A word can have more than one meaning. And the same is true of symbols. Those other meanings being uncomfortable have no bearing on their legitimacy.
A good example is the noose spray. A noose can mean many things. It can mean lynchings, it can mean suicide, it can mean the death penalty, and it can mean stupid and fun cowboy movies. It can and does have all those things as a meaning.
Why did Blizzard create the spray? Because of it’s association with cowboy movies, obviously. McCree is a mish mash of various cowboy movies and all of his sprays and voicelines reinforce this about him.
But the devs choosing to focus on one meaning of the spray, doesn’t invalidate any other meanings. And since players get to inject their own actions and meanings into sprays through player activity, they can easily use those sprays to communicate those other meanings. Because that is how symbols work.
Whether or not Blizzard changed this because players were doing this, or as a part of a widespread phenomenon of media companies reevaluating their old content with new understanding isn’t clear. They haven’t had told us why it was removed or replaced.
It would be really nice if Blizz can offer us clarity on this change.
But barring that, it’s important to keep in mind that this is how symbols work. And that we can examine art critically without hatred or offense. It doesn’t mean you have to agree with any particular solution, if any. But it always helps to understand these things to understand others, and why they may view a piece of art differently than yourself.
Art being open to interpretation is both the beauty and trouble of it.
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moira has a spray where she has a fish with 3 eyes, meaning a mutation, mutations are created by radiation,big waves of radiation are from atomic bombs, it means blizzard supports the hiroshima and nagasaki atomic bombs,meaning this spary should be removed as well
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Unlike that massive stretch you just made, there are numerous cases of people specifically using nooses to intimidate black people. And Overwatch players have done the same with the noose spray.
You making up some giant stretch by connecting a bunch of things together is not and will never be the same things as two things directly related.
Facts are facts. Nooses are symbols used for racial intimidation.
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everything can be seen wrong, nooses are used to hang people, not only black people
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No. This is not an “everything” is offensive thing. Nooses are explicitly used, right now in 2020, as a symbol to intimidate black people. That is one of it’s explicit meanings.
If you have to shy away from FACTS to support your opinion, then you should rethink your opinion. And learn to formulate it in a way that acknowledges fact.
Factually, one meaning of nooses as a symbol is racism against black people.
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You know, your last line is perhaps the most fundamental issue when it comes to games. Gamers love to say that video games are art. However, art is, at its core, a reflection of elements of the society in which the artist lives. Good art makes a statement. Good art is also subject to criticism. Criticism doesn’t invalidate the art, but rather strengthens it by making it part of the greater discourse.
If video games are art, as the gamers like to invoke, then it is subject to criticism. That criticism involves things that some people don’t like to hear. It can involve discussion of things like noose sprays and how they are seen in the current social climate, and even whether or not they’re appropriate to have in the game.
Gamers tend to balk at this, which is self-defeating in the promotion of things that they claim to enjoy. They want the games to be seen as artistic statements, but also don’t want the criticism that comes with that status. They don’t want to think about their game, what is saying, and what that means relative to society. It is those people claiming that games are serious that don’t want to take it seriously.
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nooses are not a symbol of rasicm, nooses were used in the past to hang people from all races, and now are used mostly for sucide, also, cowboys are known to use nooses, so its not just a random noose for a random hero
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Absolutely. And it is absolutely maddening to me. I actually agree that games are art. I respect and admire the talent of esports players. I have been moved by video games. You know I played “The Walking Dead” game and actually teared up a bit at the end of it.
So many people seem to want to have their cake and eat it too. They want games to stop being treated as mindless toys, and for gamers not to be treated as overgrown children.
But then they throw a fit whenever gaming is treated to a grown folk conversation and we discuss the themes, symbols, and political meaning of the messages that they send.
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This is ahistorical. The hangman’s noose was not a commonly used knot on the open range. The rolling hitch, half hitch and the ironically named water knot were most often employed on drives.
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Yes. They are. Even Fox News can acknowledge that, and Fox News is definitely not some bastion of liberal values.
