Blizzard to Remove "Sexy" Tracer Pose in Overwatch - Update

[Erttheking]

The more I think about it, the funnier this gets. People are honestly cancelling their pre-order of this game cause a fictional character no longer slaps her ass.

The more I am in the gaming community, the more I start to loath it.

First of all, the Street Fighter V controversy was months ago.

Second, do you have any idea how many video games there are out there? How many people have mile-long Steam libraries full of games they'll probably never download, much less play? Most gamers can afford to be picky.

Third, people always say "Stop complaining, vote with your wallet." What exactly do you think that means?

Eh, it's a flawed argument. Because when you don't buy a game, it's kind of a crapshoot as to WHY you didn't do it. I get the idea behind it, but honestly it's not the be all end all people make it out to be.

Plus "Vote with your wallet" usually has a "I don't want to hear your complaints about this game, just don't buy it and shut up" vibe to it.

 

[sonicneedslovetoo]

And yet they wont listen to people about removing Macro Mechanics in Starcraft 2.

Macro mechanics in SC2 are not a one sided issue though. On the one hand, the original Starcraft was an extremely macro heavy game where the winner was generally decided by who could build units faster. Making macro easy makes it a game that is fundamentally not Starcraft.

On the other hand, a lot of people feel that a strategy game should be won by outwitting the opponent rather than outbuilding the opponent. In the original game, doing clever stuff, or even scouting, would distract the average player from their macro enough to make them worse off for doing it. It's very easy to sneak up and psi storm a bunch of enemy units only to find that you forgot to build pylons and that it will cost you more than the psi storm cost your opponent.

Either way, Blizzard has to disappoint a substantial number of players.

I should defiantly clarify here, I meant the Mules/Chrono Boost/Larva Injection, the ones that you can only do well enough and have no alternate strategies or upward gain on them(nobody can chrono boost faster than the recharge rate allows, same with Mules and Larva). Since the only thing you can do is fail at them its just busywork that adds a wall that most casual players don't care to vault over.

 

[Redryhno]

The more I think about it, the funnier this gets. People are honestly cancelling their pre-order of this game cause a fictional character no longer slaps her ass.

The more I am in the gaming community, the more I start to loath it.

First of all, the Street Fighter V controversy was months ago.

Second, do you have any idea how many video games there are out there? How many people have mile-long Steam libraries full of games they'll probably never download, much less play? Most gamers can afford to be picky.

Third, people always say "Stop complaining, vote with your wallet." What exactly do you think that means?

Eh, it's a flawed argument. Because when you don't buy a game, it's kind of a crapshoot as to WHY you didn't do it. I get the idea behind it, but honestly it's not the be all end all people make it out to be.

Plus "Vote with your wallet" usually has a "I don't want to hear your complaints about this game, just don't buy it and shut up" vibe to it.

Problem is, there's not really much else consumers can do that actually has an impact. Give the game a bad score, and you just have a bunch of people laughing at you(we've seen this happen with multiple games). Start a petition, nobody signs it and the company just waves it off even if you do get people to sign it because it's a company and they get a million and a half like it a day.

"Vote with your wallet" is the only option available while also being one of the most effective if you give solid reasoning behind it. For most people this time around, it's the bullshit reasoning given by the company that IS bullshit becasue they don't remove it from any other character despite the reason given being not wanting to make others uncomfortable and staying true to the characters(Mariachi Reaper skins and Gone Apeshit Winston poses). Consistency is one of the best traits you can have honestly, and Blizzard has shown over the last few years that they've lost it big time. We saw it happen with Bioware with DA2, ME3, and finally Inquisition being the thing that broke people completely. For Blizzard, it's been their handling of Diablo3, Starcraft2, the last third of the game, HoTS largely failing as anything other than a Mario Kart(except even Mario Kart is more beloved and competitive) equivalent, and finally this.

Shit happens, companies rise and fall all the time, about the only thing you can hope for is that they don't make a bunch of small, but still significant mistakes in rapid succession with their products as often as what happens with videogames the last few years.

 

[Strazdas]

The title is wrong. The pose is not sexy. the pose is defiant. In martial arts this pose is meant to point out that you are so far superior than your oponent you can turn your back to him without fear.

Cue the cries of "censorship" and "SJWs ruin everything" (which, naturally, wouldn't occur if we were talking about something like a male character thrusting his ass at the camera) in 3, 2, 1....

The very same game - Overwatch - has a guy thrusting his crotch as a victory pose. Ive yet to see a single complaint.

