Tracer #Buttgate - Shots fired by professional cosplayer at Heroes Championships

[Erttheking]

Woe be unto any Game Developer that tries to enact it's creative control over something that doesn't fall in line with the loudest group, apparently.

The great irony of this statement when this whole thing was the result of exactly 1 person complaining.

Who actually posted a falsified complaint, because they're a man (not a woman as they alluded to in their OP), don't have a daughter or children and lied about their age.

So Blizzard literally took the words of a troll and ran with it.

I'm sorry, the person in question doesn't actually have a child? Was that ever proven? And I don't even recall the person claiming to be a woman, I feel like people just ran with that.

Since the thread is now 48 pages long - and WoW forum thread discussing it 248 pages, since I didn't save it when it was relevant, it will likely be hard to prove again. However, on this page http://us.battle.net/forums/en/overwatch/topic/20743015583?page=18#343

the OP admits to not being a woman despite earlier letting people assume and respond as such. I think it was later on Reddit or the WoW thread where someone did a little digging and found that found that the OP in the past has stated they don't have children and has made trolly posts like these before. But like I said - 248. pages. of. responses.

The OP was clarifying that he was not a woman. There's a bit of a stretch between people assuming something and a person not correcting them on that and lying.

And could you please get me a link to the kids thing?

 

[RedDeadFred]

"We decided not to sexualize one of our characters."

Expect to see "okay, sure. Your game, Blizzard."

Instead "my freedom of speech!!!! Censorship!"

Maybe I'm just not seeing how this is the evil company censoring its games more and more

Because it wasn't a sexualised pose to begin with.

I actually agree. The picture is very tame, but this is in Murrica where people might think otherwise, so I assume Blizzard is just trying to make sure there's no question. Is it contradictory and dumb? Yes, but it's their game and it's a minuscule feature so I don't think it deserves nearly as much backlash as it's getting.

 

[The Rogue Wolf]

Well, one difference between the in-game pose and the cosplayer's pose that might be important is that the spandex is not wedged halfway up the cosplayer's large intestine.

Aside from that, it seems to me that an enormous fraction of the criticism about the choice is "them SJWs gonna take away all the fun stuff! Make 'em stop!".

 

[EternallyBored]

The OP was clarifying that he was not a woman. There's a bit of a stretch between people assuming something and a person not correcting them on that and lying.

And could you please get me a link to the kids thing?

snip

Seriously, I've had people assume I was female, and never corrected them, it wasn't out of some nefarious scheme to hide my gender to garner sympathy to an argument I was making, its because I just don't give enough of a shit to correct every single instance of some random stranger on the internet using the wrong pronoun. On busy forums I've had people that assumed I was female because of my profession or something else I've said, and until they directly address me as more than just another random arguing on an internet forum, I'm usually not going to waste the time to correct them.

Letting people respond to him with the wrong gender and not correcting them is evidence of jack and shit, and trying to use that by itself as evidence that this guy was a troll or trying to manipulate people is a weak argument at best.

Now, if there is previous posts or evidence that he's said he's never had any children, or that he's admitted to trolling with posts like that in the past, that is more along the lines of something that would call his character, and intentions, into serious question.

I suppose what I'm saying, is I would also like to see evidence of this guy being a troll, because I do not care enough about this internet cryfest to go looking for it myself. I like ya Paragon, I've given you shit in the past, but you spice up the forum topics at least, it's nice, but you're gonna need more than, "It's somewhere in a 200+ page thread" to get me to believe that the original complaint was coming from a troll.

 

[NiPah]

Yet another tiny, dumb hill for the accumulation of bodies. I certainly hope Blizzard learns their lesson from this and never expresses the tiniest bit of doubt that their creation is perfect and that any criticism of it is just some attempt by the PC prudes to stifle their freedom. Remember when people liked the idea of developers engaging with their community? Those were dark days indeed.

Must of missed the bodies, all I see is a cosplayer posing.

Also it's still a good thing for developers to listen and engage with the community, doesn't make them immune to judgement, it's the give and take that comes from open discussion.

