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

[TheMysteriousGX]

What isn't necessarily wanted is thunder-thigh-girl with a muscular upper body. If you agree that hulking muscle girls are rare, then you have no idea how much rarer a fat on the bottom and incredibly toned on top is. Basically have to have the worst genetics ever and maybe inject collagen in the legs to get that combo. Maybe a serious medical condition?

Or, just maybe, in a game filled with cybernetic and robotic augmentations, the loose cloth and armor plate on her legs are covering up an exo-suit pack with electronic gadgets? I mean, we're talking about Overwatch here right? Where are the complaints that men won't be able to identify with a 12 foot tall robot suit or uplifted gorilla man?

Their resources would have been better served tackling a Jade-esque character that is an average woman but not oversexualized. Think about the current really popular female characters that are held up as golden standards. Jade, the new Lara Croft, Ellie, Faith, Jill Valentine and even Chell. These are all basically average women that just haven't been all gussied up for the prom. Attractive but not bombshells. In shape and competent. Believe it or not, but both sexes like more attractive avatars. It's just that the current body type over does it towards a man's fantasy rather than necessarily a woman's view of beauty.

In a game with a cyber-gunslinger, a gundam-esc missile boat, a yogi-robot, and a samurai using a bow, the new female character should be "realistic". Gotcha.

The main call is against oversexualization, not a demand to get a manish thunder-thigh character. Don't get me wrong, that is a demand that exists, but either only just to see it done because of some sort of imagined self-righteous belief that it deserves to exist or out of an incredibly niche desire to specifically play as a man they slapped breasts on, pretty colors, and made the face more feminine. Body diversity would require the body type to be different than existing body types. Instead, this body type exists all over the place and the only difference here is that the same body type is also a female.

Which makes it different, yes.

That's not what I'm saying. I'm not referring to people who are asking for different body types as the niche group. Hell, I want more variety myself if you'd only hear me out far enough and I don't see this character as a negative so much as a missed opportunity. What I'm referring to are those that would specifically want this body type in particular to play as if they were given a wider range of options. Studies on the avatar selected generally skew to the more traditional yet attractive body type.

Here's an excellent article on the subject: http://www.themarysue.com/what-women-want-in-female-video-game-protagonists/

Females want their avatar to be attractive, but they also want them to be realistic human beings rather than sex craved caricatures. If they're going to be warriors, they want appropriate plate mail for protection, not a chain mail bikini. If they're running from zombies, they want a character that has running shoes, not stilettos. I get that entirely.

Men have an advantage because we view both boyish features and rugged manliness as attractive and desirable features. This is why we're perfectly fine playing with an ugly character like John Marston from Red Dead Redemption without batting an eye. We also don't generally mind over exaggeration because men don't have the commonly exaggerated features that women have. Men are basically praised for their musculature (toneness or bulkiness) or their face (boyishly or ruggedly handsome with "dreamy" eyes). Women are commonly praised for a wider variety of their body. Legs, butt, breasts and many of the other features that are specific to femininity.

We're still talking about Overwatch, right? The "12 foot tall robot suit teaming up with the blue assassin and uplifted gorilla with a lightning cannon" game? Why do the male characters get to be gonzo while the female characters should be conventionally attractive?

The cake and companion cube are the far more popular "characters" from that game. Is there a point you want to make with them too?

Sure. Neither of those are characters.

The game was an entirely new thing. Something we'd never seen before and slapped into a bundle of other great games as if it were just a bonus (because Valve had no idea it would be that popular). Chell, like Gordon Freemon, is a non-character. They're great because we can place our own thoughts into them with absolutely no interference from them when they open their mouths to say something we would never say and break the illusion that they are our avatar. The writer of the article I linked above was both wrong and right when she spoke about Chell. Chell was only all of those things because SHE was playing the game. Maybe someone else who wasn't able to solve the puzzled and got frustrated and quit the game would think of Chell as any other number of adjectives.

