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

[MeatMachine]

I'll readily admit that the proclivity of overt sexual emphasis of female characters in video games is really tiresome to me, equally because it feels like condescending pandering and a complete stonewall against original female character design that I'd actually be eager to see.

Still, the tripe cries of "offensive! sexist!" is so groan-inducingly over-reactive it makes me think that people have internalized the fact that becoming histrionic on demand gives them the power to change menial things. As much as I'd like to see a larger overall divorce from sexual female characters, I don't thing that their mere existence should be THIS offensive to anyone's reasonable sensibilities and worthy of change due solely to outrageous backlash.

Besides, a spandex buttcrack? Give me a break - at least the Dragon's Crown Sorceress is a reasonable controversy.

Spoiler

...How the bloody hell is this a controversy? One person said that they didn't like it, that's it. The controversy isn't about the pose, it's about the pose being taken out.

Did I jump the gun by assuming any significant number of people whined and bitched about it, or was it really only 1 forum poster and maybe a handful of airheads agreeing with her? If I was presumptuous, forgive me - I REALLY didn't anticipate Blizzard caving to the unreasonable dumbassery of single-digit protests.

 

[Shamanic Rhythm]

TIL that if you get a wedgie, people around you will no longer think you are a strong female.

But hey, this will probably blow up into a five day epic megathread. I miss the days when Blizzard would trigger those with hunter nerfs or RealID.

 

[09philj]

snip

C'mon, I just wanted to know all about your impressive grand vision, that all us terrible plebs don't seem to possess. You can't squander that gift pissing it about in some echo-chamber! Give it to the people, we want to know!

But, if your clairvoyant abilities make you think I'm coming at you for some pithy 'win'... maybe they're not so great. I just want someone playing the 'It's a grand design of censorship! Everything adds up!' card to stick to their fuckin' guns when challenged and actually explain their position, not wuss out because I come at 'em a little hard. C'mon, stand up for your beliefs, fight for 'em on an internet forum! That's the whole point of posting shit on a forum in the first place, right?

Or, you know, throw me on ignore and make more assumptions about me. Whatever pleases you, really.

My problem is that when I wasn't looking the liberal partybus was hijacked by conservatives in hats who fulfill the traditional conservative vision of authoritarianism, idea policing, total denial of facts that don't fit in with their views, sexual puritanism, conformance to certain gender roles (Although they are new ones), being relentlessly holier-than-thou, and fuelling moral panic, but because they supposedly believe in equal rights (Although that's often untrue in practice) nobody is stopping them from driving the bus off a cliff, which is an issue because none of the other buses will give me a ride.

 

[Wrex Brogan]

snip

C'mon, I just wanted to know all about your impressive grand vision, that all us terrible plebs don't seem to possess. You can't squander that gift pissing it about in some echo-chamber! Give it to the people, we want to know!

But, if your clairvoyant abilities make you think I'm coming at you for some pithy 'win'... maybe they're not so great. I just want someone playing the 'It's a grand design of censorship! Everything adds up!' card to stick to their fuckin' guns when challenged and actually explain their position, not wuss out because I come at 'em a little hard. C'mon, stand up for your beliefs, fight for 'em on an internet forum! That's the whole point of posting shit on a forum in the first place, right?

Or, you know, throw me on ignore and make more assumptions about me. Whatever pleases you, really.

My problem is that when I wasn't looking the liberal partybus was hijacked by conservatives in hats who fulfill the traditional conservative vision of authoritarianism, idea policing, sexual puritanism, conformance to certain gender roles (Although they are new ones), being relentlessly holier-than-thou, and fuelling moral panic, but because they supposedly believe in equal rights (Although that's often untrue in practice) nobody is stopping them from driving the bus off a cliff, which is an issue because none of the other buses will give me a ride.

...well, that's... a lot to unpack. And fully addressing all of it would be a truly epic derail.

So, to put it into the topic... how is this removal relative to any of what you've said? When the developers response was a pretty succinct 'we were already thinking about removing it anyway and seeing community feedback in line with our thoughts supported the decision', I find it hard to believe that this instance is in any way, shape or form related to some grand conservative conspiracy.

Like... yeah, seriously. How does this play into anything? Why can't it just be a single incident because a developer changed something through their own wants? I know there's already been accusations that the Devs are just playing damage control, but unless someone pulls some secret Blizzard correspondence out of their arse that boils down to 'We must make Chaser as unsexy as possible for our Feminist Overlords'... I'm going to go with the 'They changed it because they wanted to' explanation, not because they were forced to by the aforementioned Feminist Overlords.

Or, as the saying goes, 'correlation does not mean causation'. I need a little more than 'because other changes have happened!' before I start buying that this is part of something larger, and not just developers going through with something they themselves had already decided on.

 

[09philj]

snip

C'mon, I just wanted to know all about your impressive grand vision, that all us terrible plebs don't seem to possess. You can't squander that gift pissing it about in some echo-chamber! Give it to the people, we want to know!

