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Overwatch's Laughably Convenient Ageism / Sexism

Sylas

Member
this thread had absolutely nothing to do with ana's design and it's laughable to think that people think that. watch the origins trailer, those drawings took months to make.

B-b-but the GAF discourse is important to every developer and they take all of our criticism very seriously!

Didn't most people assume "Sombra" would be Pharah's mother in the first place? I don't even think they changed the mask to be an alt costume and the default to show her face. They just hid the face in the clues because it would've given it away immediately instead of letting people have their fun little theories.

I'm glad we can discuss video game development without people taking to insulting each other over the smallest of things.

Oh no, wait. The opposite of that.

I can't see anything to discuss other than saying, "Oh, neat. Maybe Blizzard is planning on adding more characters that are both older and female." I, and I imagine others, would be more than happy to have a discussion if you think otherwise!
 

Darkwater

Member
this thread had absolutely nothing to do with ana's design and it's laughable to think that people think that. watch the origins trailer, those drawings took months to make.

I'm glad we can discuss video game development without people taking to insulting each other over the smallest of things.

Oh no, wait. The opposite of that.
 

SugarDave

Member
Yeah, I find it hard to believe this thread convinced Blizzard to change anything. I mean, one of the legendary skins is a younger and prettier version of her anyway.

I like all her designs though, seems like a cool character.
 
B-b-but the GAF discourse is important to every developer and they take all of our criticism very seriously!

Didn't most people assume "Sombra" would be Pharah's mother in the first place? I don't even think they changed the mask to be an alt costume and the default to show her face. They just hid the face in the clues because it would've given it away immediately instead of letting people have their fun little theories.

That was the consensus, yes, but it has now been confirmed by blizz that Ana is NOT Sombra. They are two different characters.
 
this thread had absolutely nothing to do with ana's design and it's laughable to think that people think that. watch the origins trailer, those drawings took months to make.

Theres no win in this type of situations. Theres always an excuse to move goalposts.

People that have worked on real game understand this type of designs and dev cycles take a bunch of time. Its not only "oh but they probably made the mask his unlock instead of deafult" because they had to make the cinematics, change ALL the avatars and artworks use for grafittis, etc, etc...

But hey, theres still some people on the ana thread who are saying she has too few wrinkles in her face, so there is no pleasing them. Its impossible to please everyone on the internet, and these voices are quite loud so they seem to be more than they really are. Thankfully, most of the people are loving Ana's design and she being an older badass, and that Blizzard has, and will in the future, try to even have a more diverse cast. Thats the most important thing here.
 

Sylas

Member
That was the consensus, yes, but it has now been confirmed by blizz that Ana is NOT Sombra. They are two different characters.

Yeh. Hence the quotation marks! It makes me wonder who/what Sombra was. Or is? I think people were discussing and think they might be latino/latina which would be pretty rad.
 
I'm happy that Blizzard decided to add an older woman, but I'm not surprised that some people are being just as indignant towards Overwatch's character design as they were before Ana's reveal.
 
Yeh. Hence the quotation marks! It makes me wonder who/what Sombra was. Or is? I think people were discussing and think they might be latino/latina which would be pretty rad.

I was in the Sombra = Ana camp prior to this, so now I don't know. My own guess is that Sombra isn't a human at all. I think she's an omnic. Based on hearsay, I think she's actually an AI (like Athena) who hijacks some kind of physical body in order to escape.
 

Nioret

Member
I'm happy that Blizzard decided to add an older woman, but I'm not surprised that some people are being just as indignant towards Overwatch's character design as they were before Ana's reveal.

It's just clear as day to me this movement is less about Overwatch's actual roster and more about using it's popularity as a soapbox to make their message heard. Underhanded.
 
Yeah, listening to fans and customers for feedback, how awful. Everyone knows true art is done alone in a locked room with no influence from anyone, ever.
GAF isn't even their official fan forums. Also it's one thing to take into account player feedback for gameplay balance, which can be backed up by data, like the incoming D.Va buffs. It's an entirely different thing to base the generation and implementation of art assets off odzd complaint threads on totally different forums.

There's always going to be a portion of the fanbase that will complain. There's already complaints that this old lady character does look old enough and it seems some people have already transitioned over to complaining that there isn't a fat woman character. There's no winning if they try to please everyone based on forum complaints. Hence why I'm saying I sincerely hope they aren't taking GAF complaints into thier design process.
 
