What’s the phrase? Damned if you do, damned if you don’t? Well that’s probably how the folks over at Blizzard feel right now. Eight days ago, beta tester “Fipps” did exactly what they’re supposed to do when beta testing. Leave feedback. Specifically Fipps left feedback on one of the victory poses for the character Tracer, where she’s got her back to the screen and looking over the shoulder. In fact, the pose is literally called “Over the Shoulder.” To Fipps it was overly sexual and out of character.
Below is a part of the post which you can read in full by clicking here.
“…let’s talk about Tracer. From a marketing standpoint, she’s the star of the show. She’s a great hero. When we look at the way she’s portrayed in promotional media, lore, and art in game we know a few things about her..
She’s Fast.
She’s Silly.
She’s Kind.
She’s a good Friend.
Her body seems to be comprised of about 95% spunk.”
Fipps goes on to praise the build up around Tracer’s design, poses, and animation. After that they accused the pose above to be out of character, pointlessly sexual, and a continuation in the trend of pointlessly sexualizing every female character in video games. For a while, it’s a normal civil conversation between the beta testers; Fipps clarifies that the comments weren’t trying to be “sex-negative,” and that stuff like that for more obviously sexual characters like Widowmaker and D.va, because it fit the characters.
From my perspective, it doesn’t look like anything other than a common pose. Besides, if people don’t like it, there are other poses available.
Later on the director of the game Jeff Kaplan came out and responded:
“We’ll replace the pose. We want *everyone* to feel strong and heroic in our community. The last thing we want to do is make someone feel uncomfortable, under-appreciated or misrepresented,” he wrote. “Apologies and we’ll continue to try to do better.”
After that, people came out of the woodwork for this one. (Sorry if we’re too late to the boat!) On the boards it was mostly against Fipps, who some accused of being a shrill SJW Tumblrina. In a later comment, Fipps specifically mentioned not being female or a Tumblr user.
Once the poo-flinging started, Jeff came back with a pretty lengthy response. The most important part, in my opinion, came in the middle with:
“We actually already have an alternate pose that we love and we feel speaks more to the character of Tracer. We weren’t entirely happy with the original pose, it was always one that we wrestled with creatively. That the pose had been called into question from an appropriateness standpoint by players in our community did help influence our decision—getting that kind of feedback is part of the reason we’re holding a closed beta test—but it wasn’t the only factor.”
Personally, I call bullshit. Not about having other poses ready; some speculate that it was nothing more than a placeholder pose because most characters have it. What I do think is bullshit is if you like another pose better, then put that one in first. And if you, the game designer, are not entirely happy with the pose, don’t include it. Or, if you’re not sure, post some of the “iffy” poses on the message boards you created and have people give feedback.
Social media arguments were being thrown every which way. Some said that it wasn’t sexual at all. Some said that it shouldn’t matter if it is sexual. Some said that it was awesome that it was sexual. Others said that it was unnecessary fan service. Others said that it was a dumb pose in general. Some said the whole issue was stupid. I agree on the last one. Regardless, this has gotten out of hand very fast.
Blizzard actually had to start locking threads and allegedly deleting posts about it on the subreddit. Speaking of Reddit, there are two large camps that I’ve seen on this issue. Reddit and Tumblr. (What a surprise…) Regardless, the main arguments that I’ve seen are, “This is stupid censorship because of SJWs! They’re trying to ruin the fun!” and “Shut up, you fat neckbeards! It’s just a pose and it doesn’t matter!”
On the whole, I’ll restate that I don’t think the pose is bad. What I do think is bad is the way the community has dealt with the situation as a whole. The majority seems to be against removing the pose, looking at the message boards, Reddit comments, and tweets that I’ve seen have been against the deletion of the pose. Videos have been made mocking the situation. One women explained how she felt empowered by it.
Basically, everyone is freaking out about what should have been nothing. Blizzard should be applauded for listening to the feedback, regardless of if its positive or negative feedback. It means they’re listening. And here’s the thing: just because people are in the minority, that doesn’t make their opinions invalid. And if a developer chooses to change it, it’s the developer’s choice.
Do I think that the Overwatch team really had a problem with it? No, not at all. My best bet is that they saw the potential controversy and wanted to nip it in the bud. There’s just one big problem about it. No matter what you do, no matter how hard you try, people are going to bitch about it. If it wasn’t for Fipps’ complaint, it probably would have been replaced, explained as a placeholder and there’d be no controversy. It’s a damn shame too, because the amount of work and care that the team has put into this game is amazing. There’s great variety in the characters, its gameplay is good and easy to pick up, it looks gorgeous, etc.
If it were me, I would have removed it as well, but I’d own up to it and directly say I was avoiding controversy. I think Fipps had the right idea and wanted to provide what they thought was constructive feedback, but worded it wrong. I think Jeff and the rest of Blizzard had the right idea and wanted to make sure that everyone’s voice was valid, and were put in a bad situation. The communities, however, have taken a really promising game and made it about a really stupid controversy. Because at the end of the day, it’s an ass.
Best of luck, Blizzard. You’re going to need it.