 

[Not a Cobra]

Almost all the characters in the game have such a pose.
Saying that a woman posing in a way that accentuates certain characteristics that have been sexualised in the media for the purposes of a positive reaction from onlookers devolves her into "nothing but a sex symbol" is a sexist opinion.

Dead set, people have become so focussed on social justice they've gone full circle back into sexist.
I'm not saying "Not standing up for male rights" sexist.
Full on "she's a sex symbol because you can see her arse" sexist.

isn't this the kind of narrow minded ignorance social justice is meant to be working against?

 

[LetalisK]

The title is wrong. The pose is not sexy. the pose is defiant. In martial arts this pose is meant to point out that you are so far superior than your oponent you can turn your back to him without fear.

But it's a female with tight pants. Ergo, automatic fap material.

 

[reciprocal]

Without looking at her profile, I'm going to make some predictions:
1) By the end of this year (2016), the woman who complained will have played the game less than 50 hours if she bought the game at all;
2) By the end of this year (2016), at least one of the persons opposed to the removal will have played the game more than 100 hours;

Entitled gamers at least play the game.

If you bothered to look at the poster's profile[footnote]Whom is a man might I mention so that you can rid yourself of those preconceptions you made up in your mind to bed.[/footnote] they've played the game and have shown concern about many of the game's mechanical aspects multiple times. They're invested in the game and not just looking for something to be offended about.

Furthermore, is there any difference between two people if they both pay for the game if one plays the game a bit more? Entitlement seems to be the appropriate phrase when customer thinks that they're owed more attention than other customers even though they all paid the same amount. Its basically saying this. [http://cdn.themis-media.com/media/global/images/library/deriv/859/859634.png]

Also, since when is 50 hours in a game not a significant amount of playtime for a game?

Fair enough it is a man. I will definitely admit to not looking at the person's profile. Can you tell me if that person has pre-ordered the game? Is there a hint that this person is a notable populariser of games?

I definitely would argue that a person who plays the game more deserves more attention:
1) They are likelier to purchase any future DLCs as they are more invested in the game
2) As this game is interactive in nature, someone who puts in more hours is likelier to help survive and develop. Empty servers kill these games very quickly.
3) Someone who plays more will obviously will have to deal with the decision more someone who plays less.

The 50 hours is fairly arbitrary but I did some comparisons with myself and it seems 10 hours a month for about 5 months after the game is released sounds pretty reasonable.

Look, I'm not blaming the poster. Nobody has any control over what they take offence with. Instead, I am criticising Blizzard for their actions. I do not understand why this post alone out of millions of others deserves an apology and relatively fast reaction. In his/her other posts about mechanics did they receive the SAME reaction from the developers? Did other posters get the same attention? Obviously all these posters felt that they were entitled to some attention but why did this one in particular get this response?

All this seems to show is that regardless of how much you've invested in the game, how long you've played, aspect of the game criticised, politeness, viability or strength of the argument does not matter at all. All you have to do is play the 'what about the children' card and you get instant attention.

 

[Cati]

@Earcaraxe "The "we want an heroic, inclusive game in which no one feels uncomfortable!" argument holds up to scrutiny about as well as a fishnet condom." OT, but you have a wonderful way with words <3

@ThatOtherGirl "those pants are painted on! I mean literally, I don't think I have ever seen "clothing" that hugs individual butt cheeks so completely like that outside of liquid latex body paint." - Leggings (all types and materials), lycra sports gear cyclists, runners and gymnasts wear, yoga trousers... If the person has a toned and defined ass, it's still gonna show as defined through non-baggy clothing, or baggy clothing of clingy material.

Eta. Forgot to mention Skinny jeans! I got some pairs that can leave nothing to the imagination when I put them on straight out of the dryer.

 

[Vladimir Eremeyev]

Seriousy, FUCK VOCAL MINORITY
FUCK THEM

I don't see why we gotta deal with it while some loud pricks are 'offended', it should be other way around

 

[Alterego-X]

So, from what I gather:
A person says, "Hey, can you remove this"
Blizzard goes, "Ok, sure"
And then this apparently causes more outrage over pretty much non-existent outrage.

Were circumstances different, I'd agree wholeheartedly. Except...

1. The "parent" in question was talking about their young child being exposed to the content of a T-rated game.

2. The "concerned parent"s arguments were insensible and, quite frankly, insulting to women.

3. The very obvious, omnipresent across all forms of media, double standard which exists in sexual content versus violent content.

