PSA: This is the final MVP skin

General Discussion
21

Hard agree. Framing it like “pitch an idea” rather than “A skin designed to represent you” would have been a much better way to go about the whole MVP thing.

I understand that but it’s better to at least screen out the more likely candidates of toxicity. No one can predict when/if something will happen but you can do your best to try to avoid looking bad by not giving you award to someone with a known toxic history. I know Blizz and the devs love a good redemption arc but don’t the players without known toxicity in their past deserve consideration as well? It’s like picking the lesser of two evils at that point.

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22

We’re in agreement. I was just pointing out you can’t guarantee someone will turn out to be good. I’d say screening out previous toxic players makes sense from a PR protection perspective… but I guess it just depends on how severe it was and how much they deserved MVP. If it wasn’t that severe and they were hands down the MVP of the season I feel there should be some leeway. But if there was someone just as good or close to that doesn’t have a bad history absolutely go for them 100% of the time. Depends on what you’re balancing for in terms of goals. The safer route is definitely not awarding mvp to players with any bad behavior in the past. The even safer route is to not award it at all. Obviously I think rewarding it to only squeaky clean players is preferable to never rewarding it to anyone.

Wish it became a skin suggestion prize rather than removing it altogether yeah

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23

Which is interesting, because statistically, there are more female gamers than male gamers, believe it or not. I can’t remember the exact ratio, but it’s something like 53 percent of people who identify as gamers are female.

While that seems shocking on the surface if you’re thinking in context of games like Overwatch, it’s due to the vast variety of games in general. Women make up a huge majority of gamers who play simulations, for example. Think about the Sims and how popular of a franchise that is, and then consider that about 75 percent of the people who have played the Sims or currently play the Sims are female. I play the Sims. But many men have also played the Sims. My boyfriend plays each Sims game for a while when it comes out then moves on to other games.

But I also play Overwatch, and in FPS type games, the percentage of female players falls to about 12 percent I think? It might be less I can’t recall right now.

RPGS have a fairly balanced male to female ratio, MMORPGS are nearly 50 percent female (often women and men are more separated by what activities they undertake in games like WoW than whether or not they play them in the first place)

There’s a lot of other genres you can divide by gender role, cooking games are predominately female, time wasters like Candy Crush and Bejeweled also lean female. I used to have a Bejeweled addon for WoW so I could play it while I was farming or doing dungeons :stuck_out_tongue:

RTS and TBS games are predominately male as are sports games.

But anyway, I don’t really think gaming culture is more misogynistic so much as competitive gaming, like any other sport, has been historically male-dominated. This isn’t to say that all men are misogynistic because that’s just not true, but because certain genres are male-dominated, that just gives more chances for one of those men to be a misogynist.

But I don’t see any misogyny inherent in most games or genres, until you hit the competitive scene. In the 90’s I played Magic: The Gathering on the tournament level. I was the only female present as a competitor more often than not. Nobody ever said anything to me directly but with some guys you could just kind of get this… feeling from them when I would beat them or pull of a card combo that made it hard for them to come back and beat me. I got stared at a lot. Sometimes I would overhear other players say things about me being a girl and I couldn’t be that good. I just never said anything, I let my card deck speak for me, lol.

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24

Well it would be really nice if they released all of them to rebuy for a certain amount of time.

I would probably pay out of pocket for the Doomfist one. And Reign if they re-released the All Stars skin too.

25

Sinatraa should’ve never gotten MVP.

He was hardly a good person publicly - which is something which I think should’ve been considered.

This is all on blizz.

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26

I honestly don’t know why they don’t just get rid of the audience voting system, and then they can privately look at players with both a good reputation and a stellar performance for PVP.

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27

It’s not like they’re lacking either. Smh

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28

I completely agree with what you mean, and furthermore that’s essentially what I meant. I should’ve just specified Overwatch or competitive gaming.

You did a good writeup and what you’ve said is entirely true.

29

Maybe they wouldn’t be in this situation if they chose community members who deserved to be recognized. Sinatraa might’ve been one of the best players this game has ever seen, but he’s always been an arrogant little loser. Allegations aside I wouldn’t want him to be the face of crap if I were Blizzard, at some point you have to say “this person might be talented, but look what they’re doing with their potential”

MVP he was not, but I suppose now he’s a most valuable learning experience for them.

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30

People say Sinatraa ruined it but I disagree. It’s the idiots that cry about the skin being a reminder of yadi yada.

Blizzard could have totally handled it professionally by doing…nothing. Not removing the badges, not offering refund. Actual professional leagues don’t do this crap.

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31

I agree. Also I wonder how many people buy these skin in proportion to the amount of labortime it costs? And if they are de emphasis pro league naturally they would stop mvp skins.

32

Maybe its just the last before OW2, and not the last in general?

33

It was blizzard that promptly came out and declared the removal -

There was little from the community that pushed them to that decision.

34

They probably made the mistake of not having three MVP’s.
One dps, one support, one tank.

35

No it has something to say about the destructive and obtrusive nature that social media and pr obsession has had in our culture, it’s why everything is canceled and the only things that are new are overly safe reboots involving diversifying the originals

36

It’s probably last MVP skin for ow1 as when the new owl season ends it will be ow2 already I am assuming or another reason might be for that fact that OW2 might be released during the new owl season end so they dont want people not to buy ow2 because they bought an MVP skin

37

Makes sense. Tying in-game content to the identity of a specific IRL person is a risky move and it blew up in Blizzard’s collective faces in 2 different ways with the Sinatraa skin:

  1. He had quit OWL by the time the skin was released, meaning anyone who searched for more information about him was driven towards Valorant instead of OWL
  2. He received a ton of negative publicity recently which Blizzard now has to forever wear, simply by association

It’s an inherently risky move from a business perspective and it only took 2 years for both of these things to happen, such is the fickle nature of Esports I guess. I can see why some Activision-Blizzard executive would say “No more MVP skins”.

Oh well, they were nice while they lasted.

38

They should replace the MVP skin with a charity skin each year, not saying bring back pink Mercy but instead a different one each time.

Would probably sell much better then normal purchased skins due to the charity association and could be done later in the year where there’s less events.

39

PSA: It’s a bad policy to glorify socially underdeveloped manchildren, even if you might be one now or in the future.

I’m not saying this is every player in the league, I’m saying it’s generally not a great policy to idolize ~21yos who are elite at videogames, nor is the esports system seemingly equipped to handle their developmental and mental issues without a robust psychological support system. I know I certainly wouldn’t have liked to have all my interactions scrutinized under a microscope at that age (just to be clear, I am not excusing any kind of abuse committed against others, and especially not from adults).

Athletic pro sports typically have people and systems in place to care for the team’s mental health and coach behaviours, I don’t think the same exists in esports (or certainly not to the same degree).

Blizzard and these other companies seem to have a long way to go in terms of supporting their players and demanding a certain level of conduct in and out of the game.

40

sign

Well that really sucks, it such a shame that I joined this game so late so I never got an opportunity to get previous all star / event skins, but I’m just glad that others got to enjoy them.

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