But, if your clairvoyant abilities make you think I'm coming at you for some pithy 'win'... maybe they're not so great. I just want someone playing the 'It's a grand design of censorship! Everything adds up!' card to stick to their fuckin' guns when challenged and actually explain their position, not wuss out because I come at 'em a little hard. C'mon, stand up for your beliefs, fight for 'em on an internet forum! That's the whole point of posting shit on a forum in the first place, right?

Or, you know, throw me on ignore and make more assumptions about me. Whatever pleases you, really.

My problem is that when I wasn't looking the liberal partybus was hijacked by conservatives in hats who fulfill the traditional conservative vision of authoritarianism, idea policing, sexual puritanism, conformance to certain gender roles (Although they are new ones), being relentlessly holier-than-thou, and fuelling moral panic, but because they supposedly believe in equal rights (Although that's often untrue in practice) nobody is stopping them from driving the bus off a cliff, which is an issue because none of the other buses will give me a ride.

...well, that's... a lot to unpack. And fully addressing all of it would be a truly epic derail.

So, to put it into the topic... how is this removal relative to any of what you've said? When the developers response was a pretty succinct 'we were already thinking about removing it anyway and seeing community feedback in line with our thoughts supported the decision', I find it hard to believe that this instance is in any way, shape or form related to some grand conservative conspiracy.

Like... yeah, seriously. How does this play into anything? Why can't it just be a single incident because a developer changed something through their own wants? I know there's already been accusations that the Devs are just playing damage control, but unless someone pulls some secret Blizzard correspondence out of their arse that boils down to 'We must make Chaser as unsexy as possible for our Feminist Overlords'... I'm going to go with the 'They changed it because they wanted to' explanation, not because they were forced to by the aforementioned Feminist Overlords.

Or, as the saying goes, 'correlation does not mean causation'. I need a little more than 'because other changes have happened!' before I start buying that this is part of something larger, and not just developers going through with something they themselves had already decided on.

It's not a conspiracy, it's a cultural shift. Yes, Blizzard changed it themselves, but why? What is wrong with Tracer being a little bit cheekily flirtatious? The pose, in and of itself, is nothing especially provocative; it fits Tracer's character, with the cocky backward glance towards the camera and the relaxed way she's standing. As for her arse, that's her arse. It exists and is sexy, and there is nothing wrong with that. However, some people have decided that actually Tracer isn't allowed to be sexy in that way, even though most of her other posses have a degree of the same cutesy sex appeal.

 

[Grumpy Ginger]

I don't get it why can we complain about art design, sound design, drm, level design, sound mixing, controls, hud's, random number generation, loot drops, changes to the lore, low poly models, poor optimization, dodgy business practices and many bloody more things in games with nary a whimper but the second somebody mentions the way games depict women it's the bleedin apocalypse

 

[Demagogue]

Huh... I had nothing invested into this game to start with, so no big worry I guess. Blizzard's had their time in the sun it seems, and they are starting to feel the pressures of not always being able to preform.

 

[Schadrach]

One person, a customer mind you, stating an opinion calmly and rationally on the developer forums that is free of personal attacks and gives high praise to the game is now "bullying".

Can we at least be honest a second, and admit that Blizzard submitted right out of the gate because "bullying" is what happens if you don't roll over for these sort of people?

If they hadn't more or less immediately given in, this would have become a Twitter campaign causing a PR nightmare (and one that wouldn't get mysteriously killed by Twitter "bugs" that only seem to ever effect certain viewpoints but totally isn't about blocking certain views [such as opposing Clinton for POTUS] while trying to pretend you aren't), followed by multiple threats against the physical safety of property and employees if they continued to hold out (as in the case of Divinity: Original Sin where an exposed midriff on a set of armor was deemed "problematic", and the artist who designed it outright claimed on his personal blog that he was ordered to because of the hatemail and threats they were receiving).

It's not like both we and they haven't seen how this goes time and time again.

You know what I find to be the most funny? Many of the very people who complain about companies being "bullied" are the first ones to line up against anti-bullying policies on social media.

Have you seen any anti-bullying on social media that actually gets applied equally across all users and *isn't* about regulating what politics or opinions you are allowed to express?

Was #WhichHillary (a hashtag about all the times Hillary Clinton has switched sides on issues, sometimes over relatively short periods of time) bullying? It got suddenly delisted from trending hashtags at roughly the peak of it's usage, and mysteriously vanished from autocomplete (with different misspellings showing up for different users).

Both of those are tactics that Twitter developed to try to defuse hashtags they don't like in a post-GG world. Twitter also introduced something akin to shadow bans, where certain users can tweet all they want, but their followers may not actually see those tweets, unless they look directly at that user's tweets.

People wouldn't complain about "anti-bullying" if it were politically neutral and evenly applied.

 

[Shinkicker444]

Well, its disappointing its getting taken out/changed. I dont see whats wrong with it. It fits her character fine. Perhaps if the pants were quite so far up her ass it would be less of an issue (check out her punk skin for a comparison to her default with the pose). But folding and taking it out like they did was kinda and sent a bad message. Also, http://strawpoll.me/7212830/r Interesting little bit of numbers imo.

 

[Imre Csete]

Well that's a far cry from the Blizzard who defended Kerrigan's look along the lines of "that's how we design stuff, sorry if you don't like it".

