Diversity and inclusion are the heroes in Overwatch, a runaway gaming success

[Tennis]

Last year saw the release of Overwatch, a big budget title by Activision Blizzard, one of the world’s largest videogame developers and producers. A title whose “most basic goal” was:

[…] to be this bright, positive universe, where everybody feels like they could be a hero.

Overwatch has gone on to great commercial success, demonstrating the effectiveness of diversity as a core design strategy.

Their cast of playable heroes are straight and gay, men and women, robots, doctors, and criminals – and represent six of the seven continents (sorry, Antarctica).

So why haven’t game developers done this before? The answer may be that, before now, the industry just wasn’t ready.
An historical problem

The main audience for videogames has historically been young white men, and the game development industry itself has been – and still largely is – a very homogeneous environment. The industry’s most recent survey found that only 23% of developers were female, and that 81% were from a white Caucasian background.

This lack of diversity has long been a problem for the games industry. In the arcade era of the 1970s and 1980s, little attention was paid to female consumers. When they appeared at all, female and non-white characters were often props or one-dimensional stereotypes. Cultural critic Anita Sarkeesian analyses some of the recurring depictions of women — such as the “damsel in distress” — in her web series Tropes vs. Women.

Anita Sarkeesian explains that women are commonly depicted as ‘rewards’ in gaming.

Although games like Pac-man (1980) met some success in closing the gender gap, it would be many years before diversity was seriously addressed by the industry. Games like Dead or Alive Paradise (2010) and Duke Nukem Forever (2011) demonstrated just how far the industry had to go.

A toxic culture

The industry has been only one part of the problem. Players themselves have contributed greatly to hostile game environments.

In 2011 the website fatuglyorslutty.com started collecting user-submitted documentation of online abuse directed at female players. Their archives paint a bleak picture of a world in which female gamers’ bodies and sexuality are often the subject of deeply unsettling abuse.

Critics like Sarkeesian vocally challenged this toxic culture, and in 2014 the culture war came to a head. Sarkeesian, along with many female developers, critics and scholars were targeted as part of the massive cultural backlash coined “Gamergate” by actor Adam Baldwin.

While Gamergaters cited concerns over ethics in videogame journalism, the Gamergate movement was repeatedly linked to instances of online harassment including rape threats, death threats, bomb threats, and doxxing (the public release of victims’ private information).

Most academics have since characterised Gamergate as a reaction to a shift in the videogames industry away from its traditional base to a more inclusive one.

A bold decision

Development on Overwatch began around the time Gamergate was exploding. The studio was undoubtedly following the fallout, and its decision to develop a title championing diversity was bold, given the cultural climate.

This is especially true given that although latest figures suggest that more than 40% of gamers are women, the gender division across genres is far from even. A recent study found for the two genres into which Overwatch most closely fits – First Person Shooter (FPS) and Multiplayer Online Battle Arena (MOBA) – the percentage of female gamers were only 7% and 10% respectively.

Blizzard Activision’s approach with Overwatch was both more nuanced and more substantial than most. Rather than giving a nod to diversity in the form of a single female character or plot element, they wove it into their world with every design decision. They also recognised that diversity isn’t just about the narrative elements, but can be enabled by the structure of the game.
Overwatch’s Sombra is a hacker reknowned for her stealth and debilitating attacks. Activision Blizzard

Unlike most FPS games, Overwatch doesn’t rely solely on precision targeting or twitch reflexes. The distinct abilities of the various characters allow players to experiment with different styles of play, and the integrated roles of the characters emphasises the cooperative nature of the matches.
A mature approach

To say that Overwatch has solved the diversity problems in games would be an overstatement. Even before its final release, Blizzard Activision found itself criticised by fans first for releasing, and then for retracting, a sexualised image of one of the game’s most popular characters — a female character named Tracer.

Similar controversy erupted when another character, Mei, appeared to have inexplicably lost some of her waist circumference when donning a novelty Lunar New Year outfit.

http://theconversation.com/diversity...-success-75132

Interesting. I don't bother with shooters myself but it's great that this company is pushing diversity and inclusion.
Let's hope moving forward we can see much more diversity in video games!

[Deleted]

Having options is nice.

[Tulune]

Keep your love for N'wahs out of my games, you filthy swit.

[Blade Wolf]

http://theconversation.com/diversity...-success-75132

Interesting. I don't bother with shooters myself but it's great that this company is pushing diversity and inclusion.
Let's hope moving forward we can see much more diversity in video games!

It's the gameplay people enjoy, doubt it has anything to do with diversity.

[Deleted]

you have to be mentally ill to care whether the virtual 3d model that you shoot rockets with is a white male or a black transgender pansexual granny with alzheimers

[NED funded]

Gamergate achieved very little in the years it has been active.

[Independent voter]

People from China, Japan, India, etc like seeing a character that represents them. For us in Nevada we have McCree.

[Garnier Fructis]

Wrong; healers are the real heroes of Overwatch.

[Deleted]

Yes the fact that tracer does such a good job making me feel included is what made me play the game...
Yeah no, overwatch is a good polished game that's fun to play and isn't impossible to get into a casual /bad player.

Sent from my Nexus 5X using Tapatalk

[KrazyK923]

I'm pretty sure Overwatch was successful because Blizzard did what they always do: Take another franchise, make it more casual, and promote the everloving fuck out of it.

[ramjb]

Diversity? Overwatch was successful because finally, gamers could play as a hero they were able to identify with - Roadhog.

[Tennis]

you have to be mentally ill to care whether the virtual 3d model that you shoot rockets with is a white male or a black transgender pansexual granny with alzheimers

That's really sad to call someone mentally ill because they place value on combating discrimination and racism.

[Calfredd]

That's really sad to call someone mentally ill because they place value on combating discrimination and racism.

Not what he said but then you like to twist words a lot.

[eillas]

Gamergate achieved very little in the years it has been active.

I disagree, it had achieved quite a bit.

[melodramocracy]

Who knew people could assume that such a blatant TF2 ripoff was something 'revolutionary' in the shooter world.

- - - Updated - - -

That's really sad to call someone mentally ill because they place value on combating discrimination and racism.

Many laughs, given your thread history.

[Sinyc]

but it's great that this company is pushing diversity and inclusion.

I'm not sure what your agenda is here, but people love the game because it is well done and doesn't suck. Not because the main character is a lesbian. Why can't you just enjoy the game without throwing your agenda into it?

[ramjb]

That's really sad to call someone mentally ill because they place value on combating discrimination and racism.

But is Overwatch actually combating discrimination and racism or allowing people to live out their male fantasy of killing people of other races, queers, BBWs and spastics/retarded people?

e.g. I love to target Symmetra in Overwatch. I will throw the game just to spawn camp Symmetra and mercilessly teabag her, because there's this ****** annoying autistic kid at my school and while I can't do anything to him in real life I can transfer my rage to the sperg in Overwatch.

I also love making my sister cry by pointing to Mei and saying that's you, you fatso.

[Zeek Daniels]

I like how they ask why havent games done this b4. Maybe because not every game has a make believe world were all these things come together. I dont expect a WW2 game to have chicks in it. Theres a bunch of games out there with plenty of females and males. These ppl just dont talk about them.

[ohiostate124]

This game is successful because it's Blizzards version of team fortress 2, not because of diversity.

[Post]

100 "diverse" games are horrible, it has nothing to do with diversity.

1 "diverse" game is amazing, "SEE DIVERSITY IS WHAT MAKES GAMES GOOD!"