As for the bit about PC prudes stifling freedom of speech, that's pretty irrelevant to the issue, the issue is Blizzard making a change that a lot of people disagreed with for varying reasons, not really anything new.

 

[Loop Stricken]

"We decided not to sexualize one of our characters."

Expect to see "okay, sure. Your game, Blizzard."

Instead "my freedom of speech!!!! Censorship!"

Maybe I'm just not seeing how this is the evil company censoring its games more and more

Because it wasn't a sexualised pose to begin with.

I actually agree. The picture is very tame, but this is in Murrica where people might think otherwise, so I assume Blizzard is just trying to make sure there's no question. Is it contradictory and dumb? Yes, but it's their game and it's a minuscule feature so I don't think it deserves nearly as much backlash as it's getting.

For my part at least, it's not the change that rustles the jimmies - it's the manner in which it was announced, seen as pandering to the 'think of the children' minority, concerning a game where a bunch of mercenaries murder each other in the face.

 

[Bilious Green_v1legacy]

Hahah they are actually calling it #buttgate? Really? Fucking really? This is literally the most pathetic thing I have ever seen.

Isn't _____gate just kind of shorthand for "internet controversy of the moment" those days?

 

[F-I-D-O]

It's not a "gate." This is nothing like Watergate. It's a controversy (albeit a silly one). Not everything that causes an argument needs the suffix gate.

Blizzard wasn't censored. A game in development got changed. People working on it were already wary about it, and someone pointing a finger saying "this is weird," a developer agreeing "yep, we thought so to" and then editing the game isn't censorship. It's validation for the creative teams feelings. The internet doesn't have the bible of every character's arc, background, and motivations. Blizzard's likely still writing it through this process.

Now, a cosplayer hired by Blizzard striking it at the event just seems weird. Yeah, I get wanting to do whatever poses you want to in costume, but it just isn't the best time. In addition, it doesn't show anything additional. We already know the pose looks good on Tracer's model and costume - it was already in engine and animated. But one ten second clip of a cosplayer != the sum total of the characters actions and motivations.
Blizzard's likely in the final pages of deciding how they want to present their characters. Every aspect builds to that. Undermining your bosses effort to clarify the character you dress as seems disingenuous, imo. Weird place and time to protest.

Or the actor was told to do that by Blizzard to bring more attention to the surrounding event, using a wave of idotic controversy to generate more interest in HotS and Overwatch simultaneously. Would also serve as a nice end note - those complaining an unreleased game got changed thing they won, anyone else just doesn't care what.

It is also funny that Tracer falls to the ground and we get a nice big look at the fine ass in the latest Blizzard cinematic. It's okay to show that ass in the movie, but take it out of the game! Guess they don't care about showing Tracer's ass, so long as she isn't showing it on purpose.

Aw man, it's as if surrounding context was the entire point of the initial complaint and pose removal. It's almost like taking things out of context can cause misrepresentations of the intended purpose. But, surely every time a character's ass has ever been on camera has the exact same intended purpose. /s

 

[Dragonbums]

Well I hope her protesting what has to be the silliest "controversy" I think I've seen in a long while was worth it. I imagine Blizzard is not terribly happy about that.

I suppose maybe this cosplayer feels so strongly about it that they're willing to take that hit but this has got to be one of the strangest hills I've seen so many people want to die on (and we've seen some pretty stupid freaking hills lately...)

Eh, I'd rather die on this hill than the mess that was Nintendo editing out Lins nipnops and crotch in Xenoblade so you couldn't put sex lingerie on her.

 

[Areloch]

This entire thing, on both sides, can be summed up as:

"I'm allowed to disagree with whatever I want, but no one's allowed to disagree with my disagreement!"

at this point.

 

[infohippie]

This entire thing, on both sides, can be summed up as:

"I'm allowed to disagree with whatever I want, but no one's allowed to disagree with my disagreement!"

at this point.

I don't agree.

 

[Wrex Brogan]

Honestly after years of dealing with the World of Warcraft Community, they're probably used to people picking stupid hills to die on. Slight balance changes often resulted in hundred-page threads about how they're 'ruining the game', so people getting up in arms over something like this is just usual business for 'em, really.

