A Playable Black Woman

Story Discussion
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So, basically every time a new hero releases for the current game that we have, Overwatch 1, I notice the same argument comes out: Some people say “Blizzard added another [robot, animal, caucasian, man, etc.] before they did a playable black woman.”

To which others reply either: “we have Orisa,” “we have playable black men” or now, “Sojourn is going to be a hero in Overwatch 2” and last but not least, “you have Pharah/Symmetra/Sombra/Ana though?”

Jeff even kind of addressed it when he said “we cannot represent everyone, and we would hate to pander.”

I know in general, these forums are quite adamant in their belief that representation just for representation’s sake is not good. I would agree for the most part - it can definitely feel forced at times. I understand that the world is a vast place full of so many people, and it is in fact impossible to represent everyone in a video game.

I must ask an honest question, though: From Jeff’s quote, it seems as if they just haven’t had any female black (playable) heroes yet because they haven’t integrated any into the current story yet, and tied a kit to them to make them a playable hero. Okay, that makes sense. And I know Sojourn is coming.

But also it seems they created some heroes kind of… on the fly? Such as Ashe and Sigma? Heroes that weren’t originally going to be heroes, but either they needed a personality to go with their kit, or vice versa, they really liked their personality so gave them a kit. I’m happy they were able to work on heroes they were excited for. But to me, it seems they don’t always need a story reason to have a hero then? I am not saying they have some ulterior motives against black women, of course. I don’t think they do. But can someone maybe help reconcile these two things for me, because it’s not really adding up besides the fact: they simply haven’t wanted to add a hero that happens to be a playable black woman yet?

Also, can someone explain how is it “political” if a character is a black woman? People say that a lot too - “leave your politics out of games.” I’m really trying to understand where they’re coming from.

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Idk on one hand it’s a good thing that the first black female hero is going to be an integral part of the OW organization (not just a throw away character), on the other they could have easily made any other of the white characters a black woman so I won’t give Blizzard too many brownie points for taking four years to introduce Sojourn lmao.

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I remember seeing concept art of Ashe where she was a woc, and I thought on one hand it would have been cool if she were a woc but on the other hand, it would be another brown skinned character who is “bad”

same hat with baptiste - i don’t see any reason why he couldn’t have been female but then the game’s first playable black woman would have been ex-Talon, making another “bad” poc and I’m sure people would have complained about that

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I mean they should be grateful. A black woman gets the first book about Overwatch as Efis is the main role, and Sojourn will have a big role in OW2 and will be a playable character. But judging Twitter when SIgma came out…

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Yeah, people will complain no matter what. That’s whole Earth we are talking about and so they cannot make everyone happy.
For example I don’t like that big game creators if they are going with Europe, they very often avoid nations between Germany and Russia in their video games. And so I am happy Blizzard mentioned Poland and Czech Republic in Overwatch universe.

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Oof I remember that-you could almost hear the hissing from the amount of toxicity

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Creating black characters isn’t necessarily political. Campaigning for more black characters, saying there isn’t enough, and citing arbitrary or nonexistent flaws with the ones already in the game just to push the narrative is very much political. No different from lgbt. The desire itself isn’t bad, but people will often reject the idea that this is necessary, especially when there are already characters that meet the criteria.

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The desire itself isn’t bad, but people will often reject the idea that this is necessary, especially when there are already characters that meet the criteria.

I can agree with this.

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makes sense. definitely seems that not everyone agrees on what “the criteria” is either

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I think the big difference is, creating a hero who happens to be a black woman, and a character whose identity is that she is a black woman, or creating a character for the sake of saying that your cast has a black woman.

I think for this case, Doomfist is a great example. Doomfist is a hero who happens to be a black male. His character isn’t designed around how he is black, and how being black has impacted his character growth. Likewise, they didn’t add Doomfist for the sake of adding a black male to the cast. They added Doomfist because people wanted to see their favourite namedrop supervillain. Him being black didn’t play a part in that.

I think it is the same with Sojourn. Way back when we got Recall and we had the portraits, a lot of people were drawn to characters like Sojourn and Wildebeest because they had unique character designs, and looked like they were made from hero concept art. They just looked like they could be fun characters to play or learn about, rather than because they click off some checkboxes. Note the other black characters there who received less mention or notice or request among the group (Other than Mirembe, but I dont know how much of that is because she popped up in a comic.)