4. The "we want an heroic, inclusive game in which no one feels uncomfortable!" argument holds up to scrutiny about as well as a fishnet condom.

And that would all be relevant, if the people disagreeing with the change, would owe up to these points.

"We have our own beliefs about standards of appropriateness, and about respecting women, and want to enforce those instead of the ones that this commenter believes in" would be hard to sell, but it would still be more honest than the outrage that is entirely coated in fear-mongering of how Blizzard is "caving in" to a single forum comment, from the "vocal minority", that is trying to "control their creative freedom", while at the same time cancelling the game over a creative choice that Blizzard made.

Your point #4 cut both ways in that regard. Maybe Blizzard hasn't been doing enough to respectfully represent various demographics, but it's sure as hell the Overwatch fandom hasn't been making complaints about any of that until now either.

This is NOT even a culture war outrage where Blizzard has just done something that was really obviously outrageous to one group, and that group's behaviour was really outrageous to others.

Take away the narrative about the censorous "removing" of content, and your four points are all just tired debate points fit for a 20 posts long thread on an obscure forum.

There is a reason the title of this "news story" doesn't say "Blizzard forum post shows double standard", or "Concerned parent online comment might have wrong priorities". Because the outrage is entirely revolving around the fact that Blizzard removed a piece of content from their game, and around the perception that this is censorship.

 

[bladestorm91]

Not outraged per-say, but I'm very upset at the devs who are being such spineless wusses for caving in to such a non-issue.

If it's such a non-issue, why are you upset?

Because it show that the devs will cave to anything as long as enough people whine. It's not about the non-issue, it's about how the devs handled it.

 

[Alterego-X]

it show that the devs will cave to anything as long as enough people whine. It's not about the non-issue, it's about how the devs handled it.

And apparently that "enough people" is exactly one person making a politely worded comment in a feedback thread.

 

[Bad Jim]

I should defiantly clarify here, I meant the Mules/Chrono Boost/Larva Injection, the ones that you can only do well enough and have no alternate strategies or upward gain on them(nobody can chrono boost faster than the recharge rate allows, same with Mules and Larva). Since the only thing you can do is fail at them its just busywork that adds a wall that most casual players don't care to vault over.

Yeah. I thought it was odd that in WOL they allowed you to select and hotkey multiple buildings, put rally points on your minerals, and then added an artificial layer of busywork to replace the busywork they had removed. But there are still a lot of players that want the game to be macro intensive, presumably because they are good at it.

I suspect that they thought they could satisfy both sides of the argument by allowing noobs to get a reasonable mineral income without much effort, while maintaining a busywork intensive high level game. But if noobs can field similar sized armies to their opponents, the busywork will never make a difference between players of similar macroing skill.

 

[EMWISE94]

That's cool. I wish I could draw. I am horrible at it. I once drew a stick figure and someone asked me why the dragon looked so sick. Hell, even signing my name is usually considered an invocation of dark magics or a cry for help.

So I'm curious now. Do you ask as you're designing, or after the fact?

Main reason I ask is my first drafts are often rough but written in the moment. Part of it is just to keep going to the end, and part of it is the knowledge I'm going to change things later. Hell, when writing songs, I'll throw in throwaway or even gibberish lines (an idea I may have gotten from "Scrambled Eggs," or was it 101 Dalmatians...) just to get the general flow down.

I imagine when you're an employee as part of a large group, it gets even more potentially confusing. Not only do you have to do your job, but everyone else has to do theirs at the same time. Ideas might be carried along because one thinks that's what they're supposed to be doing and whatnot, and there may not be that hands-on a level of oversight. Thing is, I don't work in environments like that. I'm either the only person doing the work or I'm beholden to a small number of people.

It could be that because this is paid work, they didn't stop to ask why themselves.

Its a varying mix, sometimes I'll have a mental image prepared before putting in down on paper and then tweaking what's necessary until satisfied, other times I just rush out the image first and start questioning the design after I've let it sit for a bit. Which is a key thing I do, I tend to let my designs 'sit' for a bit before passing final judgment, sometimes I'll put out a design and be happy with it but then a bit later I look back and go "eh, maybe it could do with some changes."; sometimes I also have visual shorthands that I put out similar to the gibberish you mentioned with your lyrics, mine would be jackets with popped collars, like if I have a character wearing some form of jacket or heavy top apparel its got popped collars or a really loose neck sleeve (like Neku from TWEWY).

