In a recently released story, Blizzard revealed that everyone’s favorite gruff Overwatch dad Soldier: 76 had a boyfriend in his younger days. The short stands as a well-written revelation, subtle and elegant. For many people, that’s enough to celebrate. However, Blizzard can and should be doing so much more to bring the LGBTQ community into their games. It’s also somewhat suspect that this reveal comes close on the heels of the Ellie controversy in which pro-players conspired, supposedly as a “social experiment”, to elevate a young woman to a professional Overwatch team.
This isn’t the first hero Blizzard has revealed to be part of the queer community. In 2016, Blizzard published the comic Tracer: Reflections which starred Tracer on a quest to find her girlfriend Emily a Christmas present. In a sweet, genuine moment the comic shows Tracer and Emily exchanging presents before sharing a romantic kiss on their couch. Tracer: Reflections established Tracer as a lesbian and Blizzard received quite a bit of praise for their decision to reveal Tracer’s sexuality.
The actual announcement itself came in the form of a short story called “Bastet” published online by Blizzard. “Bastet” follows the exploits of the healer/sniper Ana Amari as she encounters Jack Morrison aka Soldier: 76 while attempting to assassinate a brutal dictator in Cairo, Egypt. The story, penned by Overwatch’s lead writer Michael Chu, manages to convey quite a bit about the two Overwatch heroes, and even a little bit of insight into the tortured Reaper, in just fourteen short pages. However, there’s a wider context to everything in life. If we take that context into account, the release of this story and the way Blizzard handles the LGBTQ reveals in such an ancillary manner could be handled in a better, more proactive manner than they have been up until now.
- This Page: How Soldier: 76’s Reveal Falls Short Next Page: Overwatch Isolates Itself & Blizzard’s PR Smokescreen
How The Reveal Of Soldier: 76’s Sexuality Falls Short
The way Blizzard presented Soldier: 76’s sexuality could easily be misinterpreted or missed entirely. Michael Chu’s “Bastet” is a great read, but it’s only going to reach a small group of dedicated super fans. It was given prime placement on the Overwatch launcher itself, but even that doesn’t mean all that much to most players who simply glaze over those announcements while moving their mouse to the play button. The segment of gamers who will read the story shrinks even further when considering that console players don’t see the same launcher and, consequently, aren’t exposed to the story in the first place.
The reveal that Jack Morrison had a boyfriend back in the day leaves a lot of unanswered questions, especially since the story itself isn’t actually about Soldier: 76’s relationship. The moment comes and goes, receiving about a page and a half of “Bastet’s” already limited run. Ana and Jack take a moment to reminisce over some old photographs and Ana stumbles onto a weathered picture of a young Jack with his arm around a dark haired man named Vincent. Even with that visual and lines like, “Relationships don’t work out so well for us, do they?” readers have wiggle room for interpretation of the scene. Fans had so many questions that the writer of the piece, Michael Chu, took to Twitter to confirm that, yes, Jack Morrison is a gay man.
To be clear: it’s a big deal that Soldier: 76 is romantically attracted to men. It represents a lot to the LGBTQ community who play the game, while also standing as a really awesome piece of character development. It’s great, full stop. The problem comes into focus when we take a step back and realize that a huge portion of the fan base, the console players, never see the one piece of story content that depicts Soldier: 76 as being gay. On top of that, its subtle implementation might leave many players in the classic “Harold, they’re lesbians” meme scenario, totally oblivious to its implications; especially if they miss the confirmation tweet from Michael Chu.
Page 2 of 2: Overwatch Isolates Itself & Blizzard’s PR Smokescreen
Overwatch Isolates Itself From Its Own Lore
We would all do well to remember that, because as fantastic as it is that Overwatch now has a playable, canonically gay character, Blizzard is a colossal corporation. Overwatch exists as one of their most lucrative pieces of gaming content. They played it safe with the reveal that Jack Morrison is gay, relegating it to an piece of world-building lore that only a minority of players will see.
