Blizzard "Trying Not to Oversexualize" Female Overwatch Characters

[Ticklefist]

*laughs* Allright. Apology accepted, and I can totally understand that. *grins* Just realize... For a lot of folks this is a very serious issue. And many of them don't have the option of saying "this is just a game" because for them it can't "just" be that. Something they love has to be in so many ways offensive to them, at least at the moment. And for them (me, us) fighting against that is something that is really worth it.

What is it about this game that strips of them of the option of seeing it as just a game? Why do they already love this game, what has it already done to offend them? It appears to me that you've merely created a new witch for your ongoing hunt. Or at the least found a new battleground to hash over things that have been hashed over. Just doesn't feel appropriate here in the comments about a game whose lead developer has just expressed his agreement.

 

[The Material Sheep]

Wow. Whoever fed you that one is completely irrational and should seek fear counseling.

Hello, welcome to reality, where there's no shortage of men who treat women in real life as objects meant to be appealing to them. Where if you're a woman who doesn't act with gratitude to a man giving out these supposedly just friendly compliments that he may follow and harass you, and if you do, he may follow and harass you.

No that isn't reality. That is falling for a well peddled scare campaign to get political groups power. Your just as likely to have any number of terrible random accidents happen to you as that if not more so, so there is no sense in treating every situation in such an irrational and anxious way. Yeah if it happened to you that really does suck but I was just in a nasty car wreck that wasn't my fault. However I'm not going to be afraid of getting into a car now. You can't let tragic or terrible things like that effect you in such a way and if they do you need to get help. You can't expect society to bend over for your irrational view of it, especially when the problem is on your end.

 

[Ticklefist]

Wow. Whoever fed you that one is completely irrational and should seek fear counseling.

Hello, welcome to reality, where there's no shortage of men who treat women in real life as objects meant to be appealing to them. Where if you're a woman who doesn't act with gratitude to a man giving out these supposedly just friendly compliments that he may follow and harass you, and if you do, he may follow and harass you.

No that isn't reality that is falling for a well peddled scare campaign to get political groups power. Your just as likely to have any number of terrible random accidents happen to you as that if not more so, so there is no sense in treating every situation in such an irrational and anxious way.

Kind of how I saw it but I was happy to let the subject go.

 

[LazyAza]

Considering that 4 out of the 5 female characters still have the same boring archetypical skinny/curvy body type and are still just the same old pretty faced humanoids I'd say Blizzard like all studios has a long way to go still in terms of catering to diverse interests and fairer representation. Mercy and Widowmaker also still clearly have the whole molded boob outfit thing going on.

Widow especially just seems like a reuse of the female Starcraft Ghost character design but with more exposed cleavage, don't care much for her.

Meanwhile the male characters include a robot, a gorilla, a short fat hairy midget, a floating cyborg buddha and a giant armor golem-like monster man. And Reaper is pretty cool but a little bland. Still that's 6 out of the 7 males that are quite unique.

Why not under-dress one of your male characters for a change? why not make one of the scary/weird characters clearly female instead of male? Its nice that Pharah is there, she seems alright but eh her suit/design is so gender neutral and kinda boring in a different way that even she fails to be interesting or cool.

 

[The Material Sheep]

Considering that 4 out of the 5 female characters still have the same boring archetypical skinny/curvy body type and are still just the same old pretty faced humanoids I'd say Blizzard like all studios has a long way to go still in terms of catering to diverse interests and fairer representation. Mercy and Widowmaker also still clearly have the whole molded boob outfit thing going on.

Widow especially just seems like a reuse of the female Starcraft Ghost character design but with more exposed cleavage, don't care much for her.

Meanwhile the male characters include a robot, a gorilla, a short fat hairy midget, a floating cyborg buddha and a giant armor golem-like monster man. And Reaper is pretty cool but a little bland. Still that's 6 out of the 7 males that are quite unique.

Why not under-dress one of your male characters for a change? why not make one of the scary/weird characters clearly female instead of male? Its nice that Pharah is there, she seems alright but eh her suit/design is so gender neutral and kinda boring in a different way that even she fails to be interesting or cool.

Hanzo has an exposed chest and breast, pretty face, and and a lithe athletic body. He is pretty much an exemplar of the male form. A lotr Legolas esque character with an exposed chest. He's very clearly some girl eye candy, and that's fine. Lets get some more in here to balance things out and it looks like we're going to get more. These are only the starter heroes for over watch.

