I don't mind when they do some more experimental ones, but it feels like those have become the default and staying connected to the character has become the anomaly.
With cat bundle coming out, Illari is probably the biggest offender. Her outfit is so bougie and humorous simultaneously, while she retains her sour melancholic expression which makes the whole thing fall apart. It's like she's forced to wear this, doesn't suit her at all.
I don't think skins were ever based on the character well, you got pharah with native skins, devil Mercy, goth zarya, since the launch of overwatch there have been a ton of unfitting skins
Fr, the game is starting to make skins that you just dont even recgonise the character anymore and I have had a few moments where I geuinely didnt know which hero it was for a moment
I think the most recent widowmaker mythic is a grim result of all of these elements. sex appeal/popularity over readability/function. i legit thought she was ashe when it first came out.
I know I was confused when I saw it first because I couldn’t tell who it was. Why make a character with unnatural skin that’s tied to her identity into something else, especially when witches in media also can have non-natural skin, like in Wizard of Oz.
The lootbox system, for all its flaws, also got me to play new heroes. “Oh I just got a cool skin, I want to use it now”. That’s what got me playing a lot of the heroes I really enjoy! & then I wanted better skins for them, which made me pull more boxes
That's actually an interesting point that I don't think I've heard brought up before, but it makes sense - especially if you played a lot of Overwatch so you already had most of the base cosmetics, meaning that the first couple weeks after a new hero came out was usually exclusively getting their stuff out of lootboxes.
Every time I see arguments in favour of lootboxes I wonder if Overwatch's playerbase actually ever liked the game itself. It feels like people keep referring to how important the rewards were to their experience, as if fun itself isn't enough of an incentive to keep playing, or in this case, seek out variety. I play a different hero every match just because I get bored otherwise, and I never cared for lootboxes because they gave me a bunch of undesirable crap and made me feel obligated to look through skins I got just because they're offering variety at the cost of mostly looking worse than the defaults.
Loot boxes were a nice bit of flavouring but never the main draw. It was always a bonus on top of the already addicting game overwatch was or a really cool event.
@@Mezurashii5 We liked getting stuff for playing the game. We don't like having to pay for stuff unless we grind for 2 seasons for a battlepass, 4 for a skin, or 12 for a bundle in the shop. The gameplay of OW1 was better for solo-Qs, since you had more diverse comps (Thanks to a second tank), but also people could die fairly. Except for Pirate ships, I never felt like I couldn't stop a character even if I was solo, I just had to play much, MUCH smarter. Sure, you'd still get stomped every now and then, but I don't recall ever getting more than one game a month that felt actually unfair and unwinnable. And also, you had a better sense of community. You could give credits to people, you could LFG and find people, you could vote on scorecards AND endorse players, and you could CHAT and group up for a bit of time after POTG, without being booted out of the screen
You also see characters getting more skins based on how popular they are because it’s to make money. Monstrous characters in league get less skins and tend to be less popular. Like for year of the rat Twitch did not get a skin. For year of the ox Alistar didn’t get the prestige. For the porcelain skin line which is based off of the Chinese zodiac neither got a skin. It’s very frustrating seeing bias towards certain character types. Vladamir was also redesigned to have a more conventionally attractive design and it didn’t feel like it fit his character at all Also, thank you for discussing accessibility it means a lot.
I'm glad that the stuff about colourblindness has been received positively because it took me *ages* to find the LUTs and set them up and split the screens for that whole bit. Honestly it was meant to just be a bit of a passing comment in the video, but as I was working on it it's made me want to talk about it more. Seeing Overwatch with the various colourblind LUTs was really interesting, and also very revealing about how hard it is to see stuff that feels like it should stand out more obviously.