Also I've been on some collaborative projects in which I produced some assets for somebody to review and get back to me and usually there's no chances of something we both don't like going through to final phases, but then again on said projects I was usually the solo artist so mayhaps once I work on a gig with other artist (something that might be happening soon involving animation) maybe I might see how designs that the team didn't like possibly went through. I know at times the biggest culprit is time constraints, one example I can think off is Mick Gordon saying how he wasn't happy with Riptor's theme in Killer Instinct but he had to get something out in time and wanted to go revisit it if he could.

 

[Schadrach]

If they hadn't more or less immediately given in, this would have become a Twitter campaign causing a PR nightmare

Right, because this never cuts both ways *coughs while pointing in the direction of the Overwatch forums and subreddit*

"Overwatch is sexist" is a much bigger PR problem than "man-children mad that Blizzard removed jack-off material from Overwatch" -- you are ignoring how it will be spun. Blizzard isn't Rockstar, they don't have the right reputation to just say "fuck you all, we'll do what we want" on stuff like this.

I'm not sure a game company can actually get big and develop that reputation these days, since Rockstar built it against "think of the children" stuffy right-wingers as opposed to the "think of the women" hipster left-wingers that are their counterparts these days. Proof of horseshoe theory, I guess.

Kind of like how the "Punch Jack Thompson" game was totally fine and worth a snicker, but the "Punch Anita Sarkeesian" game was evil misogynistic harassment, if not itself a threat of violence being made against her.

Apparently you haven't if you're going the route of "these people" and applying it to a group other than "people who use the internet". This woman received death threats just for poking fun at the name of a lipstick colour on her Twitter page. [https://medium.com/@parkermolloy/5-things-the-media-does-to-manufacture-outrage-ba79125e1262]

Yes, that kind of thing happens, and the news coverage is often a self-fulfilling prophecy (this doesn't hurt my point at all, you just gave an example of the role media plays in creating the problem). Here's a question for you: once it started doing the media rounds, how many people were out there complaining about the name of that lipstick color? It wasn't just her, even if she was the origin point and given too much focus thanks to the media pointing her out as the origin point.

Note by the way that the lipstick color was deemed "problematic" because it was "underage red" and thus was promoting/causing/celebrating/whatever-the-fuck-they-decide-to-call-it-this-time-to-denote-responsibility-without-having-to-demonstrate-how-ing "the degradation of women, statutory rape, sexual behavior, human trafficking, underage drinking, or even idealization of fleeting youth." Also, this color of lipstick was accused of supporting rape culture more than a few times. That one tweet may have been the flashpoint, but that wasn't where the controversy went, much like WWI wasn't "about" Archduke Ferdinand in any meaningful way.

Doesn't matter to me. Nobody has any right to use a private social media platform. If they want ban people for their opinion of "kill all the kikes" then let them.

If it was only people yelling "kill all the kikes", no one would care. What is actually happening is that they establish a set of rules under which people are supposed to act, then certain people are arbitrarily immune to those rules for political reasons, PR reasons, or both while others are held to much tighter standards because they say unpopular things that don't actually violate the rules.

People get annoyed when you establish a policy, then have secret hidden rules that determine who the policy actually applies to.

Dunno, how many people sent threats of violence against or exposed sensitive information of Hillary Clinton and her supporters? How many of her supporters sent threats of violence against or exposed sensitive information of people who are against it?

In #WhichHillary? A small minority, if even that. Most of it was posting her publicly saying something alongside her publicly saying the opposite on a different occasion. She's been both pro- and anti- a pretty shocking number of positions, sometimes just weeks apart.

Pffffffffffffffffffffffffffffft. Yes, sure, GamerGate, a movement about complaining about games journalism, is so very important that its having a direct and significant impact on the presidential election.

Only in the way that the Nobel prize is about newspaper errors.

I'm not saying GG is influencing elections or anything ridiculous like that. I'm saying that Twitter developed approaches for "defusing" hashtags they find problematic in response to GG and related tags, most of which was deployed in mid-to-late 2015 (some of those "anti-bullying policies" you wonder why folks get opposed to). They in turn have used those same techniques and policies to "defuse" anti-Clinton hashtags, because they already have the tools in place for "defusing" hashtags semi-quietly, why not use them?

It's the same way that spam bots are responsible for a fantastic tool for "no platforming" people on Reddit, the shadow ban. Shadow bans were introduced as a way to block spambots while making the spambot think it isn't blocked. Basically you get flagged, and once you are flagged any post you make on any part of Reddit must be approved by a moderator for anyone else to see it. You see your own posts as though this wasn't happening, and the only way to know is if a moderator informs you. You have to petition the admins to have it removed, and until/unless it is, all your posts require explicit moderator approval in all subs. Again, created as an anti-spam measure, and then used for other things entirely.