Overall, Overwatch is distancing itself from racial or gender politics and giving characters backstories where their ethnicity or gender would impact their character in a strong or political manner. They save the political stuff for Omnics, robots, and cyborgs instead, as well as actual international governmental institutions and terrorist organizations like Overwatch, Helix, and Talon.

I can’t speak for Sigma, but in Ashe’s case, they were designing a second cowboy to be part of McCree’s gang for Reunion, and decided to go with a Texan. Sigma could have been anything, but I think they might have made him an old bald white guy to distance it from Mauga who was a young fit Polynesian with a glorious mane.

I for one am looking forwards to learning more about Sojourn. Still holding out hopes for Sanjay Korpal, Hamid Faisal, and Mauga as well. I also can’t wait to see what kind of mech Junkerqueen had taken her thrown with too, I hope we get to play with it ourselves in Overwatch 2.

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All art is inherently political but this forum will never be ready for that discussion lmao

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Some of the most popular games of all time, like CoD Modern Warfare and Final Fantasy, have heavy political messages at their heart… if gamers want to avoid politics, they would have to avoid a lot of games…

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Overwatch has them to. It accomplishes them through the parallels of Omnics.

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You’ve got Soujourn but she ain’t coming out any time soon.

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Does it really matter?
I mean it’s a game
Wake up

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Jeff’s on point. This is the problem with Hollywood (since we’re talking about entertainment): They pander by ‘checking boxes’ and call it diversity. As a result, it does feel forced, cheesy, and cringy. Of course, articles in magazines like Kotaku and ColorLines made it clear that they didn’t like Jeff’s answer. Well, too bad.

Here is the thing…you already answered your question by saying that representations for representation’s sake can become forced. But ever asked what that actually means? It means that people don’t like things like identity politics, gender politics, ethnicity politics,…etc ‘shoved down their throats’. Not because they don’t care about other people, but because they are aware ‘while watching it’ or ‘playing it’ that they are subconsciously being ‘lectured’. They get enough of that from the media (hence why they say ‘keep your politics out of my game’). This is not the way to do it. And what you see happening now is people ‘throwing it back in those people’s faces’. By commenting in the forums, refusing to see certain movies and so on. The rift between the ‘for’ and ‘against’ is the widest it had ever been. Thanks mostly to the stupid media that wants to pit people against each other. ‘If it bleeds, it leads’, like those in the media say. Because conflict creates interest, and interest creates revenue for them.

If the whole premise of Overwatch is ‘heroes can be from different backgrounds’ why should we not trust that the game’s dev team actually is committed to it? They already showed us that they are by introducing heroes from all different walks of life. What changed? So it is not a matter of ‘will they ever do it’, but rather ‘when will they do it’. That ‘when’ is dependent on a few factors like the time it needs for a hero to be developed, what the story or the game needs,… etc. In the case of Ashe, for example, that was because they needed another ‘damage hero’ to balance the game, and it fits with the backstory they wanted to tell for McCree.

But art is also emotional. The artists at Blizzard want to feel a ‘connection’ with the characters they are creating and the stories they want to tell. This should not be interpreted as ‘they don’t want diversity’ or ‘they don’t care’ b.s. It gets tiring after a while when people try to politicise every aspect of the creative process.

The way to do diversity is you have to be ‘tactical’ about it. Meaning it needs to ‘fit’ the narrative of whatever story you are trying to tell and so that people, again, don’t feel that they are being ‘lectured’. In the example of Overwatch, let’s say they want to tell a story about an omnic crisis in the Middle East (Iraq’s Oasis or whatever country there). If they introduced some middle eastern ‘male hero’, do you think anyone is going to say ‘geez, I wonder why they did that, this feels forced?’. No. Because it ‘fits’ the narrative. That is just a simple example, but you get the idea.

And one more thing…I am not white. Not that it matters.

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but I have to ask, what are they being lectured in this case? that black women exist? how could it possibly be seen as aggressive or critical?

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Are you seriously going to engage somebody that says “identity politics” are being shoved down people’s throats?

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Because you see so much of it in the media (with political parties, Hollywood films) talking about it all the time…etc. Everything is ‘racist’, ‘sexist’,…etc. People are exposed to this every day and they see Hollywood bowing to those ‘lectures’ for the fear of being called what ever ‘ist’ comes to the minds of those people. It is not that the request is wrong (for a black character) it is asking for it to be available no matter what, when it does not make sense for whatever the content they want to produce at the moment.

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At least he/she is smarter than you are.