@@TheViverosyeah most large developers think of accessibility as an afterthought if they even consider it at all. I have photosensitivity from chronic migraines and it’s much easier for devs to slap a photosensitivity warning than develop a photosensitivity mode which sucks. I’ve had games which HAVE had photosensitivity modes like Lost Arc which I’ve then been blindsided when certain boss fights have been really flashy and hurt like there was one where everything was black and white and it physically hurt. Also legendary skins may have over the top effects and have far too much going on with skills as to look cooler and so people feel they get more bang for their buck and it comes at the expense at people who have photosensitivity and when it’s in games with team fights dear god is it bad when you see all that flashy crap at once
@@chattychatotchannel I used to love Urgot because of his old design. He was gross, bloated, disgusting thing. I hate how they changed his human part to be a buff guy instead so much
A lot of the points you bring up in this video can be seen in action if you look at concept art for MOBA or hero shooter games. A great example is Sett from LoL. During his early concepting stages they had a ton of wild ideas for his design, including a Kaiju esque design, and an Asura's Wrath looking design with 4 arms. However, the final design we got was 'attractive buff man with animal ears' and even in that final design track they further simplified and prettified from the initial concept until you have the extremely design we have now. This happens over and over and over in LoL. Even champions who are supposed to be monsters or ancient evils inevitably get pulled towards the infinite gravitational pull of 'generically attractive man/woman in regular clothes'.
Take Kaisa as another example she doesn’t at all look like she is affiliated with the void and has spent her life fighting for her life. Her concept art was way cooler but we got a toned down, boring version. Also look at Aurora’s design in her introductory video compared to what we got. In the video she had an interesting silhouette fitting someone exploring the coldest parts of the Freljord with her huge puffy jacket but then we get another generic girl because I’d imagine it would be easier to make skins on that template
Even when it's not. Look at Smolder and how poorly people received his design forcing them to try altering it swiftly. It's obvious he was designed to be a marketable cat like creature first just like Yuumi and a actual character second. You can see that through his concept art. In current League design principles, we'd never get sometime so weird and off putting yet uniquely endearing like Kog'Maw.
It isn’t just the skins, the character designs for the female characters have become so samey-same. I legit thought that Juno was just a skin for Tracer, Kiriko, or Dva when i first saw the trailer. It feels like they’re only making cute/quirky east Asian (bait) young characters because, unfortunately that sells the most. Sojourn was the new poster girl for like… 2 minutes before Kiriko came out. The mythic skin for Widow, i thought the same thing. Looks nothing like widow. Did we really need a third Japanese character? Did we really need to design an alien from fucking outer space to look like a normal human girl?
This exactly. I love Echo's character design, I would have loved a non-human alien... Or just a new character that wasn't the most generic girl they could come up with.
Juno tho is human, she was born on Mars as apart of a space colony so she’s technically not an alien. (Unless I’m misunderstanding your comment.) However, it would be funny if they had a STITCH- like hero.
@@sweethistortea My apologies I assumed she was from Mars. I still think that her design is just too similar to what we already have. Her face looks near identical to the other characters we already have. Wish they’d spice things up a bit more
25:53 i appreciate you showing that the value of capitalism are antithetical to art by literally making a semi joke of how capitalism has literally influenced your art
Honestly I wish I could say that the videos are so long for capitalism reasons, the real reason is just that I'm truly allergic to shutting the fuck up lmao
Yeah, a lot of the OW2 skins are not only hideous, but also ruin the chsracter silhouettes. Earlier I died to a hanzo because I couldnt even tell he was facing me lmao
I hate the Galactic Emperor skin on Sigma because it ruins his triangular shape and there are a lot more skins like that on other characters (please give Widowmaker some clothes, it's just sad at this point)
Classism and Favouritism strike the anvil that forges an endless printing of skins for heroes who won popularity contests arguably upon conception, based on how much they adhered to conventional attractiveness/appeal. And then, that concept ends up not even mattering in the end anywhere near as much as what cosplays and costumes they can be shoved into; being eradicated in both identity and personality, all in favour of only being interested in their shape, which is yet another piece of their character made by the devs, too. It's all just an endless loop. Anyways, excited for the December poll. Eager to see how the new format works out :)
12:40 in dead by daylight theres a character whos the opposite; the spirit. Every single outfit adds more clothing to her (or is equal to) than the default.
Just a correction- Australia in more recent years is starting to celebrate Halloween but more so in the way that businesses are selling Halloween things. Some neighbourhoods have trick or treaters and events as well as parties but it is not nearly a big of a thing as North America.
