make things a win-win for multiple demographics. Some of the outcry must be related to the perceived culture war, I reckon so too, but I highly doubt the companies are also in that fight, when a competition in the market makes much more sense. It's why I personally don't really care that gaming companies do this even though I'm not a fan of our socially progressive politics.
Who? Because certainly not Overwatch. And I find that very suspect considering that many of the games mentioned have no (real) link to the real world.
What cinematic? Sisters in Arms? I didn't see any "girl" power there, not unless your definition is "girls shooting people." Which, as operators in Rainbow, is kind of your job description.
I really don't have time to go through LoL's entire champion roster, so sure, okay. By my eyes, girls and pretty boys were always part of the setting (Ashe, Katarina, that fox girl character), but meh.
What?
Okay, that's more managable. There's 24 Legends in the game right now, I assume you have statistics to back that up.
Also, "sexual liberalism?" Where? Because it's certianly not in EU material. Society of the Frontier in the 28th century doesn't seem particuarly permiscuous.
First, you need a source for "cries for diversity," because while there's certainly people that view media purely through identitarian lenses, you need to verify a source for that.
Second, your claim doesn't make sense. Much of the initial roster for Overwatch came from repurposed Titan classes, so for your claim to be correct, the diversity calls would have had to occur during development of Project Titan, with people somehow knowing about the setting of Project Titan. And considering how little is still known about Project Titan, that's highly suspect.
Third, your argument appears to rely on the idea that if characters come from all over the world, it has to be due to a "diversity roster." This is particuarly asinine for a number of reasons, but consider, among them, Rainbow Six, which has operated from the outset of the titular Rainbow Team being composed of CTOs taken from all over the world (or at least countries that can claim alliance with NATO). And while the titular Overwatch organization might be a strange comparison, the in-universe rationale was to take operatives from around the world as well. So, basically, it's woke for multinitaional organizations/settings to be...multinational?
Basically, your entire viewpoint is the same identitarian one as the people who are obssesed with diversity and representation, just seeing it in a negative light. I see much more complaining about diversity from outside developers than from within.
First, none of that is "woke" lore. And if it was, an entire swathe of media is suddenly "woke" if the criteria is a setting where people aren't discriminated against for sexuality, or LEDCs are better off then. FFS, Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare could be considered "woke" by that criteria for instance (certainly Infinite Warfare would be), but how often do you see CoD being called "woke?"
Second, it's a tenuous connection. Lots of people want extended backstories and setting lore, that isn't a woke concept. A setting can just as easily be grimdark and fleshed out, 40K being the go-to example.
Sure, okay.
The weird thing reading this is that very little of what I've written on is technically new from a conceptual standpoint. Street Fighter had characters from all over the world. Captain Planet explicitly stakes itself on (from other things) its titular team coming from all over the world. Even stuff like Rainbow Six and Counter-Strike explicitly based themselves on the notion of various counter-terrorism organizations working together, with CTOs coming from all over the world. None of this was new, but it's only recently that SQWs started having a meltdown about it.
Basically, the Tracer comic where she was "revealed" as gay is a perfect microcosm. Nothing about it is relevant to plot/character, but people all over the Internet went into meltdown. As irritating as companies virtue signalling can be, often, it's swathes of the masses that are far worse.
Everything exists in the real world. You are the kind of person who wants to elaborate on in-universe reasons for everything, but I'm not talking about that at all, so, whatever.
I maybe jumped to conclusions with this one (a streamer paraphrased the idea). So I looked it up and there is quite a lot of extended lore in the game's "quests" that sometimes albeit rarely hint at the characters sleeping with each other from time to time.
The Playbook. R6: Siege is a good example because it began as a very 'dude-shooter', but has since expanded its roster with a lot of women. I find it the funniest because it's pretty grounded, and you could do an irl paintball team game like that in 2022 if somebody got the millions for it, but only in a video game would it have women competitors. That's the woke part. But I'll write it one last time: it's fine. Like, I also enjoy females in these rosters from a design point of view.
-You've sidstepped the question, so let me repeat it - you've claimed that "everytime they write lore, it's more about its link to inclusivity/diversity politics than anything else." You haven't specified "who" (Blizzard? Riot? Ubisoft), nor given an example. I'll throw you a bone and point out that the dev post on Espercanca for Overwatch did delve into the development side of things, but contrast that with other updates such as the Kiriko cinematic, or the Yokai short story. Where, in any of these, is there a case of characters going on about the politics you describe? And while I'm not as familiar with LoL as OW (but still more than the "Clancyverse"), I find it very surprising to hear the claim that the mountains of lore are focusing on the things you're claiming.
-Yes, thank you, every fictional universe is crafted in the real world, I never knew that until now.
I'm not even sure why you're bringing this up, because while that's technically true, there's a clear distinction between something like Rainbow Six (real-world, present day), League of Legends (fantasy setting), Overwatch (near future, approx. 2070s), and Apex Legends (28th century).
-So some of the Legends sleep with each other some of the time. Um, okay...am I meant to be surprised? Because I'm not, there's clear implied, if not outright confirmed ships I'm familiar with for the setting (heck, I've dabbled with it myself). And how is any of that "woke?" Sexual permiscuity isn't new, either in fiction or reality.
I watched the cinematic in question, I didn't get any sense of "girl power" there. Both teams have both genders on them, no attention is drawn to the sex of any of the female characters, etc. If the definition of "girl power" is that the main characters of a cinematic are female, then that's an awful lot of 'girl power' in the world. And as for girl competitors...you have Rainbow operatives already working together across both genders, you really think they're going to worry about that in a paintball match? If that's "woke," then the game became "woke" the moment female characters were allowed.
No. That's been my point in the thread.
But y'know, my working definition of 'woke' in these instances is clearly much broader than yours, and thus bothering with examples is a waste of time. Regardless, diversity is one area where OW, R6, Valorant and LoL, and Apex Legends compete against each other.
Do gamers take things to heart, fight a culture war, or both? Debatable. My argument for CriticalGaming was that inclusive lore in these games doesn't pander to the non-casual playerbase, but neither does most extended lore, so indeed nobody's meant to be surprised.
Mei is considered "fat" by Chinese and Asian standards, not by Western nor American. BTW, the pictures don't work.
The PvE that Overwatch 2 advertised itself on, that justified the existence of an Overwatch 2 in the first place, even though it wasn't in the release version of the game...
has just been cancelled.
has just been cancelled.
I was going to post this in the general news thread. What an Overwatch thing to do.
Oh its like GTA 5's heists. That were supposed to be added in to the SP game lol.
That were only added in Online, and to the next gen versions (which were not given as upgrades as has generally been standard) so you literally had to buy the game a second time.
Except in OW's case I guess maybe never. Unless they have you buy OW 3 for them.
That were only added in Online, and to the next gen versions (which were not given as upgrades as has generally been standard) so you literally had to buy the game a second time.
Except in OW's case I guess maybe never. Unless they have you buy OW 3 for them.
Even mentioning an Overwatch 3 is gonna take some massive brass balls that I don’t think even Blizzard's hubris would trick them into thinking they had.
Like even uttering the word ‘three’ in those hallways at the moment is likely to get them grabbed by the Dai Li for tea at Lake Laogai.
Gearbox should just revive battleborn as a major flex on blizzard. Came out same month as OW1, with PvE missions and hero progression and no cash shop iirc.
Battleborn always looked pretty bad to me, but that 2D animation they put out for the game will always stick with me.