This was also a problem with Tracer’s lesbian reveal; as heartwarming as it was, there are still many people playing Overwatch who have no idea that the zippy, cheerful face of the team-based FPS loves women. Both Tracer and now Soldier: 76 should have those very important pieces of their character lore included in the actual Overwatch game. A game that, it should be be added, benefits from the enthusiasm of the LGBTQ community by portraying its characters as members of the community without actually committing to anything substantive in-game. Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling famously declared that Hogwarts headmaster Dumbledore was gay years after the core books were finished without ever putting that into the actual text of her works. It’s a move that’s better than nothing, but does not represent a strong stance by any stretch of the imagination. Blizzard has done practically the same thing here.
To be completely fair, Blizzard did include something in-game for both characters. Tracer has a voice line that sometimes plays while on the King’s Row map where she will muse about visiting Emily, as well as a spray of her red-headed girlfriend. There’s also a contextual interaction with Lúcio asking if Tracer and Emily would like to hit the slopes that only plays during Winter Wonderland events. In the latest update that dropped today, Soldier: 76 has an unlockable spray of the photograph that features him and Vincent. However, none of the in-game sprays or voice lines actually explicitly confirm that Tracer and Emily are an item or that Soldier: 76 and Vincent had a romantic relationship. You would only know that if you read the lore outside of the game itself, which is a real bummer.
Compare that to McCree and Ashe, two characters with a complicated relationship shown in the most recent animated short (Michael Chu did comment that they were not dating, but didn’t rule out a romantic past) or Widowmaker’s wedding photo spray or Brigitte’s existence as Torbjorn’s daughter. If Blizzard want’s to make Overwatch a bastion for inclusion, then it should actually commit to that within the game itself in a readily identifiable way that players actually encounter and have to engage with to some degree.
Blizzard’s Very Convenient Gay Smokescreen
Pulling back even further, the timing of this announcement seems incredibly convenient. Since January 2, when Overwatch Contenders team Second Wind announced a recently signed player would be stepping down, the professional Overwatch community has been embroiled in the Ellie controversy. People discovered that Second Wind, a team in Overwatch Contenders, the professional stepping stone to Overwatch League’s high-profile competitions, had signed a new player going by the name Ellie. It was an exciting move with the potential to make the professional Overwatch scene more diverse with its first woman competing after many had been driven off by harassment. Unfortunately, due to the backlash and harassment directed toward Ellie, she pulled out of competing just before her first game. In the days following the Ellie’s departure, it came out that Ellie did not, in fact, exist, but was a fraud created by a player with the Battletag Punisher and several accomplices to pose as witnesses, culminating in an official statement from Blizzard on January 6.
Understandably, the Ellie controversy currently dominating professional Overwatch discourse isn’t a good look for the players involved, Second Wind, Overwatch League, or the game itself. The January 7 announcement of a gay Soldier: 76 gives the game a major positive PR boost and shifts the story away from narratives about harassment in the community and the subset of toxic professional players. Those two facts together make for a situation where it looks like Blizzard used this announcement for PR purposes, like they exploited their LGBTQ fans as a way of scoring a win in the press rather than including a diverse cast because that’s the right thing to do for a global game like Overwatch.
The update that rebalanced Overwatch this past week and gave the community the “Bastet” short story has clearly been in the works for a bit. After all, skins don’t just magically appear. However, nothing about the story or what was included in the update itself directly speaks to Soldier: 76 as a gay man that couldn’t have been done since Jeff Kaplan teased the update on January 4. If we put on some tinfoil conspiracy hats, it isn’t a huge stretch to consider that a huge company might leverage an upcoming short story release to include a brief allusion to a gay romance. Of course, whether or not any last minute edits happened doesn’t change how the timely update looks to those following the controversies surrounding Overwatch.
If Blizzard wants to genuinely do right by their LGBTQ players, steps exist for them to do better. They can time their important releases to avoid looking like a PR distraction, intentional or not. Perhaps even more importantly, they could actually include more substantial representation in the game itself. It could be as subtle as a spray of a clearly romantic encounter or a lovelorn voice line heavy with regret or even an emote! Even better than any of those, Overwatch might benefit from small solo campaigns that explore each character’s story and could take the time to depict nuanced relationships in interesting ways. Make it meaningful, fully integrated content within the game. Overwatch players deserve better than halfhearted gestures toward inclusion from a company that happily profits off of the people who desperately want to see characters like themselves in a video game.
Update: Added clarification regarding McCree and Ashe’s relationship and the timeline of the Ellie controversy in relation to the “Bastet” release