I've heard it's become more of a thing in recent years, but when Junkenstein's Revenge started in 2016 it very much so wasn't. I was living in Queensland at the time and both Halloween and Thanksgiving were holidays I really missed while I was there.
Also, as a woman, sexualizing characters turns me off them. I like kiriko, but I main ana because she's more relatable to me. I like mai because I'm a little chubby and constantly anxious, and I relate to her. I'm also attracted to men so I don't thirst after the female character, and I think women tend to have a wider verity of body types they like I think Lucio is attractive and I think soilder 76 is attractive and rine is attractive but traditionally attractive men like genji and life weever are meh
even as a bi woman it rubs me the wrong way a lot how female characters in games are unnecessarily sexualized SO much. knowing the target audience for those skins and who makes them just makes me feel… gross(?) and objectified considering the big picture of why that content is being created so often. kiri is very childish so seeing her in sexualizing context just feels icky, and i know for a fact it’s gonna happen w juno and she acts totally like a child. i think both of them are adorable not sexy!! and the coomers are gonna argue that “she’s technically 19” (i think) forgetting how they HAD to make dva above 18 bc ppl wouldn’t stop making porn of her despite her canonically being a minor. teen is the most commonly searched porn category and it SHOWS
Its a bit of a nuanced thing because some women do like playing as atractive female characters or even as sexualized ones. It is after all entertainment and escapism.
@@dan_da5213 Somewhat. If there's gonna be sexualization, there needs to be a baseline. Equal rights, equal fights for attention from all audiences. Currently, most of the sexualization and fanservice in media is for cishet men. Young women (or girls, in many disturbing cases) are sexualized to profit off that audience. And you could say "well lesbians could also like those characters", and yeah. Some might. But in the experiences I've heard through queer spaces from queer women with varying backgrounds, most agree that the characters sexualized do not appeal to them much. And as someone who's into men, most male sexualization in media does not appeal to me. *The issue stems from heteronormativity and many types of discrimination* (mostly based on gender, race, and sexuality). You can sell to the majority audience and make the most profit, which is often cishet men (esp in games like Overwatch, LoL, Valorant, and R6S). So, what would that formula be? 1. Cool men doing cool things. 2. Hot women doing hot things. 3. Avoiding overlap/swapping of the roles. Hot women can't do too many cool things, and cool men can't do too many hot things. 4. A steep difference in the ratio of character depth when it comes to cool men and hot women. Because male players need to feel like they can relate to a cool man, and there would be no point in catering to a female audience if the piece of media was made by men, for men. This effect is also known as "The Male Gaze", which is when a piece of media is created to cater towards its male creators/viewers, often without regard or concern for other demographics. As established, this is detrimental to women and queer people, especially young women and teenage girls. (This next part I'd like to preface, I am American. Racially White and ethnically Hispanic. I don't speak on behalf of the experienced discrimination of Black people, Asian people, other Hispanic people, etc., as I have not experienced discrimination based on my race. The experiences of a non-immigrant mixed-Hispanic person like myself are vastly different to immigrant Hispanic people, let alone other races.) There's also an argument to be made for racial biases, as laws and lasting prejudices (especially in the early 1900's) hurt Black, Asian, and Hispanic communities by leaving them out of the mainstream and therefor making them minorities in media. It's considered 'woke' for shows to add honest and accurate representation of different cultures, which sways the audience's perspective of such characters, as well as lessens their existence all together. As mentioned in the video, this results in fan-company-service biases. Diverse characters get significantly varied attention, with the fetishized caricatures of sexy Asians/Latinas being just as bad as the hatred and neglect often faced by Blacks/Latinos. They don't appeal to the heteronormative male gaze, or appeal in an actively harmful way (not just to their gender, but to race). And there are so many intricacies here, like the divide in popularity between light-skinned Black characters vs dark-skinned Black characters (which is glaringly obvious, even in media curated for African audiences like The Proud Family). You've also got the lack of SEA representation, as well as the generalization of Asia as an entire continent. Indians are Asians, but The Male Gaze refuses to perceive them as such. Instead, it opts to only accept Japanese, Chinese, and Korean characters, and those often lack distinction and proper representation. This can lead to characters speaking multiple North Eastern Asian languages interchangeably (ex. a Japanese character speaking Korean for no established reason) (this happened more in the past, and has recently seen a decline in such misleading representation between China, Japan, and Korea). Not to mention Vietnamese, Eastern Russian, Philippino, and a plethora of other Asian ethnicities being completely misrepresented, neglected, or forgotten because The Male Gaze didn't bother. To a lesser extent, Oceanic and European countries receive the same treatment. And I didn't even fully touch on Africa as a whole. If I did, I'd exceed the character limit. *So, how what does this mean for sexualization* (and general fan service)? It needs to be tasteful and authentic before it can be hot. At the very least, ask in spaces for the specific culture what you need to know before creating a character of a different race than your own. In other words, educate yourself on the experiences of others who share the same culture as your character and apply them where they fit. And honestly, this extends further than race, especially for trans characters (and as a nonbinary person, nonbinary characters are often easily readable as "A cis person wrote me without researching. I'm androgynous and somewhat feminine, always. Only they/them. Also I'm not human. Also I'm not relevant to the plot, and might get ret-conned for backlash/lack of popularity). THEN YOU CAN MAKE THEM SEXY. This has been my rant, goodbye.
