A Rear-View Look at the Overwatch "Butt Controversy"

Daniel H.
Apr 17, 2016
3 min read

Usually, when the Internet talks about butts, it's not worth listening to. However, there was one recent controversy which did catch my attention, all focused around a main character of Blizzard's upcoming game Overwatch.

Although Overwatch features many diverse and fun heroes, it's clear that the teleporting, quick-witted Tracer is the mascot of the entire game. She's the only character on the box art, and she's featured in almost every promotional video. Tracer is a fantastic, unique hero who's not only entertaining to watch and play, but she's kind-hearted, silly, and inspiring. If you have any doubts, just watch her in the newest animated short, "Alive."

She also wears Crocs from the future

Everything was going fine for Tracer and the rest of the Overwatch crew until Overwatch forum member "Fipps" posted a short argument detailing his concerns about one of Tracer's victory poses. I'm sure he did not anticipate the pages of replies his post would generate. As you can see in the picture above, Tracer wear tight fitting pants similar to leggings. He argued that one particular pose ("Over the Shoulder,") well, uses these to highlight one of Tracer's assets (this is a video game design joke; this is not intended to be derogatory to women AT ALL.)

Here's the pose in all its scandalous glory.

This pose does seem to make Tracer more sexy, but Fipps wasn't arguing that having a game character seem sexy is wrong. In comparison to a another Overwatch character, the scantly clothed Widowmaker, this pose shouldn't be an issue. His main concern was that this pose didn't fit Tracer's fun, spunky, and non-seductive personality. Because of this, he argued that this pose showed that Blizzard was fine with reducing interesting, wholesome female characters to blatant "sex symbols." He praised the already diverse cast of female fighters and wanted Tracer to be a character his young daughter could learn from and aspire to imitate.

The reply posts varied in opinion, with fierce contenders both sides of the issue. However, the amazing thing was that Blizzard listened.

Now, Blizzard did admit that they already had concerns about this pose, but, at the end of the day, Fipps and his supporters were what pushed Blizzard to remove Tracer's "Over the Shoulder" pose from the game entirely.

So what does this mean for female characters and the game industry?

First of all, Overwatch has done a fantastic job designing their female characters.

Some of Overwatch's female characters. Widowmaker is second from the left.

It really is discouraging to see the wealth of over-sexualized female characters throughout the game industry, most of which seem to be blatant marketing tactics to attract what I can only assume to be desperate, delusional men. I'm glad that Blizzard has incorporated a mix of body types, nationalities, and clothing styles into Overwatch's character designs. It's a step in a mature direction for game design.

That said, this one pose was blown way out of proportion.

This pose isn't unique to Tracer, but is shared by Widowmaker and even a few male characters. Here's Hanzo flaunting his backside.

Sure, Tracer's version is more suggestive, but it's not like Blizzard made this pose only with Tracer in mind. Also, Tracer has several other victory poses which players could use instead. These really do highlight Tracer's fun personality and would seem to be more popular than "Over the Shoulder."

Overwatch's creative director Jeff Caplan speaks for his team when he says "We wouldn’t do anything to sacrifice our creative vision for Overwatch, and we’re not going to remove something solely because someone may take issue with it." But in a way, they did. They allowed a portion of the community to shape the game and take a freedom, however small, away from the entire Overwatch community. I'm glad that Blizzard cares about making strong female characters for their games, but they should have been able to do that without the input of the community.

I hope fans realize that this is Blizzard's game, and that as consumers, they should respect the choices of the developer. It's the developer's work of art and their job to be responsible in the development process. If they don't agree, they should simply not buy the game and give the developer money.

I hope developers realize that fans appreciate non-suggestive female characters and creative, neat characters like Tracer are huge selling points for a game.

Let's learn from this controversy before it is too far behind us. ( :) Sorry, just one more.)

-Daniel