I don't think this influenced Blizzard or the Overwatch team at all. At most I assume they saw this thread since they're pretty darn active online and thought "Well it's a good thing we're finishing up Ana!" or something like that. I think it's silly to think that Blizz would quickly whip up Ana as a response to a clickbaity thread on gaf.

The design for Ana is super cool though. It's nice to have a female character like Rein and 76 who is older but still kicks ass. Having a family connection with the Overwatch cast is an added bonus too.
 

Permanently A

Junior Member
Yeh. Hence the quotation marks! It makes me wonder who/what Sombra was. Or is? I think people were discussing and think they might be latino/latina which would be pretty rad.

Sombra is tied to Dorado and has connections to Reaper. That's about what we know concretely.
 

zaccheus

Banned
Theres no win in this type of situations. Theres always an excuse to move goalposts.

People that have worked on real game understand this type of designs and dev cycles take a bunch of time. Its not only "oh but they probably made the mask his unlock instead of deafult" because they had to make the cinematics, change ALL the avatars and artworks use for grafittis, etc, etc...

But hey, theres still some people on the ana thread who are saying she has too few wrinkles in her face, so there is no pleasing them. Its impossible to please everyone on the internet, and these voices are quite loud so they seem to be more than they really are. Thankfully, most of the people are loving Ana's design and she being an older badass, and that Blizzard has, and will in the future, try to even have a more diverse cast. Thats the most important thing here.

it used to be fans were ecstatic to be given the opportunity to talk to their favorite comic book artists, they'd write fan mail, go to the odd convention and reach out and let their favorite authors know that they are fans. now with social media fans have a false sense of entitlement and thank their favorite authors and artists by demanding that the art is altered to suit them. instead of going to a restaurant and ordering food, they demand the chef prepare a meal exactly to their specification, and if that isn't available then obviously the chef is guilty of the highest forms of discrimination.

maybe these people should just start their own restaurants. case in point - fans freaking out about captain america hydra thing, when obviously it was a cliffhanger. "this isn't MY captain america", etc.
 

Ivan 3414

Member
B-b-but the GAF discourse is important to every developer and they take all of our criticism very seriously!

They changed Tracer's pose because a grand total of one person complained. So while your sarcasm is so endearing, it's pretty clear that they do take fan feedback very seriously. Unless you think Blizzard hates GAF.
 
They changed Tracer's pose because a grand total of one person complained. So while your sarcasm is so endearing, it's pretty clear that they do take fan feedback very seriously. Unless you think Blizzard hates GAF.

That's not true, Jeff clarified the change was already in the radar before that post
 

Skab

Member
They changed Tracer's pose because a grand total of one person complained. So while your sarcasm is so endearing, it's pretty clear that they do take fan feedback very seriously. Unless you think Blizzard hates GAF.

Except they didn't.

Edit: beat
 

Phu

Banned
What? WHAT? This thread had nothing to do with how Ana turned out. They even have backstory of her getting her eye shot out resulting in her having that badass eyepatch.
 

Mupod

Member
Obviously this thread didn't do shit. But this kind of thing has been discussed here and there recently and the internet discussion might have influenced their decision whether to have her 'unmasked' costume be the default over her Destiny Hunter look.
 

21XX

Banned
They changed Tracer's pose because a grand total of one person complained. So while your sarcasm is so endearing, it's pretty clear that they do take fan feedback very seriously. Unless you think Blizzard hates GAF.

Pretty sure it was more about the often ultra self important tone gaf members take.
 

Azoor

Member
Yeah, I find it hard to believe this thread convinced Blizzard to change anything. I mean, one of the legendary skins is a younger and prettier version of her anyway.

I like all her designs though, seems like a cool character.

Hanzo and Genji have skins of their younger selves too. It's not unique to her.
 
I love everything about Ana. We could use more badass older women in videogames. She reminds me a lot of the old lady sharpshooters from Fury Road. And I approve of that.
 

Rockyrock

Member
Yeah, I find it hard to believe this thread convinced Blizzard to change anything. I mean, one of the legendary skins is a younger and prettier version of her anyway.

I like all her designs though, seems like a cool character.

This thread had absolutely 0 to do with her character creation lol. New characters are literally in the works for months and months. Not just thrown together cause 1 over reacting GAFer.

In fact it just shows how ironic the OP was for their complaint in the first place when the vanilla cast was already incredibly diverse. Completely foolish to think they wouldn't continue with that trend with newly released characters

Hopefully they learned their lesson.
 
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