It was really only one person. A few people in the thread read the post and went "yeah, I see your point" while many disagreed.

Everything starts with one person.

You say it was only one person, who wants to bet that if we look we'll see an awful lot of folks talking about it (not just in the forum thread, but also in social media), and in increasing numbers leading up to when Blizzard submitted?

Over two days later they made the change. I don't know about you but I personally imagine in that span of two whole days that they probably talked it over with some people in the creative departments to see how they felt about the pose, maybe got some outside opinions and decided that they didn't accomplish their goal with it.

For a massive corporation with deep pockets, two days is not a long time. Especially since you are starting the clock from the forum post, and it's fair to assume that no one at Blizzard outside the forum mods saw the post for a bit.

Now they could've caved to one person, thats entirely possible, but given Blizzard fetish for asking player feedback, its huge development teams for its gigantic projects and its concerns about lore I think that its more likely that they sought second opinions after doubts having been raised. After all, on a project this big things slip through the cracks.

As a long time WoW veteran who finally shrugged off that dragon after MoP, Blizzard has a fetish for asking for player feedback and then ignoring it.

Want to guess what class I played? I'll give you a hint: For most of an expansion, we had a rather important class ability (it contributed significantly to both survivability and DPS) that upped our threat generation by ~35% that wasn't supposed to generate threat at all. People brought up roughly biweekly that this was where the problem was, even did comparison runs using and not using that ability to demonstrate that it was the cause. Second to last raid tier of the xpac before they admitted that something funny was going on with our threat, last raid tier of the xpac before they finally fixed it. There was a patch during the same xpac where they fixed one of our DPS specs so it was roughly competitive in PvE, and everyone warned them that they put way too much of the damage output in one ability and that would cause PvP issues -- it made it to live and that spec stayed competitive in PvE for roughly 48 hours before they hotfix nerfed that ability to be OK in PvP which cut total DPS for the spec by ~25%. Rather ironically, they had exactly the same problem with another spec in the same patch, but they left it that way much longer and fixed it in a way that only impacted PvP (rather amusingly using a solution a bunch of people had suggested for the other spec).

You and I clearly have *wildly* different experiences with Blizzard listening to player feedback.

If you bothered to look at the poster's profile[footnote]Whom is a man might I mention so that you can rid yourself of those preconceptions you made up in your mind to bed.[/footnote] they've played the game and have shown concern about many of the game's mechanical aspects multiple times. They're invested in the game and not just looking for something to be offended about.

To be fair on the gender thing, many of the articles about this described that person as a mother, so presuming that is less preconception and more assuming the media could get basic details straight. On the other hand, you're right, we should all know better at this point than to assume that the media could get basic details straight. Especially here.

 

[OldNewNewOld]

I hope Blizzards removes the female character completely or puts all of them under burkas. They are too sexy. We can't have that. It's degrading to women. Women can't be sexy so any sexy female character is absolutely haram. While we're at it, lets ban all the female users of facebook or other social networks that have posted such images. That's absolutely inexcusable.

Also it's quite a funny message that she's sending to her daughter for whom she apparently does that. A 8 year old daughter to be precise.

"Listen Honey, it's okay to kill people. There is nothing wrong with that. Also just so you know, you can't be sexy and a strong female character. If you're sexy, you're a slut. If you're sexy, all your achievements go down the drain. So don't be sexy Honey. Also go kill all those bastards!"

The fact that she admits that she doesn't play the game but is worried that her 8 year old daughter that plays it will get the wrong message because funny girls can't also be sexy, only the bad girls can be sexy is pretty damn retarded and someone should send her some social worker to check up stuff before she fucks up her child even more. An 8 year old child shouldn't be allowed to play and online FPS in the first place. The message some character could potentially send her is one of the least worries the mother should have.

Cue the cries of "censorship" and "SJWs ruin everything" (which, naturally, wouldn't occur if we were talking about something like a male character thrusting his ass at the camera) in 3, 2, 1....

Just because you wrote that sarcastically or ironically or whatever doesn't mean it's not true. Also most people, male and female included, don't find the same things on a man sexy that they find on a female. Females with a nice butt is hot, a man with nice muscular body is hot for me. Thanks god we don't have muscular men in games.

Cue for you replying that it's a power fantasy and it doesn't count in 3, 2, 1...