Hello, long time viewer, first time commenter. The following is a bit of rant, but something that's been on my mind for a while. You've been warned lol I remember when it first came out, Bounty Hunter Baptiste was one of the skins I wanted the most. I always loved the idea of the "anonymous masked mysterious mercenary" archetype, a la Boba Fett, and I just thought it looked cool. This was already well after I swore off spending money on OW2, so I never bought it, but would've liked it. But it recently came back as a reward for the most recent "anniversary" event, if you can call it that, and I was finally able to get it. I still think the skin looks cool, and the gun design is really nice, but the thing is, I got sick of the skin so quickly. You know why? Because of the voice lines. If I had to hear about how "Dorioux will have his head if he doesn't bring him a big catch soon" or how it's a "good thing he doesn't have to count his bullets" this time in a game with no ammo management, I was going to lose it. Who is Dorioux? No one knows. Blizzard doesn't even know. You search it up, and you'll find three forum threads at most even mentioning the name. It was then it fully kicked in why OW2 is so disappointing. All these characters, who were supposed to be real characters, have been reduced to mere action figures. It's why I can't bring myself to care about any of the new heroes released after Sojourn, because they stopped being real characters, instead becoming another vessel to fulfill some archetype the game is lacking. It's why I groaned when the "Phreaks" or whatever was teased, because all they're going to be when released is yet another archetype from yet another faction that will not have any clear relevance on the story or universe of Overwatch. I know you previously mentioned how using the characters themselves as a means of storytelling isn't necessarily a bad thing, as you can tell interesting stories in contexts that wouldn't narratively be possible, but as the new characters become hollower and more basic aside from their surface level traits, and the already established cast becoming shells of their past selves, even that won't be lasting very long. It's why I feel the need to address the elephant in the room: **skins are boring.** The reason that it's always such a hot topic in the OW community is because... it's all we have to look forward to now. There's no story, PvE, or long term progression coming. The skins *are* the end goal now. A pretty thing to look at, chew up, and spit out, just in time for the next one to come along. It's why I don't see OW2 lasting too long, because eventually, more people will realize this, and will get bored. People will get tired of dressing up and showing off their Barbie dolls in a game that's not substantially progressing in anyway. For all my main heroes, I've unequipped my skins, opting to use either the OW1/OW2 skins for them. The reason I still play Overwatch is the same reason I've played religiously for years now, even during the 2020 content drought: it's because the game is fun. To this day, I get excited to try out new comps, new strategies, experiment, get away with plays I have no business getting away. And also because to me, it's a form of roleplay. The idea of being Baptiste, running from my past, but still trying to change for a better. Trying to stop an EMP from wiping out an entire omnic population while also trying to save as many of my teammates as possible. Blizzard has stopped pretending that they have a story to give us, so now I'm just trying to make my own, because deep down, I still love the game and the world of Overwatch. I've stopped trying to show off, or be an elitist in a game that's losing as many players as it's gaining. I play the game because it's fun, and at the end of the day, that's what a game should be.
