Overwatch Comic #10 - Tracer Breaks The Internet (and Russia)

[freezer]

As many of you already know, Blizzard Entertainment has been posting online comics involving the characters of their smash hit game, Overwatch. The tenth such comic, "Tracer: Reflections" is a Christmas-themed comic involving Tracer's attempt at getting a last-minute gift for her best bud, Winston (The armor-clad, hyper-intelligent gorilla).




The big to-do about this comic is a reveal about Tracer's personal life. One that's drawn strong reaction positive and negative: The two relevant pages (out of 12)





The scarf was actually for Winston, BTW.



Yep: Tracer, the game's defacto mascot, is a lesbian. Naturally, the internet reacted in equal parts "SQUEE" and "WHAT ABOUT THE CHILDREN".

Equally naturally, it's already banned in Russia. They're not saying it's because of their laws banning anything that could be considered "gay propaganda," just that the comic is not "in accordance with Russian law." Their loss.

I admit the only other Overwatch comic I've read is one with McCree foiling a train heist in the most assholish way possible. I plan to dig into the rest, post haste.

Comments

[janegray]

Or how Naughty Dog, for whatever reason, had Ellie's friggin backstory be DLC.

Same reason as your Bioshock example: executive meddling. They didn't even want Ellie to be on the cover art because they were worried it would scare the customers away.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/121064-Naughty-Dog-Flat-Out-Refused-to-Change-Last-of-Us-Cover

I love vidoegames with all my heart, I've been a gamer all my life. But let's be real: videogames are the medium that generated GamerGate. Anybody who shrugs off Tracer's reveal as meaningless just because other mediums have been getting more and more queer characters has no idea just how depressingly conservative the videogame industry and fanbase can be.

[lucean]

My favorite argument, that I still find to really telling, was at Bioware forums where someone was explaining how they didn't have any difficulties with minority main characters as long as it made sense from a story point of view. What amuses me to this point is that that person, and I feel this is a mental trap that so many fall in to in this discussion, was asking for it to fit the story if the main character was something else than a white straight guy without seeming to place the same requirement for why the main character had to be a white straight guy. In AC discussions that subject became even more of a blast.

[md84]

There's actually an Adam Ruins Everything episode covering how this happened. It boils down to corporate marketing videogames to boys instead of girls after the Great Videogame Crash in the eighties. It's absurd that the industry is so slow to recognize that their marketing strategies are alienating half of the human race, but old habits die hard.

[q99]

Or in some cases, flat ignore the existence of 'girl games'.

The point-and-click adventure gaming genre (King's Quest, the LucasArts adventure games, Monkey Island, etc.) 'died' for awhile in the late 90s through the 00s, a lamented loss to many you may be aware of.

Except, they didn't. The developers did, like, Nancy Drew games for girls, *dozens* of them, and were making more money than ever off of games doing better than ever. The gaming media just chose to not acknowledge their existence.