I wanted your opinion on this. I used to be a fan of Overwatch. But I left it all behind about a year ago and find myself becoming frustrated and feeling genuinely angry with even thinking about Overwatch in general. I feel that Blizz advocates this LGBT stuff while not actively confirming anything and leaving it to interpretation as a means to supposedly be progressive, but it just feels as if they are leeching off the idea for profit. I don’t feel like it’s diverse anymore. Am I crazy?
No, but I think you’ve been manipulated by Tumblr’s “EVERYTHING MUST BE ABSOLUTELY PERFECT AND ON MY OWN TIMELINE OR THE DEVS/SHOW RUNNERS ARE TERRIBLE AND FAKE ALLIES”.
Blizzard made their face of Overwatch - an AAA game - gay. Openly gay. The writer shot down people on Twitter who tried to contest it. That is the very opposite of queer baiting.
I’m disappointed they haven’t confirmed the second character yet, too - but one of my best friends works for an AAA studio so I know there can be a lot of friction between the ‘play’ devs and the ‘lore’ devs (or similar teams). Overwatch is by far and large designed to be a play game. eSports, the actual game, etc. It’s not really a story game and so we need to realise that the story parts of the game will get FARRRRRR less resources than any other part. When they release heroes, what they design, etc, will depend on what balance the play part of the game needs. Lore will always play distant second fiddle to this.
People saying things like “THIS OTHER GAME DID GAY BETTER!! THIS OTHER GAME DID THIS!” are probably pointing to a story game, with more capacity to develop characters and release content as the story requires.
I say this as someone who’s been playing video games for 25 years and WISHING for the sort of representation Overwatch has: Overwatch is a fucking gift. You guys don’t know how lucky you are, being in an era where you feel free to demand and expect diverse content from studios. It’s new, and it’s heartening that it exists, but honestly, I wish people had some perspective and some appreciation for how great it is that you can be like, “Excuse me, Blizzard, this huge amount of representation you’ve already given us is not enough, we want more and better!” Because, even though it’s completely true and they could do better (and have even said they’ll do more and better), it’s fantastic what they’ve already done.
Let’s not forget to reflect on the fact they responded to our request for different body types for the women, they gave us a gay character, they let the fandom pressure the lore team to reveal more about Pharah’s backstory, there’s a nonbinary character with they/them pronouns, they acknowledged there was an issue with Talon being mostly PoC, etc, etc. Yes, they can do better - for example, we’re still waiting on that long-promised black woman - and you can respectfully deliver them that feedback. But even with those things considered, they’ve already done fucking great.
Overwatch is trying to be diverse far more than other games of its platform have up until this point, and yes, sometimes it misses the mark, but the idea of just tossing it and everything it’s achieved for representation already aside just because I haven’t received my promised second queer character is…. mmm. Well, people are welcome to discard games for any reason they see fit, but I think unilaterally declaring the game made by FAKE ALLIES BLIZZARD is shown a huge lack of perspective and appreciation.
Blizzard aren’t fake allies. Can they do better? Sure. Is the game perfect? No, but absolutely nothing is. There will never be a perfect game made. You will live and die waiting for the ‘perfect’ game to exist: and even if you find your perfect game, someone else will be hurt by it, disappointed in it and hate it.
Please don’t fall prey to Tumblr’s mentality of immediately burning something that isn’t perfect in every way. Nothing is perfect, and you’ll just end up throwing the baby away with the bathwater. Overwatch has done great things for diversity in gaming and they’ll probably do more of them. It sucks we have to wait for the things we want, but I’m not using that as any sort of indication the team aren’t fantastic queer allies.
