Are you telling me that the Omnic Uprising can in no way be extrapolated as a political message?
People who are under the impression that LGBT or Black/Asian characters are somehow a political message of sorts, need to keep quiet because they don’t understand anything, at all, like literally zero.
At such a point you are too uniformed to hold an opinion.
I am saying the opposite. That this game does have a political message of pro-inclusion. It was in it’s pre-release marketing and is a major theme of the lore.
Edit:
If someone chooses not to engage with it, that’s fine. This game could not make it easier to separate lore from gameplay. But, it shouldn’t come as some big surprise that others do. There is nothing inappropriate about discussing a message included in the game and that discussion should not need to be only positive.
I was trying to quote the person above you, who is under the ignorant position that introducing a Black character is a political statement.
As for your reply, the political message of the lore is yours to extrapolate, it is subjective.
Here’s an example, the Overwatch team was founded on merit, not inclusion. They do not have diversity in skin color because that’s what they stand for necessarily, but because they have the best every nationality can offer.
That is a perfectly valid interpretation of the lore to have, just as yours.
It would be difficult, if not even at the cost of quality to reduce it to an objective one.
The devs actually stated in an interview that they wanted the game to be about inclusion. Diversity ended up being the end result, but that is a major theme of the game.
How exactly does that discredit the example I gave? It’s a subjective extrapolation, a Developer’s words cannot discredit or argue against a personal experience 
On top of that, at Gamescon they said Lucio was the living embodiment of Tracer’s adage: “the world could always use more heroes.”
It doesn’t discredit it. But it does mean that the authorial intent is for that message to be conveyed, which means that isn’t a message only subjectively there. It is objectively a message that is attempting to be communicated. This game is partially about inclusion, objectively.
If they did it well, or if there are other messages (such as your example), etc then that’s all purely subjective.
While I’m not too too keen on the author getting in the way of personal interpretations of artwork, I think completely ignoring an author saying the intent of their work requires a reasonable argument using context from the work and not a cop-out handwave based on the subjectivity of personal experience when engaging in a work.
Like, if you wanted to say Steven Universe was an extended metaphor not for both the modern LGBT experience and the nature of families broken by poor communication and lack of empathy, but instead for escaping the North Korean totalitarian complex, I mean…okay? Receipts???
If there’s authorial intent how come there’s only real world reasons for the inclusivity?
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t feel strongly one way or the other. It is not a topic I am passionate about, I just wanted to get this off my chest, when I usually do that both sides disagree but oh well.
I don’t think that authorial intent should either. But I also think authorial intent shouldn’t be dismissed as “purely subjective,” either.
It’s one thing to say “the author didn’t do a good job and it’s actually more of a x,y,z” message and it’s quite another to say that it’s purely subjective that the major theme the author stated they were trying to get across isn’t objecively a major theme.
Because real world reasons are why people connect with it.
Edit
Also this is what Kaplan said was the team’s goal with the design. The failure he is referring to is an unreleased MMO from which Overwatch was reworked.
“We didn’t get dispersed to the winds,” Kaplan said. “I want to remind people. We built Overwatch from a selfish place. You had a team with little hope and a lot of despair. Failure is a dark situation. To pull ourselves out of that dark situation, we created a hopeful world. We need to show people what the world could be like. This shows there is room for hopefulness and inclusivity in our industry as well.”
Are we referring to the successful Mercy rework in Apex? 
I appreciate the quote, I for one would love to see more diversity in the industry and to be intellectually fair Overwatch is one of the games in which I’ve met the most Female players, along with World of Warcraft actually, I think most of my Raid Leaders have been Female.
I don’t know if the lore is what attracted people or the gameplay, if it was the former then maybe all of this passion for inclusivity might have a smidge of credibility.
I can only speak for myself, but as a black woman who has hated pretty much all the other mostly pvp shooters I ever played, what made me give this one a try was the lore and character designs. I hoped it would drawn in more people like me and I’d be harassed less on mic.
