Earlier today, Blizzard game director Jeff Kaplan responded to a single complaint about Tracer’s pose in its upcoming game, Overwatch. The developer promised the poster that Blizzard as a studio was committed to making sure no one felt “uncomfortable, under-appreciated or misrepresented” by removing the pose.
Kaplan would go on to explain how the team wouldn’t be sacrificing any of its creative vision with the decision some ten hours later. “That the pose had been called into question from an appropriateness standpoint by players in our community did help influence our decision,” he wrote, stating that the team wanted to “create something better.” None of this, of course, was actually stated in his original reply, where he simply offered an apology and a promise to “try to do better.”
Here are nine reasons that have nothing to do with “I wanna look at girls’ asses” addressing Blizzard’s and Jeff Kaplan’s decision today how it was terribly communicated.
1) Kaplan as team lead, has a responsibility to protect and support those who work under him. By capitulating to the post of one person and basically saying “we were wrong,” he threw his art team under the bus by claiming they made problematic art. Despite Kaplan’s later clarification, it is difficult not to see his initial apologetic response, followed by an extensive period of silence, as anything but an admission that the artists had created something wrong.
2) By capitulating, Kaplan effectively slut-shamed his own team’s character. By claiming that for Tracer to stand looking over her shoulder, she is making other women feel unwelcome, not to mention that doing so is effectively slutty and a “modest” woman would not do so, Kaplan’s decision could be construed to mean “if you are a woman and you stand like this, you are asking for it.”
3) Kaplan’s words and actions today were in response to a thread in which the vast majority of the posters disagreed with the OP. By agreeing with the OP, Kaplan is in effect sending a message to the game’s userbase to say: ”Your opinion does not matter. We are going to change your experience in a way, however minor, that you have expressly said you do not want, to satisfy a tiny minority.”
Doing so will make the userbase lose trust in Blizzard’s ability to properly filter and sort through feedback and make them more fearful that the game they are going to be paying money for will receive unwelcome changes despite their protests.
4) The OP of the thread used his “daughter” (we are assuming good faith from the OP, which is generous) as a weapon to thrust their point home. It is implied in the original post that his daughter is young and not yet a teenager. Overwatch is “T” rated by the ESRB. By agreeing to the parent’s demands, Kaplan is saying “It’s totally okay for your underage daughter to play our game, and we’ll even change it to make it “better” for her despite the fact that the game’s rating indicates it is not suitable for a child of her age and catering to an entirely different demographic.”
5) There is a possibility that Kaplan was being somewhat disingenuous with his claim that the pose is being removed to make the game more “welcoming.” In reality, the pose is kinda lazy, it’s identical to Hanzo’s and quite a cookiecutter addition to the game. Rather than admitting this early on and stating simply that the studio understood the OP’s concerns and that they had planned to replace or revamp it anyway, Kaplan’s initial statement strongly implied that the post of a single individual caused a change in the artistic direction of the entire game. The entire PR disaster could have been mitigated had the developer clarified its intentions right at the start.
6) Through his actions and words, the developer has implied that women (and indeed men as well) that actually liked the pose are objectifying the character and as such are bad people for doing so. Calling your fanbase sexist by proxy is a really stupid idea and counter-productive when trying to attract more women to your game. In reality, no one in general—neither men nor women—enjoys being told how to think or shamed.
7) By implying that Tracer’s pose was merely intended for the sexual gratification of heterosexual men, the statement is exclusionary to women who feel that her pose is a positive expression of her character. It’s as if to say women have no agency to decide whether a character’s neutral pose is non-sexual because some men might be turned on by it.
8) PR 101. You do NOT show this degree of weakness to the public. If you give them this inch, they will take a mile. As a result of showing that they are willing to fold at the slightest sign of trouble, Overwatch will never be free of ridiculous complaints despite being one of the most diverse and inclusive shooters on the market. This damage will be long-term, in spite of the triviality of the issue.
9) By creating a storm in a teacup through this inept PR response, Kaplan has created an environment in which more people are likely to be hurt and harassed because there is now a furious and passionate discussion in which people are attacking each other over a videogame. It’s the opposite of creating a safe and welcoming environment.
In Kaplan’s attempt to placate a single individual by capitulating to their censorious demands, Blizzard only succeeded in creating discomfort for the Overwatch community as a whole and raise the ire of gamers already on edge over the issue of censorship.
Correction: The author of the post complaining about Tracer’s pose is a man, not a woman.