Has it occurred to you that, for many people who put dozens if not hundreds of hours into a single character, a "slight balance" change can and will ruin the game for them? Especially when you take into consideration how needlessly min-max obsessed the WoW community is in general, something as simple as a 1% shift in DPS or eHP can change entire raid comps and leave swaths of the player base entirely out in the cold.

Remember in BC when Blizzard stuck a cooldown on BoSac? The paladin community -- at least those in the paladin community who knew what the fuck they were talking about -- were in open revolt. The rest of the community, including the stupid paladin players, went on and on playing down the potential ramifications of that "slight" balance change. And, when it went live, every paladin build in the game in PvP and PvE (especially PvP) alike got kicked straight in the nads, some to complete inexistence, since no-cooldown BoSac was the difference between viability (genuine viability, not tryhard min-max "viability") and respeccing.

...Well that's needlessly hostile.

And no, see, the problem is it's damn near every change that Blizzard does causes players to run riot. Good and bad. So many. So, so many. Yes, some of them have been about actual shitty changes - shockingly I don't agree with every change (really? Fury Warriors take extra damage during Enrage? Who the fuck thought that was a good idea?) - but the thing is, everything sets the users of Battle.net off. EVERYTHING.

Which is why Blizzard isn't... really fussed about these kinds of things. An explosive outrage across multiple sites and generating hundreds of pages of threads is like... the least-likely thing to change their mind. Because they see it all the time. It's standard operation from their users. People standing upon their chosen hills going 'This Patch, This Patch is where I chose to fight and Die!' is met by Blizzard with a shrug.

Outrage is a useful tool. Just... not when it's the only tool a community provides.

RE: "This is a silly hill"

People who are fighting this war need to post up on all the hills they can, because if they don't, there eventually won't be any hills left to defend.

...This isn't a war. You're not noble soldiers fighting a terrible foe.

You're getting mad about changes developers are making in their own video games.

Please, step back for five minutes.

 

[Dragonlayer]

Oh way to go Miss C. Player, now everyone in the audience who has a daughter is doomed to watch their beloved offspring be corrupted into a monstrous temptress of barely repressed sexual menace.

EDIT

Argh! What happened to my avatar!?

 

[spartandude]

Ok how is this such a massive controversy? Why are we complaining about this minor change but things like Day one DLC, micro-transactions and botched ports aren't worth talking about now?

Also can some one please provide evidence that the OP that started this whole thing was a troll post or is this just conjecture?

 

[Bat Vader]

I kinda agree about the pose. I feel like it wasn't sexy enough. They should do a new one where she's just completely nude. Also, give her a bigger ass. That ass on that character is flatter than a pancake that Godzilla stepped on. Make it jiggle when she moves.

 

[TravelerSF]

It's pretty damn silly, really...

Yeah, I couldn't help but notice that in the new short too. The more this goes on, the more it seems like a misguided effort. At this point I'd be fairly confident to say that the problem wasn't about the pose to begin with. The problem was the character model, which made the pose look much more sexual than intended. I suppose the pants are designed after the ones that runners use, which does fit her character, but they're so skin tight that combined with her body model you're bound to have a few "sexual" poses if you're willing to look for them.

 

[DudeistBelieve]

....This counts as a CM Punk level pipe bomb these days?

Jesus someone get a shovel, because the bar is so low it's actually underground.

 

[Wolf Hagen]

Butt.... Gate..... BUTTGATE!?!

Now I don't wonder anymore, how "President Trump" might be a possible Scenario in such a world.

 

[Phasmal]

You know you guys can just.. google butts if you want to see butts.

I had no idea butts were that important to you guys. Blizzard changed a thing, guys, it's okay. I know you guys are used to being the targeted audience who gets listened to all the time, but sometimes they're gonna do stuff you don't like.

I mean, I've even seen guys say they won't buy Overwatch now because of this. But they clearly didn't really want it and weren't going to play it in the first place. Fake gamer guys, eh.

 

[loa]

Why is everything a gate?