I think you're underestimating how f2p games work here. I totally get where you're coming from, but people are actually VERY easy to fool especially when people either lack or ignore information. There's a good portion of people who exclusively play OW2 because their friends play it. There's also a good chunk who play it specifically because they played OW1 and are stuck in the ecosystem for various reasons. En ef tees were a through and through grift, but the grift fad still lasted a year or so Like with your skin example, there a lot of people who take the "it's not a problem unless it effects me directly" approach. The negatives of that get out of hand REALLY fast. And that's a systemic "the way people are currently educated is fundamentally flawed and will lead to the collapse of multiple nations" level issue. This exploitable loophole won't be fixed for literally hundreds of years
usually i don't leave comments but i had to. your comment has actually made me emotional. it's why i played and loved OW1. i loved its characters, i loved the story, i loved looking foward to seeing more characters that add to the lore being released. i loved playing as dva, a stubborn and popular meka professional. i loved playing as mei, an anxious meteorologist that always tries her best. i loved playing as symmetra, a perfectionist in what she does, always striving to be better. but gradually, those characters just... disipated. i dont really care about the new characters anymore. i do love venture, because i CAN tell they were made with love and passion, but not even blizzard cares about them, which says a lot. i don't like it when a character loses its character. it is not a character anymore, its just some empty vessel for blizzard to dump their skins on, to look pretty, and, most importantly, to be bought, because blizzard desperately want money. i know few people will relate to this. i dont think most of the people who play OW do it for this. they either will care about skins, or being the best in comp. but i dont. i loved this game and its characters, now its just a shell of what it used to be.
@@michiic0la I feel this 100%. A couple of my friends got into the game with me during OW2, and for the longest time, they thought I was joking when I said the story and the narrative were my favorite part of the game. They didn't even realize there was supposed to be one. They never experienced the hype or excitement of the Archives events, at seeing more of the story unravel, or the hype of the community anxiously waiting for the story to continue. It's a very sad realization, but Blizzard no longer wants the people who want more out of Overwatch, they only want the people who accept it as it is now.
@@starman4572You have a great way with words, person on the web! May your wisdom spread to the rest of the OW community so, at the very least, it can be less toxic.
@@starman4572 Let me start by saying that I only played Overwatch 1 at the house of an acquaintance of mine because I couldn't afford an online subscription but I always kept informed about the "story", in my opinion the problem is that the narrative of Overwatch has always been fluctuating because it was already subject to changes or retcons before or with less detailed sides, I simply believe it had a good foundation but it wasn't built properly over time satisfying the power fantasy that every hero represents. Maybe it would benefit them to release more stories, comics, animated shorts (not necessarily always cinematic) and finally a blessed animated series like Riot does with LoL (even though they also seem to be reducing some of these aspects), but I imagine that the choice will always be up to Microsoft, however, certainly has no shortage of funds. (I apologize if I repeated the message but this is how I feel about it)
Hot take, the OW2 resigns were mostly downgrades. Yes it made sense in the story, as they were regrouping as a team. But look at OW1 Tracer and Mei. Thier clothes fit thier OWN design and lore more. But the OW2 makes it all collectivized... not nice
For me some redesigns are not bad (for example I prefer the Symmetra one), while for others I preferred the previous ones (like Sigma), so i think it's different point of views.
it's the gacha iffication of character design. Looks pretty and over the top detailed but once you start looking into the details of that design a lot of things are just there for the sake of being there and looking pretty and not benefitting the character or saying a lot abt them. This can also vary to slight overdetailing to completely unecessary features like the expose shoulder detached sleeves games like hsr like to do. as someone who is studying character design I'm always a bit saddened because it doesn'T feel like skins or modern charaxters are actually that impactful towards me.
Maybe I'm naive, but couldn't this also apply to many of the original Fortnite skins (and other games with various cosmetics)? Certainly many are beautiful to look at, but if in the end there will always be favorites and you don't focus much on them, preferring to play, why continue to buy them?
