New Overwatch Hero Is a Response to Body-Type Diversity Criticism

[The Lunatic]

On the topic of hair.


It'd be kinda life if we had a character that ran around wearing a fedora.

People are going to make characterisations based on a character's appearance.

Though, if we're going for such stereotypes, maybe the next character should be an overweight neck-beard with a trench-coat, fedora and an oversized katana?


It'd certainly balance things out.

 

[SweetShark]

Wait, wasn't the Barbarian Girl from Diablo 3 had Body-Type Diversion like Zayra?
WHy this is so important now?
Btw, muscular overweight women for the win!!!
Also Pyro from TF2 is a girl.

 

[SweetShark]

Zarya this, Zarya that, I don't see the big deal about a Rule 63 Heavy. I wanna know why no one else is talking about how fucking awesome McCree looks.

His entire design screams "Badass Western". Maybe it's because I've always had a soft spot for the Wild West in fiction, but his appearance is genius. Between the cigar, poncho, coolass six-shooter, and hat, it's easily my favorite so far. I especially like his ultimate, that quickdraw looks FUCKING FUN AS HELL. Also, it's nice how they implemented a flashbang to not be like Counter-Strike, in that it's not actually a flashbang. Shit hurts my eyes.

Because there is a Cowboy NINJA in Mortal Kombat and he is way cooler than him:

Spoiler: BEHOLD!!!

We will see more of him in the game obviously.

EDIT: If you like Cowboys so much, I suggest you to play "Fistful of Frags". Great FPS game.

 

[Grahav]

Relevant to this topic:

Michael Hartman, the CEO of Frogdice, tries to have a reasonable conversation about female costume designs with a Polygon journo, but is unable to get through to him.

 

[theNater]

The problem is that Blizzard is using her as PR to appeal to a crowd that cannot be pleased and giving the impression of coercion.

You know that a lot of the people who were asking for more body type variety are happy with Zarya, right? That the people complaining about her are largely different people?

If Blizzard just released her without waving their dick about how she is "a direct response" to something, then no one would even notice she was different to begin with, which is how diversity should be.

Yeah, that's not how real people work. There was always going to be someone claiming it was a response to this criticism, and there were always going to be people complaining about how "ugly" and "mannish" she looks.

and the analogy... Maybe Alice is...

Well, if you weren't sure why she was doing it, you could have asked. I mean, you had access to the guy who came up with the analogy. But instead, you leapt immediately to the assumption that "Alice is being controlling".

Also, never bring up an extremist as a representative of the whole. I could easily do the same, but it detracts from the actual conversation.

Again, I was trying to bring up the extremists as representatives of the extremists. I accidentally overshot my mark, and apologized.

 

[Kameburger]

Holy crap... I've never been so unaffected and desensitized to something in my life. I think this was a good solution though. And for everyone ragging on the media for giving this attention you know what good on them for this one. It's much nicer to see one article about a thing a company did right than 6 or 7 articles and 3 videos about something stupid a random guy at Ubisoft blurted out in a sneeze. I'm still looking forward to overwatch. That game looks fun. What I'm not looking forward to is really just anything that remotely resembles 2014's glorious outrage culture flaring up like the hemroid from hell.

 

[Vigormortis]

I'm hearing a lot that its not quite like Team Fortress 2 as everybody thinks it is.

Um....that statement does not jive with the linked video. That video makes the game look precisely like a Team Fortress 2 clone set in the future.

 

[keniakittykat]

They were so damn close to making a real stand-out character but fell on the last hurdle and made her a Russian strongwoman stereotype with bright pink hair. It's like they were trying to justify the design to themselves.

You were so close, Blizzard!

 

[Trishbot]

They were so damn close to making a real stand-out character but fell on the last hurdle and made her a Russian strongwoman stereotype with bright pink hair. It's like they were trying to justify the design to themselves.

You were so close, Blizzard!