And you complained about Pharah's suit being gender neutral while at the same time complaining about form fitting outfits... what do you want man?

 

[JohnnyDelRay]

I'm with some people here just wondering the fundamental, why do you have to "try" not to, you either just do or you don't!

But I feel out of the loop. Can someone hit me over the head or explain why game developers have to satisfy audience or societal expectations? I know people are free to analyse and criticise, game reviewers, racism, sexism, social commentary and all that, but why should game design have to conform?

Weren't we arguing not too long ago that games are 'art'? Would you tell an artist to stop drawing controversial figures in case our kids saw it? What's the point in all this? Or is it "draw for your audience" in which case, due to the age rating this game is going for they can't flash too much skin and bloodshed.

Why do we treat games as a medium in which we can influence the creative process? Does anyone tell R.R. Martin not to have incest or misogynistic representations? No, because if you don't like that shit, you just don't buy/read/watch it! I, too, have seen games with forced oversexualization, especially nowadays in the free-to-play and android arena, if I get turned off by it, the simple solution of uninstall is only a few clicks/taps away. If I research a more expensive product and realize that it's not for me, I do not toss any of my dollar bills in their direction.

Hardcore deja vu with all of these circular arguments...

 

[Ticklefist]

Mercy and Widowmaker also still clearly have the whole molded boob outfit thing going on.

*snip*

Its nice that Pharah is there, she seems alright but eh her suit/design is so gender neutral and kinda boring

Well clearly there's no winning with you.

 

[LazyAza]

Mercy and Widowmaker also still clearly have the whole molded boob outfit thing going on.

*snip*

Its nice that Pharah is there, she seems alright but eh her suit/design is so gender neutral and kinda boring

Well clearly there's no winning with you.

Their would be if this supposed super talented billion dollar company could hire some artists who knew what the definition of interesting character design was. The male designs aren't exactly amazing either but compared to the females at least have decent variety.

 

[LazyAza]

And you complained about Pharah's suit being gender neutral while at the same time complaining about form fitting outfits... what do you want man?

I want a female character that is clearly female but isn't wearing a form fitting outfit. Apparently this is the hardest thing in the world for game artists to draw and model.

 

[The Material Sheep]

Mercy and Widowmaker also still clearly have the whole molded boob outfit thing going on.

*snip*

Its nice that Pharah is there, she seems alright but eh her suit/design is so gender neutral and kinda boring

Well clearly there's no winning with you.

Their would be if this supposed super talented billion dollar company could hire some artists who knew what the definition of interesting character design was. The male designs aren't exactly amazing either but compared to the females at least have decent variety.

No. At one point you hate form fitting clothing and another you claim to dislike the fact that Pharah's armor is gender neutral. You are DIRECTLY contradicting yourself. The point of form fitting armor for visuals in a game like this is to show that the character is CLEARLY female. So fine... you've got options with Pharah... but apparently you don't like her because you can't tell she's a female from her armor. Like... I don't know where to go with you man.

 

[NiPah]

Trying not to oversexualise? How about, I dunno, just don't do it? Seriously, it's just silly and always takes me out of the game completely. I haven't been able to take games that do this seriously since I was very young.

They do it because there's a larger market for people who like sexy characters then those who think it's silly.
But companies always like to test the waters so to say, maybe the market is changing a bit, I do hope this does well...
Not that I'll ever play it.

Is there any evidence for that? Or is it an assumption because so many popular games also happen to have oversexualised characters? I've enjoyed lots of games that do this, but I would definitely enjoy most of them a lot more if the characters were even remotely believable.

I used to just assume that a lot of devs have weird kinks and since the games sell well, they don't feel the need to stop doing it. Then again, in recent years I would attribute it more to publishers trying to cater to prepubescent children (I'm not using it as a derogatory term) like they've been doing with most aspects of recent games.

I'm not well versed on the scientific literature, any answer I'd give would just be from skimming a Google scholar article or two on sex in advertising and what not.
Also the industry practice of focus group testing, polling of customers, ect (while not public) would mean they are aggregating large bodies of data on the subject and using them in the creation of their games.

I'm not sure why you focus on prepubescent children, sexual imagery is mainly used to target the post-puberty teen male demographic during which they develop sexual interests.

 

[Ticklefist]

Their would be if this supposed super talented billion dollar company could hire some artists who knew what the definition of interesting character design was. The male designs aren't exactly amazing either but compared to the females at least have decent variety.