19:56 Sojourn has gotten jack apart from the 1 league skin and this current bp skin actually being nice, but ana absolutely gets a fuck ton of skins. Not countering your argument either because according to their own data ana is the most played hero in the whole game, she has gotten at least 3 different battlepass skins, the one power ranger skin, a mythic skin and weapon. They def give her more love than the others who live in the kiriko mercy shadow
@@deadhelix Remember when Sojourn was the new poster girl for the game for like… 2 seconds before Kiriko came out? And I literally thought Juno was just a skin for tracer, kiriko, or dva. They’ve lowkey given up on making diverse female characters.
I think it’s also worth noting how visibly disabled characters in games are often depicted as villains. You almost never see characters with visible differences and even rarer are prominent facial differences. When they appear they are villains with their differences showing that they are evil or a sign of their corruption like good old fashion physiognomy When disabilities appear they are more innocuous disabilities like blindness or characters which have high-tech prosthetics as to not make non-disabled people uncomfortable. Representation of disabled people is reliant on how much non-disabled people tolerate how existence, and it’s very little.
So this is comment is going to cover a topic that is risqué, but is purely from an artistic and marketing standpoint. Though if this needs to be deleted I completely understand. So a content creator by the name of T B Skyen made a point regarding Overwatch’s approach to sexuality in skins and I think it really pertains to this. The development team really only ever go for the safest route when it comes to exploring those topics. They’re rarely if ever mentioned in the story/dialogue and the skin designs only really show what you would see at a beach. Now at first that seems obvious as Overwatch is meant to played by a variety of ages and is not about that type of material. But as Skyen pointed out, it kinda of is? At least a little bit. Because as he recalls, there was a tweet the official Overwatch account made regarding a kiriko skin that had bare feet. The tweet read something along the lines of “This skin’s got GRIPPERS” with images focusing on her feet. This seemed to be with the intention of enticing the crowd who are into that. Issue being that the skin simply was not designed in a way that actually attempted to appeal to that. It just looks like she happens to be barefoot. Now my personal opinion is this was the marketing team making a lame attempt at relating to the audience completely independent of the art team. However, it does highlight that in the profit driven, mass appeal strategy they go for in skin design, that type of risqué aesthetics will never even be attempted to be explored, even if not used in an explicit way. But on the hand, they also seem to want to have their cake and eat it too by pushing it where it isn’t. That disconnect if very interesting to me is all. And I hope I explained my points well enough to get across what I’m trying to say.
First of all, love TB Skyen, his analysis of skins in League in particular has actually been really helpful for developing more of a critical eye for this sort of thing. And I think your point is very relevant. I actually talked about something similar in an old video from last year - Barbie Girl, R34 Overwatch, and How Corporations Lose Control of Their Characters - talking about how Blizzard is in an awkward situation when it comes to how their characters are perceived similar to the awkward situation Mattel found themselves in with Barbie Girl. It really wasn't the brand that the company intended to foster, but it was one that outside forces (Aqua in Barbie's case and NSFW artists in Blizzard's case) created for them, and now it's on them to work around that. Mattel spent a lot of years outright hating Barbie Girl, then slowly worked it into their ads, before finally putting the remix in the Barbie Movie. I think Blizzard is just entering the transition from "We can't stop you but we absolutely will not encourage you" from "Ok so *maybe* we can dip our toes into this (pun intended) since it's clearly what the people want and it's pretty harmless" and that's why stuff like the weird grippers tweet happens. I would imagine we're probably going to see a bunch of similar stuff over the next year or two, especially now that they've basically given up on having any sort of story or anything. Something else I talked about in that video that I wish would get talked about more is that I find it very silly how touchy people get over the idea of sexuality or sex appeal when we're talking about actual murderers. Like Widowmaker canonically has at *least* a high double-digit kill streak, probably into the triple-digit range, but if she rocks up in a bikini and a giant sniper rifle there are people who're pulling the "But won't somebody think of the children!?" act over the bikini and not the fact that the weapon she uses for international terrorism and assassinations is being redesigned to look like a beach accessory lmao