 

[the December King]

I'm glad they clarified their position. Blizzard can change what they like to their own specifications, up to and including considering consumer opinion and suggestions, and consumers should feel free to criticize the art design, or laud it, as they like, potential to effect product notwithstanding.

 

[MrCalavera_v1legacy]

So i still don't quite get what makes this

Spoiler

[/spoiler] a no-no, and this [QUOTE=Corven]
[spoiler][img]https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CeqnS9yXEAAHWEr.jpg

[/QUOTE] a-okay.

Whatever, regardless whether you think if #sexism or #censorship is a problem here, it'st a nonroversy since:

If Deviantart has taught me anything, it's that you can't stop the sexy...

 

[Wrex Brogan]

It's not a conspiracy, it's a cultural shift. Yes, Blizzard changed it themselves, but why? What is wrong with Tracer being a little bit cheekily flirtatious? The pose, in and of itself, is nothing especially provocative; it fits Tracer's character, with the cocky backward glance towards the camera and the relaxed way she's standing. As for her arse, that's her arse. It exists and is sexy, and there is nothing wrong with that. However, some people have decided that actually Tracer isn't allowed to be sexy in that way, even though most of her other posses have a degree of the same cutesy sex appeal.

Sorry, it keeps getting sold to me as a conspiracy, hence the labeling. Hell I'm pretty sure in another thread on this issue someone actually says 'I don't want to say conspiracy theory, but...' (and missed an awfully good moment to pun, I might add).

The thing is, they aren't saying any of that. Hell, 'they' in this case are Tracer's creators. They're not saying you can't think she's sexy, or she's got a great butt, or anything like that - they're just saying 'we agree this didn't fit, so we're removing it'. It certainly wasn't a provocative pose, but they were debating on removing it anyway and just went ahead when they saw this woman's criticism of it.

And it's just... pretty standard for the design process? Stances/poses and the like often get cut for the most minor of reasons. I've had friends cut out entire animation sets in their 3D work for things like 'too rigid' or 'too strict', despite being quite similar to their other sets. She's still bouncy and fun and poppy in all her animations, it's just for whatever reason Blizzard themselves looked at this pose and went 'it doesn't fit'.

So yeah, it's just... not anything to me. Cultural shift or no, this is just a developer making a stock-standard design choice, using a community post to weigh whatever internal debate they have going on. It's not even anything out of character for Blizzard, since they often do this kind of thing with class balance/toys and trinkets/class balance anyway.

 

[RJ 17]

Hmmmm...seems like Jeff is trying to have his cake and eat it too...

I mean this...

The last thing we want to do is make someone feel uncomfortable, under-appreciated or misrepresented.

Is directly contradicted by this...

and we're not going to remove something solely because someone may take issue with it.

 

[Disco Biscuit]

Hmmmm...seems like Jeff is trying to have his cake and eat it too...

I mean this...

The last thing we want to do is make someone feel uncomfortable, under-appreciated or misrepresented.

Is directly contradicted by this...

and we're not going to remove something solely because someone may take issue with it.

So, if you put the two together, then maybe there was a reason beyond "Someone may take issue with it"? Such as "Many people actually took issue with it" or "We're worried about some crazy christian group in Australia boycotting our game".

 

[Shinkicker444]

So i still don't quite get what makes this

Spoiler

[/spoiler] a no-no, and this [QUOTE=Corven]
[spoiler][img]https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CeqnS9yXEAAHWEr.jpg

a-okay.

Whatever, regardless whether you think if #sexism or #censorship is a problem here, it'st a nonroversy since:

If Deviantart has taught me anything, it's that you can't stop the sexy...

[/quote]

Because Tracer is good and Widowmaker is bad (femme fatale), according to the original poster. Apparently its okay to be 'sexy' if you're a bad girl? But Tracer has to be a pure innocent playful flower... that kills people by the dozen.

 

[Wuvlycuddles]

So form fitting trousers are acceptable sexy but god forbid you flaunt it? I'm confused.

 

[RJ 17]

Hmmmm...seems like Jeff is trying to have his cake and eat it too...

I mean this...

The last thing we want to do is make someone feel uncomfortable, under-appreciated or misrepresented.

Is directly contradicted by this...

and we're not going to remove something solely because someone may take issue with it.

So, if you put the two together, then maybe there was a reason beyond "Someone may take issue with it"? Such as "Many people actually took issue with it" or "We're worried about some crazy christian group in Australia boycotting our game".

Meh, I don't care one way or the other. I simply felt like pointing out that Jeff "clarified" his previous statement by directly contradicting it.

More likely the first statement was said as appeasement to make half the people reading it feel all warm and fuzzy inside. When the other half inevitably flipped their shit over perceived censorship, Jeff put out a new statement to appease them.

 

[Adam Jensen_v1legacy]

This is one of those situations where I don't know who I hate more. People that were outraged by a fictional character's pose or people that were outraged that a pose was removed. It doesn't matter either way.

 

[Quellist]

Oh noes, a woman showed a little sass. Let's twist it around and make it a thing.

Yeah, exactly right.

Why can't some assholes just keep their mouths shut and let everyone have their fun