Blizzard’s Trying to Make Better Women Characters in Overwatch

Last week Blizzard announced their first new IP in 17 years, Overwatch, a first person shooter based on the remnants of scrapped MMO Titan and the developer showed numerous characters of both sexes, plus a gorilla, but it's the women characters in Overwatch that the World of Warcraft maker most wants to improve upon. 

Chris Metzen, Blizzard's story and lore keeper, spoke about watch a World of Warcraft cutscene with his daughter during BlizzCon, Kotaku reports. Metzen said Blizzard hopes to create a less over-sexualised cast of characters in future, which will be more diverse. 

"We've heard our female employees," he commented. "And my daughter tools me out about it. She saw a World of Warcraft cinematic of the Dragon Aspects, and my daughter was like, 'Why are they all in swimsuits?' And I was like, 'I don't know. I don't know anymore.'"

"I think we're clear we're in an age where gaming is for everybody. We build games for everybody. We want everybody to come and play. Increasingly people want to feel represented from all walks of life, everywhere in the world. Boys and girls—everybody. We feel indebted to do our best to honour that."

However, Metzen admits that there's "room to growth" in relation to more realistic depicitions of women. The characters in Overwatch, while representing numerous races, tend to be super-slim women in cat suits, as you can see above. There's nothing to say these characters won't be great or that Overwatch shouldn't have some sexy women and men, but there's definitely scope for some adjustment.  

Metzen says this will very much be a focus going forward. 

"Specifically for Overwatch over the past year we've been really cognizant of that, trying not to oversexualize the female characters. I don't know if we oversexualize the male characters. But it's something we're very sensitive to. We want that to be part of who we are, what our brand is. I think [Blizzard president] Mike [Morhaime] talked in a roundabout way to that in his speech [at the start of BlizzCon]. It's something we're very cognizant of. We want girls to feel kick-butt. Equally represented."

Overwatch game director Jeff Kaplan concluded: "We want everyone to feel kick-butt!"