The heroines of Overwatch are heavily sexualized and used as masturbation templates. Can Blizzard do something about this, or is it the users themselves?
At the beginning, there were dirty video clips found on porn sites. However, there has always been a lot of romantic fan art or cosplays featuring heroines from Overwatch in tasteful poses and dressed appropriately.
Last week, the news came that in China, the Overwatch sex mania has reached a new high: controllers replicating the behinds of Overwatch heroines. They can then be controlled by a penis. A pretty degrading method that probably isn’t suited for long sessions.
What is behind this? Why is sex such a big issue in Overwatch?
What Blizzard wanted with the character design of Overwatch
A few weeks ago, there was an article by a journalist on the explicitly left-wing website Polygon praising the character design of Overwatch: This is now a game with a diverse cast. Not just male, nameless characters like in the game’s predecessor Team Fortress 2, but something for everyone:
It’s disappointing that Team Fortress 2 has not a single female class. Blizzard took the time to develop strong women who correspond to various roles, types, and levels of difficulty. And they are built differently too. Great! Hopefully, other developers will see this success and follow suit. Hopefully, the “We only have men in the game” era has come to an end.
Wait a minute! Blizzard has ulterior motives
Blizzard certainly didn’t do this out of a “belief” that they really want to give everyone a counterpart in the game. If you look closer, it becomes clear that they are oriented towards Hollywood: When we make a movie, we cast actors from the markets we want to reach, into which we want to earn money.
The WoW movie is a hit in China, also because they cast Gul’Dan with the Chinese fan favorite Daniel Wu. If someone wants to have some fun, they can pay attention to the nationality of the actors in supporting roles in James Bond films – Hollywood has been ensuring that various markets see familiar faces for years in their blockbusters. For Germany, it has long been just side roles for Bond, Götz Otto, Ludger Pistor, Claude-Oliver Rudolph – the German-speaking market is too small. Well, Christoph Waltz got a leading role in the last one, he is an exceptional chess player … but also an Austrian.
Therefore, the roster in Overwatch is also populated such that every target market is regionally represented. D.Va, for example, is tailored to Korea, Lucio is supposed to cater to the growing market in Brazil, for the USA, they have several heroes like Soldier: 76 or Reaper in action, Australia gets Junkrat and Roadhog, and Zarya is Russian. For Asia, besides D.Va, they also have Hanzo, Genji, and Mei, making it three more heroes.
But these heroes also fulfill further roles. The Koreans should not only identify with D.Va as a Korean, but she also covers the “nerd” and “eSport” sector. Soldier: 76 is supposed to clearly appeal to traditional shooter players with his style and demeanor, while a hero like Winston delivers more of the fantasy feeling, the “sense of wonder,” and is also a point of orientation for younger players.
A difference, when the colleague from Polygon raves about the “diverse cast,” is already noticeable between the male and female characters. While there is a robot among the men, two cyborg-like beings, a sixty-year-old, a dwarf, and a monkey, all of the Overwatch heroines conform to a beauty ideal, a sexual archetype.
The only one who truly comes to mind with “different silhouette” is the Russian weightlifter Zarya, but even the bodybuilder fits quite well into our beauty ideals.
Overwatch 2 is a hero shooter by Blizzard and the evolution of the first Overwatch. Now in a free-to-play variant and with some modifications to the original ga...