It did. It was not enough less to bother getting on mic most times, but enough so that I started trying to learn how to play these games. And once I started learning, I got better at the game and had more fun. I wouldn’t still be here if the gameplay wasn’t fun for me. But it isn’t what initially attracted me, at all.
Funny enough I have a friend that stopped playing overwatch because she had no attachment to the game, character wise anyway, and it really bothered her that such a diverse cast had no black women…and as time went on it pretty much sealed the deal that she’d never play.
The game went out its way to let you know the sexual history of its character ( And by out it’s way I mean it wasn’t blatantly obvious via typical stereotypes or tropes)
Yet for some reason a black woman (and to a certain extent a non stereotypical black male) haven’t made it to the game in years…
That’s says a lot to me, its no hate on the team. But that speaks volumes to me on either a lack of black people on the team… or just how invisible “they” subconsciously see black people.
For me, it’s got so much other diversity it doesn’t bother me that much. I’m sure they’ll get to it if they last long enough. I’d imagine she’d be a hero we’ve already seen too like Mirembe.
But I appreciate it may be different for others, especially since I was stunned by own reaction to seeing Pharah as a biracial daughter of a military family. Because that is what I am too, and it’s just wild to me that a hero like her is in this or any game. And its not treated as a very special episode or something. She’s just living her best life. It’s pretty cool to me. So I definitely get it. I kind of wish that she had been around when I was a little kid, I’d have probably appreciated it a lot more back then. But it’s awesome to think she might help some other kid.
Also quite frankly, I dislike seeing people being tone policed or dismissed for wanting this game in particular to have so much representation. Like, did these people pay any attention to the interviews and such Kaplan et al were putting out?
This isn’t just a game where diversity would be nice, it is THE game to want it in. It’s literally just a roster of folks from all over the globe shooting each other. If not this game, then what game should we be discussing it?
Honestly.
I think blizzard just sucks at making black people or doesn’t really have black people on the team that are…vocal? or that they tap for resources like that.
Of all the blizzard games made I feel like I can count on one hand how many black people are in them.
I wouldn’t really know, I haven’t played many other Blizzard titles.
Actually most gaming consumers don’t care about major thematic elements. As seen with other big triple A games that have little to no story/character/message but people still play them for the fun gameplay.
In something like a book you’d be mostly right but even then there’s trashy romantic books that people read and enjoy despite their shallow nature.
Actually blizz designs the gameplay aspect first most of the time. You could see this in the development footage they showed at blizzcon last year. They said they only focus on art, lore, and models last once they’re confident in the kit.
And it makes sense, you only make art and models once something is already ready to go from a gameplay aspect or you might waste your time and resources.
There’s nothing big but posts like the one we’re talking in are clear demands. There are plenty of people complaining on social media as well, just a few weeks ago there were 3 posts on the forum’s complaining that the skins blizz was showing for the event were mostly male.
People complain alot and it gets very annoying when they think diversity is something that is required.
I’ll look it up but all I ever saw was gameplay trailers.
And what would that be? All I gathered was “german bad, shoot german”. Not to mention the game takes place in a fictional universe so any political talk about real life are wholly irrelevant to the game.
I already explained how getting mad over something like this is stupid. Like I said, it’s akin to getting mad over the lack of the color green. Want diversity? Ask, don’t demand as if it’s something you’re entitled to.
I want a hero with a flamethrower, I can make a contracture thread about how I think it would be cool, or I can make one ranting about how we don’t have it yet. Which one sounds more productive to you?
Which one sounds pointlessly annoying?
Ok then, all the people who are annoyed at the lack of specific identities should also go by this same logic. Annoyed there’s no black female? That’s a you problem.
Except it really wouldn’t. A simple 2 second clip of tracer talking about the issue would be perfectly fine without jeopardizing the game or its message. And if you think a message about world hunger would severely alter the message of an art piece then why do you think a message of diversity wouldn’t do the same?
The more you talk about it the better the example gets really, there are a lot of obvious parallels.
Yes and without a doubt a message about world hunger would also have benefits.
Just because a message is good doesn’t mean everything has to have that message.