This is a fact. You’re entitled to your own feelings but not your own facts.
Nooses are a symbol of racial intimidation and are still used as such in 2020, even if lynchings aren’t happening in appreciable numbers any longer. That they objectively have other meanings too doesn’t change that fact.
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“Hey that’s a nice Baptiste portrait spray you got there, be a shame if someone sauntered on over and did a big racism to it.”
Yeah the noose spray was a symbol of old cowboy culture, but it’s also a symbol that could be easily associated, and in my above statement directly applied, to much more unpleasant and unnecessary meanings. There are better symbols that can be used to represent the same old cowboy culture without the same baggage.
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Blizz doesn’t benefit from drawing attention to it if it isn’t already there.
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I’d rather the original art and intention of giving McCree the noose as a small part of his character and the influences behind his creation be there than not, even if it offends some people. I don’t know, I just think people can be a little more mature to just accept that it’s there and deal with it. I just don’t like when an artist’s intentions are done away with even if I don’t like it. Like the Venus de Milo and whatnot being criticized. It’s fine to criticize it, but not fine to remove it I think.
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It’d be better to have it quietly blow over than have to invest the resources into dealing with PR and negative attention, because what the normies will hear is that there was a noose in an AAA game with no context, and people will dig up Tracer’s butt and Blitzchung again, not that the latter is a bad thing.
There was no outcry about it or significant asks for removal. People DID accept it was there and Blizzard removed it on their own with no press release or fanfare.
If an artist themselves decides that they want to remove something from an online game, where things are removed or changed at an artists will, then why wouldn’t you support that if you support artistic integrity. Is it not trying to control artists if you hold the postion that under no circumstances are they not allowed to remove something from their own game for a reason that expresses their beliefs?
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I don’t know, I just feel there was subtle pressure to make them do it. It’s like with the Simpsons creators removing the Michael Jackson episode and they said they were fine with doing it, but I can read between the lines. The Michael Jackson Simpsons episode was fun and wholesome and I don’t think they wanted to remove it without society pressuring them to do it. Maybe I’m just cynical.
There was no real risk of it becoming a pr problem. There has been no huge uptick of players reporting it being used inappropriately. And people were so caught up on Riot Brigitte and Officer D.va (which were not removed) that Mccree’s spray completely flew under the radar.
Just doesn’t strike me as the reason they did it. I think it’s more likely they got tired of expending resources moderating it’s usage, and under the current climate didn’t see it as worth the effort to protect.
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There was literally none. People kind of invented all these things that there are no signs of, because it’s easier to have a blanket attitude towards removing things than it does to engage with the nuance of analyzing any given removal. IMO
But that doesn’t quite mesh with the idea of artistic freedom because now you’re forcing artists to keep content in an artistic medium that is constantly modified. So I think that’s kind of why are spreading the idea this was pressured, even though there is absolutely no evidence of that. Or maybe it’s just cynicism.
If were the Riot Brigitte or Police D.va skins, I’d be inclined to agree that it was motivated by that. But it wasn’t like that.
But I am curious, since you seem to be more open and less hostile about this than others, are there any circumstances where you feel that it would be okay for an artist to remove things for these kinds of reasons? And if the answer to that question is no, how do you reconcile that with artistic freedom?
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I mean, the original art (as in the original original art from the artbook before they had decided to take those designs and make Overwatch) also featured a confederate flag. They removed that for the same reason a lot of people think they removed the noose. It has a history and certain distasteful implications.
The issue is that asking people to just “DWI” as you are is that this puts an undue amount of responsibility onto marginalized people. Of course some people are going to have a stronger reaction to something than others. When you have a stake in the game, it’s harder to just “deal with it.” maturity doesn’t play into it. If something is a symbol of an ideology against my existence, I’m going to have a different reaction, and likely a stronger reaction, than someone who hasn’t got to deal with that.
It’s blizzards decision to remove it, not ours. It’s their intellectual property, and they are entitled to any decisions about what belongs in it.
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