Heroes need to be "people", not "representative"

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I believe there is nothing worse than having a representative first and then a person. people represent themselves and an infinity of possibilities, stories, experiences, opinions. sexuality, gender, nationality or color are of no use, and there will never be a single figure immune to a contrast. I am particularly sad that Blizzard has a very strong paranoia on the subject of “representation”, especially after the scandal and of this diversity space tool as the ideology of their games in the next future. we want for the characters of the stories, first of all. they must have a narrative dimension even before playing the “guess what category this represents?”.

I realize it is complicated in the midst of so many comments, but I would like to remind you this: what is the difference between the representative personalization of video games like the sims and the sci-fi narrative of Overwatch? if peace or war have universal meanings in the struggle between good and evil, then stick to the ideas you have of the characters and their characteristics, passions, etc. OW has always had a nice kaleidoscope of people from all over the world, there is no need to create a worldwide announcement on how important the representation of a people is as it happened for Sojourn (in a stream literally presented only for her skin).

I just ask for more relaxation on the topic of “diversification”, because it is a useless ostentation. and detrimental to the credibility of the Overwatch narrative. aim to create characters, be quiet. :pray:

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characters can be both people and representative, they arent mutually exclusive. representation is important. Sojourn is important for many people, and not acknowledging that is a disservice. i found it touching how dion spoke of the care he put into the character that would make his mother proud. they also expressed how they fleshed out her character as a person, and not just a token. to say a character being representation and a person is mutually exclusive is borderline offensive… in a way it makes it sound like you are saying characters can only be people if they dont represent minority groups…

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never said that. :flushed: I agree on how very nice Dion’s intervention was, but take a moment to resume THAT specific stream of Sojourn’s first presentation as Ow’s hero to the community (which was the general theme that I criticize in this topic): how do you talk for a full streaming hour ONLY about her skin color and at most a “wow, does she have a railgun ?!”. I’m not saying it’s not important to talk about it, but neither is the exact opposite where you aren’t actually talking about the character itself because 1) her lore with the other characters is almost completely muted with a generic “ex agent of Ow” and not even a description on the official Ow2 website, and 2) no actual mention of her life and context in Canada in the world of Overwatch (what she’s been doing these years, how she’s living, etc.).

other heroes had a more targeted presentation of the character within their own story, but the representative value was felt, not explicitly presented. at best mentioned in pride but certainly not boasted for so long. I think for example Baptiste and Echo, whose Creole and Singaporean culture is not very easy to see in the usual nations shown by the media, yet there is a nice hidden trait that describes their cultures (idioms, for example).

in the specific case of Sojourn it was … very reductive the way of describing her as a person after almost an entire hour of streaming in which A) you do not describe her skills in values ​​(which was then done the next day on YouTube) and B) basically you are not talking about who is sojourn rather than what it is (black woman made up of prostheses. and …?). there is still a huge coming soon on her story on a novel or for the release of Ow2 PVE. paradoxically, we had a slightly clearer idea of ​​D.va’s life when she was presented at BlizzCon 2015: she was not just a “Korean pro-player WOMAN passionate about video games” (in a period in which misogyny in video games is deeply rooted, unfortunately ), she was also a MEKA pilot, defended her country, explained that there was an omnic threat in Overwatch’s South Korea. all in almost 10-15 minutes of presentation on the blizzcon stage and update of the official PlayOverwatch website. then the deepening of Busan came after years, but in the meantime we had a well-established idea of ​​the character in her world. and sojourn? we know the same info intuited by storm rising and in one hour of single-issue streaming, unfortunately.

the fear I want to express in this topic is to avoid this type of approach in which the spotlight is ONLY on a specific type of characteristic, physical or representative. it would bother me personally if they gave a presentation highlighting only the importance of “Ow’s first transgender hero”, or if in 2017 they implemented a full one-hour stream about Tracer turning out to be a lesbian. in fact, mention was made of it in an interview, among Ow’s many other questions to Jeff kaplan during that 2016 Christmas period.

the representation is fine, but it must also be respected why you talk about a character to your community: you do it because you intend to make this game richer or because the company Blizzard entertainment is casually going through a difficult period between some accusations soooo pertinent to the topic chosen in streaming? the arguments are nice, especially the one you mentioned do Dion, but it shows an annoying approach in its seeming very “focused” on what to talk about. because at that moment you were ALSO talking to the community of gamers and Overwatch readers who have had a certain famine of the game for a while, and not improve it only with a new representative record within your video game. include it as a topic, but not just that as a first approach, and it wasn’t at all what was promised as a streaming appointment (“Sojourn reveal trailer”, ALSO talk about the gameplay duo. which was worthily done by Goodman on the day later on youtube, you can check). I think I can’t be clearer :sweat_smile: I want to invite the developers to better argue the identity of his next characters even before just representation. obviously hoping that their claims are true that they don’t use that ridiculous representationsystem presented by Activision last month at all. of which the heroes of Overwatch were used in the graphic examples, sadly.

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Heroes need to be animals tbh.

I want a bear with guns