I don’t need to hear about how black females can do anything while reading a cereal box or watching a movie.
The message doesn’t need to be forcefully injected into everything it possible can be.
Complaints can be invalid regardless of where their posted. Whether it be on twitter or the forum’s, there is such a thing as stupid/pointless complaining.
Again, my example of the color green would be a pointless detail to complain about.
And this all cycles back to my original point. The logic of “there’s no reason not to have a black female” also mean there’s no reason to have one either.
If people can’t complain about forced diversity then no one can complain about the lack of it either.
This has nothing to do with my personal worldview I’ve already explained why I believe complaining about it is stupid, pointless, and overall bad for artistic freedom.
You can disagree but that doesn’t make you automatically right either.
Again, just because something is good doesn’t mean it’s required. nothing is required in art, people can make whatever they want and shouldn’t be pressured to conform to what the majority wants them to make instead.
Saying diversity absolutely needs to be in everything is just beyond entitled and limits alot of what artists can do.
Wanna make a historically accurate cowboy flick? Too bad gotta make sure there’s some black heros in there as well.
Wanna make a personal narrative journey with a male protagonist? Gotta give him a black female sidekick too. Oh wait but we can’t make the black female the sidekick or else people might think they belong as side characters, better to just make her the protagonist to avoid the potential backlash.
You may say all of what I just said is just hypothetical scenarios but things like this are already happening.
Artists feel forced to comply to the public or else they face backlash and boycotts.
It’s why media over the years is getting safer and safer, because why make a unique story that could face backlash when you can make the same things over and over again but with differently colored protagonists this time.
Battlefield 1’s entire message was that war was a pointless loss of life. There was an entire mission showing how disposable soldiers actually were in the horror that is war.
In the next battlefield a mother and her teenage daughter fight an entire battalion of enemy soldiers and reclaim a base all on their own. Because we can’t have the women fail, we gotta show they’re just as capable as men.
This is the kinda garbage forced diversity and political messages give us.
We shouldn’t pressure people to make political statements they didn’t want to, just let them create their art the way they want to.
It doesn’t matter if it’s a big deal to anyone other than the artist.
To me, cancer is a huge deal, but I still don’t expect all media to cater to me and inject cancer messages into everything.
If it’s not a big deal to the artist, it shouldn’t matter.
The artist should choose what message they send if any.
If “literally nothing” would change then why were so many people demanding another gay hero?
This is my biggest problem with this “it doesn’t change anything” logic. If someone demands diversity it’s defended with “its important to them” and “representation is important” but if someone doesn’t like the forced feeling of it they get berated with “it doesn’t change anything” and “it’s not even important to the gameplay”.
Why does it matter so much to one side but the other side doesn’t get to complain because it “doesn’t change anything”?
Also it wouldn’t require drastic changes to include a message about world hunger if you inject it badly (like forced diversity often is).
For example: in that scene there was literally no reason for either of them to bring up soldiers old boyfriend from 20+ years ago. It was just dropped into the scene with zero subtlety.
So let’s just do the same with the world hunger message. Have soldier look at ana and say “you know, we really should do something about the hunger crisis in (insert fictional place here) seeing people starve is horrible” and then they go back to talking as if he never said it.
Is it forced? Absolutely but so was the reveal and people loved it because “representation is good” so people should love this to since “spreading awareness of world hunger is good”.
I simply disagree. We shouldn’t pressure them to make something they don’t want to make. That’s my opinion.
You have yours.
Ok. If it’s not required then why do people act like it’s something their entitled to and why are you defending them?
That explains how it’s beneficial. But it doesn’t explain why not having it is a flaw.
See my example of world hunger also having a positive affect.
Again that explains why it’s good but not why it’s a flaw not to have it.
Again.
Ok then what dictates whether or not it’s a flaw? If it’s a big Hollywood movie? Or is it just if it’s an already popular identity?
Edit: in my quote with the wolfenstein thing I originally put the actual word but the forum’s wouldn’t let me so I replaced it with German instead but I’m sure you’ll still get it.