What this tells us is that we don't like our protagonists to take us out of control. I mean, you had no idea that you could even see Chell in the game. She might as well have been a dog or a stalk of celery. At least Gordon Freemon was spoken to regularly and addressed for who he was.

Where'd you ge the idea I didn't see Chell through a portal when I was playing? The point I was making is that "non-character player-mobiles" are almost never women, despite there being no gameplay or story reason for excluding them. Making Chell noteworthy. Or hell, Faith from Mirrors Edge.

I'm saying that the AAA market is making huge strides in accommodating everyone. Want to be a fat, ugly, old woman in a game? Play Skyrim or any of the games with a customizer like that. These are great and are under-valued merely because there is no stable character that you have to play as. But claiming that diverse body types don't exist is pretty dishonest for this reason. Character customization has only gotten better and better and has led to a decent variety.

"Just stop asking for games without character creators to accommodate people, sheesh."

When this sort of stuff is ignored or passed over, it makes it look like people aren't asking for equal representation. They're instead asking for games in which their desired body type is the only option where other people have to play as them too. Or maybe a number of very limited characters. If that's the demand, then whether or not they represent a significant demographic of the consumer base comes far more into play. In a lot of the AAA market space they simply don't represent anywhere close to the majority and if there's only four or so selectable characters then catering to them means not catering to the larger groups.

How much larger can you get than 51% of the population? Or 49% of gamers, or whatever that's up to now? Perhaps, and I'm just spitballing here, if they started getting some accommodation, it might make more member of those groups interested in playing the game? Kinda like how Simcity didn't really appeal to many women, but the changes to the formula to make the Sims hit it outta the park?

As I said, imagine if a lot of people started to demand that pantyhose be made more ball-friendly to accommodate the men who like to wear them. That's not going to happen because women are the majority consumers of the product and making the product less enjoyable for the largest consumer market just isn't going to happen. They may instead make a different or smaller line to cater to a niche market.

...really? All right. This analogy would fit better if said panty-hose manufatorer was already doing very well selling pantyhose to testicled individuals, and decided to make their main line of pantyhose more testicle friendly to react to demand, only to have said move resisted by non-testicled individuals going on about "pantyhose culture" and asking "why can't they just make their own pantyhose?"

That being said. Tomb Raider was a fantastic game. I didn't particularly like playing as what appeared to be a far weaker character but I got over that in the game. It also sold very well from what I'm told and she wasn't oversexualized. So maybe if they do the character right then we simply won't give a damn.

In what would does "doing a character right" lead to indifference? Wouldn't that be a sign of bad writing there?

You're right, in Tomb Raider, a more humanized Lara Croft fits really well, where Zarya (while amusing) probably wouldn't fit in very well. But we're talking about Overwatch. Gorilla with a lightning gun, steampunk roided Dwarf, time-skipping hacker, transforming robot Overwatch. New Lara wouldn't really fit in.

 

[iller3]

If you're old enough

...If I'm old enough... Oh honey, you're too kind. I'll be old enough for ultraporn pretty soon

But I was satisfied by what I saw, so thanks for that anyway. Seems we just perceive "character presence" differently and there's not much else to say about it. I guess I shouldn't bother including my interpretation of her if we've already agreed that her design was "different enough" already. (atleast I'm pretty sure no one's still interested at this point)

Every other female character so far has had more interesting design. Probably in terms of abilities too.

Couldn't disagree more here. The other SUPPORT characters have the most run of the mill overused abilities I've seen in a team arena setting compared to Zarya's. I'm not saying Zay's are super original mind you, infact they're functionally identical to the "Electron" class from the F2P shooter "FireFall" They even copied that electron's inherent where shielding allies buffs your own damage. But as far as Team shooters go, it's a hell of a lot more interesting than the Heal-spammer classes b/c Zay is a soldier class who can actually walk into Breaching situations instead of "hiding behind the big burly male character" like so many MMO healers often are forced into doing.