I'll give you a pony if you can name me five Russian strongwomen in video games that I can't make with a character creator. I'll even be impressed if you can name me two.

 

[happyninja42]

They were so damn close to making a real stand-out character but fell on the last hurdle and made her a Russian strongwoman stereotype with bright pink hair. It's like they were trying to justify the design to themselves.

You were so close, Blizzard!

I'll give you a pony if you can name me five Russian strongwomen in video games that I can't make with a character creator. I'll even be impressed if you can name me two.

Well, since I'm pretty confident you can make any character with a..you know..character creator, I don't know how it is possible to actually meet your challenge. xD

The only one I can think of offhand, is that character from Alpha Protocol, the strong female Russian mercenary. She was admittedly way more feminine in design than this Overwatch character, but she was also pretty manly and butch in other ways. Aside from her....yeah I got nothin'.

 

[Trishbot]

The only one I can think of offhand, is that character from Alpha Protocol, the strong female Russian mercenary. She was admittedly way more feminine in design than this Overwatch character, but she was also pretty manly and butch in other ways. Aside from her....yeah I got nothin'.

I was thinking more along the lines of, say, Saints Row has a "Russian accent" for one of the female Boss characters, and you can customize her body to be a bulging, strong, bodybuilder type. But outside of that, I can't think of a single one that's an established character.

 

[happyninja42]

The only one I can think of offhand, is that character from Alpha Protocol, the strong female Russian mercenary. She was admittedly way more feminine in design than this Overwatch character, but she was also pretty manly and butch in other ways. Aside from her....yeah I got nothin'.

I was thinking more along the lines of, say, Saints Row has a "Russian accent" for one of the female Boss characters, and you can customize her body to be a bulging, strong, bodybuilder type. But outside of that, I can't think of a single one that's an established character.

Ah, established as opposed to designed by the player. *nods* Ok, I grok you fully now. Yeah, I'm still drawing a blank, other than the one from Alpha Protocol that I mentioned. She wasn't "bulging" except in the cleavage department. But she was definitely a muscular Russian woman. She was at that (in my opinion) perfect synergy of female curves and muscular strength, without going into the "yes I take steroids" level of mass.


**Edit** Would you count Nurse Nina from Borderlands Pre-Sequel? She wasn't a bodybuilder level of big, but she was a massive Russian woman. I mean, maybe she did lift weights, but the results were insulated under a lot of fat.

 

[Scarim Coral]

I just wanted to post this link-

http://thespectacularspider-girl.tumblr.com/post/113010314274/female-portrayals-in-video-games

I find it quite insightful especially when I was one of those people who did view the Overwatch girls had the same body type.

 

[theNater]

I just wanted to post this link-

http://thespectacularspider-girl.tumblr.com/post/113010314274/female-portrayals-in-video-games

I find it quite insightful especially when I was one of those people who did view the Overwatch girls had the same body type.

I responded to that article a few pages back; I'm repasting my response here for ease of access.

My main problem with that article is the assumption that what she finds sexy is what everybody finds sexy. That women can't be sexy while fully dressed. That anyone who doesn't want the women she likes is anti-sex. Well, I'll probably be mocked for saying this, but I think Zarya is hot. I like a woman with some heft to her. Zarya is such a breath of fresh air compared to the half-clothed twigs that we see over and over and over. I'd much rather date her than Widowmaker. But when I cheer for the addition of someone I think is sexy, it must be because I hate sex.

My secondary problem is that she lists four male body types when there are five: thin, dwarf, heroic, large, gorilla.

 

[Trishbot]

I just wanted to post this link-

http://thespectacularspider-girl.tumblr.com/post/113010314274/female-portrayals-in-video-games

I find it quite insightful especially when I was one of those people who did view the Overwatch girls had the same body type.