I've always felt that the best designs were subtle. Intelligently designed so that players could quickly identify what they were looking at with just a glance.

If you were to show me a quick .2 second video of Pharah I would be able to identify her without a problem. She was only introduced to the world two days ago. That's good design.

 

[LazyAza]

Mercy and Widowmaker also still clearly have the whole molded boob outfit thing going on.

*snip*

Its nice that Pharah is there, she seems alright but eh her suit/design is so gender neutral and kinda boring

Well clearly there's no winning with you.

Their would be if this supposed super talented billion dollar company could hire some artists who knew what the definition of interesting character design was. The male designs aren't exactly amazing either but compared to the females at least have decent variety.

No. At one point you hate form fitting clothing and another you claim to dislike the fact that Pharah's armor is gender neutral. You are DIRECTLY contradicting yourself. The point of form fitting armor for visuals in a game like this is to show that the character is CLEARLY female. So fine... you've got options with Pharah... but apparently you don't like her because you can't tell she's a female from her armor. Like... I don't know where to go with you man.

No I'm not I said Pharah's design was uninteresting because it is so neutral. Gender neutrality is an easy/lazy alternative to 100% form fitting body suits, disliking that doesn't mean I hate it means I think they could have still done better. They could have easily found a perfect middle ground and achieved a much cooler look for her if they had. You don't need to have a character be in one extreme or the other and that seems to be all blizzard is capable of; either 100% CHECK OUT THAT ASS GUYS or 100% IS THAT A GIRL OR BOY? I can't tell!

My primary complaint is the laziness of these designs and the lack of creativity. I want more of the latter and less of the former.

 

[Furbyz]

So, quick question, do you agree with me in that there should be a healthy balance of sexualized and empowered characters for both genders? If I haven't convinced you of the difference between the two, than at least an even balance of the types I showed you? With plenty of exploration of everything in between?

I kind of lost track of what I was talking about.

Yeah, a healthy diversity of characters is great, even if it does inevitably fall into that same mentality of trying to evenly represent everything. A little bit of token this, a bit of token that, but look at games like Team Fortress 2 or Borderlands. Sure TF2 is a total boy's club as far as the character roster goes, but that's beside the point, because what those two games have in common is that their representation of really any characters portrayed in their respective universes as a whole? They're diverse. And I'm not thinking genders or races, I'm thinking physically. How they both show off the many different ways a person can look, the way they use that to give the characters their character, instead of gunning straight for voluptuous girls or herculean guys as though they're trying to promote some kind of sexual attraction to the characters.

I think that's a good mentality, right there. A character shouldn't have their appearance based on what the player might find attractive, it should be based on what actually fits the character. Otherwise, you're just bombarding the audience with a physical idealization that's only going to have a toxic effect at the end of the day. And that, if you ask me, is the root of the problem for oversexualized characters, for guys and girls alike.

It is pretty cool of TF2 to show that, and it's why I do like how Overwatch is turning out in terms of variety. Granted I wish that it had a bit more variety to it in terms of body types, but overall it's still a pretty solid step in the right direction.

Oh dear God a thousand times yes. Half of the time the reason sexy characters annoy me, it's because it completely contradicts either the setting or the character. Apparently Ivy from Soul Caliber is supposed to have taken an oath of chastity. Her outfit can most generously described as a bunch of string with a few random scraps of cloth. Is it really too much to ask for internal consistency from writers?

Right there with you on Ivy. Her outfit is so oversexualized that it colored my entire view of this conversation for years. People would talk about oversexualization, my brain would immediately go to Ivy, and all other complaints paled in comparison so teenage me just didn't get it.

Then one day it struck me that even Talim, my main for ages, was sexualized and even played into certain fantasies with her alternate skins. I was just distracted by the almost reasonable clothing and lack of upskirt shots and sitting on people's faces like the rest of the female cast had in Soul Caliber 2.

OT: It's a step in the right direction, but I figure they need to take a few more. I also had about the same reaction as Browder's daughter. Whose idea was it that Alexstrasza the Life-binder, essentially mother of all creation, would decide to look like that when she takes on a mortal form? Middle-aged and matronly would've suited the character so much better.

 

[The Material Sheep]

Mercy and Widowmaker also still clearly have the whole molded boob outfit thing going on.

*snip*

Its nice that Pharah is there, she seems alright but eh her suit/design is so gender neutral and kinda boring

Well clearly there's no winning with you.

