Blizzard Responds to Tracer Stance Rebuttal

If you’ve been following the beta feedback forum topics for Overwatch in the past few days, no doubt you may have stumbled across a thread entitled “Overwatch’s Strong Female Heroes and that One Tracer Pose.” Made on March 25^th , user Fipps argues that Tracer’s “Over the Shoulder” victory pose undermines both the internal consistency of Tracer as a character, but also by extension, Blizzard’s approach to its female characters in Overwatch. Of the twenty existing heroes currently in Overwatch, seven have “Over the Shoulder”-type victory poses: four women (Mercy, Symmetra, Widowmaker, and Tracer) and two men (Hanzo and McCree).

The topic quickly became heated, with players providing their opinions on whether or not this pose actually undermined Tracer’s characterization. Comparatively, Widowmaker is almost exclusively used as a foil to Tracer–an “acceptable” “Over the Shoulder” pose, as she is intentionally a femme fatale by design. Largely, the community discussion ignores the presence of other heroes’ “Over the Shoulder” victory poses, except when discussing the nature of clothing style vs. pose. It was suggested by a number of players that the issues surrounding Tracer’s victory pose, in contrast to other heroes’, was the nature of her clothing–the same stance as seen with Hanzo, McCree, or Mercy does not evoke the same response as Tracer’s. Arguments posed by other players however quickly stretched into larger issues in the gaming industry and tangentially calling out Fipps for only focusing on perceived sexualization of Tracer and ignoring other poses in the game that do not fit the argument. Others support Fipps, and suggest Blizzard ought to stand as a beacon to other gaming companies in their strong female character development and consistencies. Ultimately, Jeff Kaplan recently responded to the post, stating: “We’ll replace the pose. We want *everyone* to feel strong and heroic in our community. The last thing we want to do is make someone feel uncomfortable, under-appreciated or misrepresented. Apologies and we’ll continue to try to do better.”

While official Blizzard responses to gameplay mechanics or balance issues are frequently seen, it is intriguing to see customer feedback taken beyond questions of gameplay and into larger issues. It remains to be seen how far Blizzard will take criticisms such as these in the future, but in the very least, we might be on the verge of seeing new levels of feedback implementation.