Tracer over-sexualized pose gets cut from Overwatch game.

Some controversy has turned up yesterday over a particularly over-sexualized pose from the character Tracer in the up-coming game Overwatch. It is very clear that Blizzard intends for their female characters in Overwatch to take on a specific persona and not all be shown as eye candy. Blizzard has said that it will remove the "over-the-shoulder" victory pose made by the hero Tracer, following a post over on the Battle.net forums complaining about turning the spunky time-bending hero into a "bland female sex symbol" The poster "Fipps" makes a very compelling statement "What about this pose has anything to do with the character you're building in tracer? It's not fun, its not silly, it has nothing to do with being a fast elite killer. It just reduces tracer to another bland female sex symbol." "We aren't looking at a Widowmaker pose here, this isn't a character who is in part defined by flaunting her sexuality. This pose says to the player base, oh we've got all these cool diverse characters, but at any moment we are willing to reduce them to sex symbols to help boost our investment game."

"I have a young daughter that everyday when I wake up wants to watch the recall trailer again. She knows who tracer is, and as she grows up, she can grow up alongside these characters."

As a man who has a god-daughter and a person who looks to have children, I can stand by his statement and say I agree, not specifically that sexualization is wrong, but when a character who is brought out with elements that are great and don't include being sexy, and is suddenly sexualized, it does raise some red flags. Jeff Kaplan, Game Director with the choice of overall art direction quickly responded with "We'll replace the pose. We want *everyone* to feel strong and heroic in our community. The last thing we want to do is make someone feel uncomfortable, under-appreciated or misrepresented. Apologies and we'll continue to try to do better". Followed by a larger explanation "While I stand by my previous comment, I realize I should have been more clear. As the game director, I have final creative say over what does or does not go into the game. With this particular decision, it was an easy one to make—not just for me, but for the art team as well. We actually already have an alternate pose that we love and we feel speaks more to the character of Tracer. We weren’t entirely happy with the original pose, it was always one that we wrestled with creatively. That the pose had been called into question from an appropriateness standpoint by players in our community did help influence our decision—getting that kind of feedback is part of the reason we’re holding a closed beta test—but it wasn’t the only factor. We made the decision to go with a different pose in part because we shared some of the same concerns, but also because we wanted to create something better." This is a breath of fresh air, though some will feel worried that Blizzard will change because of some minor complaints, it's shown that these complaints helped them make an overall decision in which they were worried about in the first place. I'm glad they'll get to use the alternate pose that they love, let's hope Tracer remains the character she was created to be. Jeff Kaplan's full statement can be found here. The following picture shows the post that will be removed from the game. Please keep comments mature and tame, we encourage conversation as long as it is kept that way.