Their would be if this supposed super talented billion dollar company could hire some artists who knew what the definition of interesting character design was. The male designs aren't exactly amazing either but compared to the females at least have decent variety.

No. At one point you hate form fitting clothing and another you claim to dislike the fact that Pharah's armor is gender neutral. You are DIRECTLY contradicting yourself. The point of form fitting armor for visuals in a game like this is to show that the character is CLEARLY female. So fine... you've got options with Pharah... but apparently you don't like her because you can't tell she's a female from her armor. Like... I don't know where to go with you man.

No I'm not I said Pharah's design was uninteresting because it is so neutral. Gender neutrality is an easy/lazy alternative to 100% form fitting body suits, disliking that doesn't mean I hate it means I think they could have still done better. They could have easily found a perfect middle ground and achieved a much cooler look for her if they had. You don't need to have a character be in one extreme or the other and that seems to be all blizzard is capable of; either 100% CHECK OUT THAT ASS GUYS or 100% IS THAT A GIRL OR BOY? I can't tell!

My primary complaint is the laziness of these designs and the lack of creativity. I want more of the latter and less of the former.

If you can't see how needlessly hard to please your standards are, than I don't know how to help you. Pharah is well designed. Her character was suppose to be armored and if she'd had boob plate than people would have just complained about that too. Armor by its very definition is gender neutral when worn most of the time. I mean even than she still has a cartoonish exaggerated design that makes her distinct from the wrest of the cast.

 

[cdemares]

My takeaway is the line, "I don't know. I don't know anymore."

At some point, this stuff gets to be in the eye of the beholder. To me, it just has to make sense. That, I suppose, is the line.
I would argue that Widowmaker is hypersexualized, but Mercy? She's just attractive. Being feminine and fit is not a problem. But more body diversity could lead to some more interesting (and less predictable) characters. Me? I'm always for more diversity. You can find more ways for women to be appealing. Overwatch actually has a good mix of appealing types of characters. But they're mostly predictable types. The thing about diversity is that it's an opportunity. I don't think skinny women in videogames are a crisis, but there will always be some missed opportunities. Overwatch is fine for what it is. It's not the game that's going to blow the lid off of daring and deep alternative characters.

Feminists complain about predictable female roles and characters for the same reason gamers complain about first-person self-serious shooters. Malaise at seeing the same thing repeated endlessly. Except imagine seeing the same thing your entire life. And yet we keep asking for the same thing from female characters, and god help anyone who challenges the precious status quo. We always react as though something precious will be stolen away from us forever or something. But if you want something new, somebody has to say no to the safe and predictable.

BTW, being hot is also a fantasy. Just saying. I don't have a problem with sexualized or good-looking men in games. We are inhabiting those guys and they rule. It's a part of the fantasy. But there are a lot of ways to be appealing. Alan Wake is pretty appealing. I would dig a female equivalent of a character like that. Not a super-soldier or something, but clearly smart, well-spoken and caring.

 

[Lavok]

The hypocrisy of SJW's never cease to amaze

It's even funnier when you look at her back story. She's the stereotypical french femme fatale assassin archetype that reinforces the idea that women suck at CQC. On top of that, she literally has no personality and is completely subservient to another

Compared to Bayonetta who answers to no one and is in complete control of herself and her sexuality.

EDIT: And of course, Nathan Grayson wrote that article.

 

[Norithics]

My takeaway is the line, "I don't know. I don't know anymore."

You know, honestly I don't even think it needs to be quite as complicated as it seems when you get into the weeds of it. More than anything I think the best outcome you can ask for is, "Hey, we're aware of this issue and will remain conscious of it."

As long as that remains true, I think it can only improve. People stop leaning on old crutches and at least give an effort creatively to be different. There's this weird expectation that there's some way to strike a perfect balance, but that's just nonsensical; ultimately creations will have a personal touch and reflect the views of the people who made it in one way or another, and nobody's immune to influence.

 

[DementedSheep]

I can tell by breakback angel, slutsuits sniper and the architect with the crippling inability to walk like a normal person...but hey one of them gets armour and one is kinda tomboyish and they both seem to lack awful animations from the short amount of footage that's up, woo. In contrast to the dawrfs, robots, proper mech suits and gorillas of the male cast of course but still point for not being as bad as you could have been I guess.

 

[oathblade]

and in Warcraft news as a part of the graphic update Underboob added to armor.

Try failed.