I still think they do IN COMPARISON TO THE MEN. It's not just "sexy", compared to the rich diversity of the male Overwatch characters, which are pushed to incredibly diverse extremes, the women absolutely are similar in size apart from Zarya's inclusion. Identical? No, but, yeah, when you see most of the cast, the women are far more alike than different.

I think the article you linked to is interesting, but partially misguided. At least 4 (maybe 5, without the armor) of the girls are cut from the same cloth, with similar, but not quite identical, builds. It's a problem MANY people have doing women in fiction, and it's the reason the bodies of 99% of superheroines in comics are identical and, without having a costume or hair color to tell them apart, you couldn't tell a civilian like Mary Jane from a psychic superhero warrior like Jean Grey. All the women had to be sexy, lithe, and curvy.

For Overwatch, the problem was the developers were aiming for diversity and realized they weren't hitting it well enough with the female characters (as opposed to how vastly different the men are). In the greater gaming landscape, it's not quite so much an issue, but it was for Overwatch.

It's still an issue as a whole, however. We absolutely DO need better, more sensible female characters in games. The article you linked to comes from the right place, but while she says we have characters like Talim and Hilde in Soul Calibur, or the rogue in Dragon's Crown, they're vastly outnumbered by the "sexy" women, not just in representation but also marketing. You barely saw the rogue compared to the sorceress and amazon, so what good does it do people to create a sensible alternative if most people don't even know she exists? For every sensibly dressed, averagely-sized woman, there's at least 30 or more that fit the "pinup model" size, typically wearing impractical clothing (good ol' chainmail bikinis are the rule for most of fantasy fiction, sadly). I do celebrate the ones that get it right, though. I DO talk about Hilde, Chun-Li, Samus Aran (in armor), Faith Conners, Alyx Vance, Jade from Beyond Good & Evil, Chell, Zoey, etc., and I do thank people like Netherrealm Studios for "trying to make our women more realistic" or Bioware for putting female Shepard on the game cover and attempting to be more open minded.

 

[martyrdrebel27]

She is still sexy though, in a body-builder kind-of way. And she has a pretty face. How about making fat, not pretty female character?

like hatchetface from crybaby. that's fuckin diverse. ugh.

 

[Lil devils x_v1legacy]

Finally they put some muscles on the girl instead of toothpick arms, still would have been nice if they were a bit in between hulked out and toothpicks, ( like real girl arms) but at least she has muscles at all.

 

[EternallyBored]

I just wanted to post this link-

http://thespectacularspider-girl.tumblr.com/post/113010314274/female-portrayals-in-video-games

I find it quite insightful especially when I was one of those people who did view the Overwatch girls had the same body type.

I responded to that article a few pages back; I'm repasting my response here for ease of access.

My main problem with that article is the assumption that what she finds sexy is what everybody finds sexy. That women can't be sexy while fully dressed. That anyone who doesn't want the women she likes is anti-sex. Well, I'll probably be mocked for saying this, but I think Zarya is hot. I like a woman with some heft to her. Zarya is such a breath of fresh air compared to the half-clothed twigs that we see over and over and over. I'd much rather date her than Widowmaker. But when I cheer for the addition of someone I think is sexy, it must be because I hate sex.

My secondary problem is that she lists four male body types when there are five: thin, dwarf, heroic, large, gorilla.

That's pretty much my issue as well, the post focuses too much on attractiveness, which in itself has problems because once again, the fight is over how attractive the characters are rather than their existence as characters. It's like the people who defended the ME3 ending by only focusing on the people that thought it was bad because it wasn't a happy ending, it only addresses a small part of the criticism being leveled against such games, and completely avoids other potential views on the topic other than the easy, "you just don't like overly attractive characters because you are petty and have low self esteem". It's basically attacking the low hanging fruit, and being insulting on top of it. In an effort to counteract petty criticisms she gets very petty and snide herself.

