If you love to complain and argue on message boards and comments sections, you've likely been very busy the past couple of days talking about Overwatch. Blizzard's hugely anticipated, team-based shooter is still a couple of months away, but players have been playing the game through a closed beta and talking about their experiences. Most of the feedback has been extremely positive, but one player took issue with the way that one hero, a zippy Brit named Tracer, was represented in a victory pose. If you've been living under a rock and have no idea what I'm talking about I'll fill you in very briefly. Consider this the tl;dr (too long; didn't read) version of the story:
Tracer, from the very first cinematic trailer (which looks like something produced by Pixar), is portrayed as a young, kind-hearted, wise-cracking hero. She has an air of innocence and honor about her and has become the unofficial mascot of Overwatch. Tracer has a bit of a foil in Widowmaker, who contrasts nicely as a kind of dark and seductive villain. A beta player by the name of Fipps posted a thorough and heartfelt post on the official beta forums expressing her concern over a particular victory pose for Tracer (pictured above). In Fipps' view, the pose represented an unfortunate inconsistency in Tracer's presentation. Where a pose like that might make sense for a character like Widowmaker (pictured below), it came off as strange and degrading to Tracer's character - just a sexy pose flippantly thrown in because who doesn't love a good ass shot?
“What about this pose has anything to do with the character you're building?” Fipps asked. “It's not fun, it's not silly, it has nothing to do with being a fast elite killer. It just reduces [Tracer] to another bland female sex symbol.” Her argument, I think, is perfectly valid. This isn't some random, overly sensitive activist – she even mentions that the same pose, for a character like Widowmaker, is fitting. In the end, Overwatch director Jeff Kaplan chimed in to voice his agreement, stating that the pose would be removed and that the team would “continue to try to do better.”
What followed was veritable crapstorm the likes of which we haven't seen since the infamous R. Mika ass-slap debacle. Former Blizzard fans are canceling pre-orders, demanding refunds, and shaming Kaplan for supposedly sacrificing his team's original artistic vision, caving to a lone crybaby who had nothing better to do than complain about a total nonissue. That's how they phrase it, anyway. Generally, though I never take part in these ridiculous yelling matches, I tend to internally side with the more liberal among you. I think that designers, developers, and directors should be free to express themselves how they see fit to make the greatest game they can make. That's why I think Blizzard totally made the right call here.
You guys are forgetting you're not entitled to dictate what does or doesn't belong in the game. You don't know Tracer better than Kaplan does, and if he says that replacing that pose is the right call, then it's the right call – period. He's the director; you're not. Sure, he may have done a poor job of clarifying his reasoning for replacing the pose at first, but only because he was reaching out personally, cordially, to respond to the player who raised the issue. He went on to make a few important follow up points. “As the game director, I have final creative say over what does or does not go into the game.” He could have stopped there as far as I'm concerned, because that's all that matters. Thankfully he was a little more thorough.
“We actually already have an alternate pose that we love and we feel speaks more to the character of Tracer,” he added. “We weren't entirely happy with the original pose, it was always one that we wrestled with creatively.” Kaplan goes on to state outright that he wasn't caving to anyone, and that he'd never sacrifice his team's creative vision just because someone takes issue with it. “This was the right call from our perspective, and we think the game will be just as fun the next time you play it.”
That's the bottom line, folks. If you're so convinced that the pose was a complete nonissue, then why don't you do yourself a favor and move on. This doesn't affect what looks like one of the best multiplayer shooters we'll get to play all year, so let's get back on track and focus on what really matters: the game.