The blog post also has a big issue with assuming that any deviation from the norm is automatically an attack on "sexy", or that people aren't attracted to these characters, rather than just another type of attractive, it is unfortunate that I think she sabotages herself by implying that character's like Zarya are only liked because they are not "sexy", sexy to who? her? She's not the arbiter of what everyone finds attractive.

The Hanzo/ McCree generic buff male pretty boy is the most common model amongst the male characters in Overwatch, but they still get the big characters, the small characters, the non-human characters, and the females get 5 characters of tiny variations of tall, skinny, and well-endowed, three of which are similar enough they could probably trade clothes. That is not a problem in and of itself, those characters, like the baseline Hanzo buff male deserve to exist, and I can even understand them being the average model used for a good chunk of characters. I do not however, support them being the only model with slight variations, I do not condemn Blizzard because obviously the roster wasn't complete at announcement, but somehow I wasn't going to be surprised if the female characters added after the fact were going to be all normal height skinny well-endowed models in various outfits. Meanwhile, the male character not in the game yet from Trishbot's post features a fully armored cyborg ninja and a giant beer belly Mad Max raider in a gas mask.

 

[Ishal]

Anybody that's played a MOBA knows this or even games similar to Skullgirls knows this. Variety will come, if you have the patience to wait for it. Unfortunately, I didn't see much, and it led to this.

This is my thought as well.

The aesthetic of this game screams LoL, Skull Girls, Borderlands, and of course TF2. I doubt it'll be subscription based, since things seem to be moving away from that model. That means there'll be a cash shop with tons of stuff to buy.

Even if Zarya wasn't released now, I'm guessing we would have seen her or something similar down the line. And we'll probably see more. Either sold individually, in packs, or totally some for free in a patch. There are lots of ways they could do it.

I'm guessing they have a TON of characters waiting to be released. Especially if this truly is what remained of the scrapped "Titan" project. They're probably sitting on tons of material.

 

[Bocaj2000]

The problem is that Blizzard is using her as PR to appeal to a crowd that cannot be pleased and giving the impression of coercion.

You know that a lot of the people who were asking for more body type variety are happy with Zarya, right? That the people complaining about her are largely different people?

If Blizzard just released her without waving their dick about how she is "a direct response" to something, then no one would even notice she was different to begin with, which is how diversity should be.

Yeah, that's not how real people work. There was always going to be someone claiming it was a response to this criticism, and there were always going to be people complaining about how "ugly" and "mannish" she looks.

and the analogy... Maybe Alice is...

Well, if you weren't sure why she was doing it, you could have asked. I mean, you had access to the guy who came up with the analogy. But instead, you leapt immediately to the assumption that "Alice is being controlling".

Also, never bring up an extremist as a representative of the whole. I could easily do the same, but it detracts from the actual conversation.

Again, I was trying to bring up the extremists as representatives of the extremists. I accidentally overshot my mark, and apologized.

First of all, on the first page of this thread, you can see people complaining about a "token," a new body type to objectify, offensive stereotypes, a simple gender swap, and that she's not ugly enough. That was just page one. I'm glad that Tumblr likes this girl, but that doesn't mean everybody does. They are probably outliars, so I won't take it too seriously, but you should still be aware. Second of all, I don't know a single person whom is actually against diversity. Only those who don't like it being forced (just like innovation and convention).

And don't use a blanket statement that all people and situations work the same. LoadOut happened with little mention for its diversity in female body types. My assumption is that it's because she fit the style of the game and was just as natural as everything else. The female dwarfs in WoW are stocky, and the barbarian woman in Diablo III is built like a barbarian. These are invisible unless you call attention to it. But when it is shouted from the rooftops that there is diversity in this game, that is all anyone sees. Like I said, I really like Zarya, but I fear she is being used for politics now.

Also, with such little information given to me, I assumed that they were friends at a restaurant ordering food. The kind of person who orders food for another is controlling. I used the information given to me, and if I misinterpreted, then it's the fault of the writer for being vague, not the reader for applying critical thinking.