@@TheViveros Yee he’s great. He gave me a deeper appreciation for the techniques and styles of animation. In fact, that point I paraphrased came from his reaction to a helluva boss episode. And I did in fact watch that video, and now I am actually realizing that yeah, that tweet is the logical result of the loosening mindset (logical in the way it tracks. It was still super dumb). But they’re also at a point rn where I still don’t think they get it. Like Skyen pointed out, they don’t really understand the appeal of it, so they just go to “WOAH LOOK FEET! LOOK GRIPPERS!” from just the presence of feet. It’s very “how do you do fellow kids?” And I fully agree with your violence Vs sexuality point. It is a little off topic but still relevant I think. Something similar has happened with Helluva boss and Hazbin Hotel. There is a character in Hazbin, Valentino, who is an abusive pimp who does engage in SA. People then took issue with the fact that they made merch of the character, which items with him included him in skimpy clothes. Love or hate the shows, I think this is a silly criticism. Especially since other characters from them with similar merch include a team of assassins, one of which killed a child in the non canon pilot and another who killed a child in canon. And that’s not even to mention the copious amount of merch, sexual or not, of other morally objectionable characters like slasher villains or known child killer and g*nocider Darth Vader. I get people being uncomfortable with it for sure, if they don’t like that merch that is completely fine. It just is a very interesting line that gets drawn when people talk about from a morals perspective . Sorry for the rant, all of this is to say I agree with your last point lol
I think about the paying for sexy characters thing a lot. I started thinking about it after playing Azur Lane, when I realized that I couldn't think of games in genres I really liked with characters that appealed to me sexually that are not sold as part of microtransactions or lootboxes. The stigma around sexy character designs has seemed weirder and weirder to me as I've gotten older, and mild annoyance at it has lead to me spending 4 years learning Blender and programming, so I can make my own FPS with character designs and mechanics that appeal to me. It's been an interesting experience so far, especially trying to figure out how to balance being sexy and practical, and trying to make the game not sexist.
Your break down of all the details that affect character design is just so elaborate and well written. I hope you continue these amazing videos and thank you for this one! ♡
11:28 it doesn’t help they stopped releasing base legendaries and epics, so they’re forcing u to pay money to get this unconscious satisfaction. I feel silly when thinking about it, but I heavily gravitate towards characters I’ve customized. They just feel more mine.
I've wondered if the lack of Venture's skin could have been calculated since Blizzard has now developed a hunger for one, where they could have been 'lost' within the cast from the live-service churn otherwise. Since there will sadly always be a portion of people who will dislike them, Blizzard now has a group who adores them as happens with every character, but more importantly, many others who are actively thinking about their next skin.
The fourth section of this video is another reason i think venture and bap specifically dont get skins,they all have to find a way to incorporate ventures big ahh coat or baps boots,even meis recent skin to find the owcs prize pool has to have kinda awkward looking bulky shoes to fit in with her default silhouette
Personally I think the best kind of cosmetics are the ones that work with the base silhouette of a character, and translate certain aspects of their outfit into different things that still maintain that silhouette. Like in identity v, a hunter whose whole deal is being a freshwater naiad, she has a really unique fishtail braid in her base design that the game always keeps for her high tiers to keep her recognizable to herself, but manages to change up the details to still make it fancier/higher quality.
I would say it's both the provider and the consumer's fault.. like if people didn't buy these overpriced skins in droves they wouldn't make it in the first place
So , I was an intern last summer on Ow2 as a concept artist. Who was actually working within these exact parameters. I want to mention, that marketing doesn't play as much of a part as you'd think. Nowadays, we as artists on the team had a lot of liberty over what we wanted to create. I believe there is a culture shift within the roster, with there being a lot of Chinese skins due to there being a flux of Chinese concept artists, therefor making it culturally impactful and easy for them to connect with, regardless if the players were able to or not. The use of survey skins is helpful, but its far from what could be for the playerbase, considering they are who put money into Blizzard's pockets to begin with. There needed to be more diversity for all characters, whether it be by theme, or culture. Asian characters having as much as they do whilst the rest of the roster gets neglected just never sat right to me. I also want to mention that there a slight double standard as well with naming conventions. There was a slight problem with the project I was working on for the name not being able to be recognizable to the player due to the language used, yet Mercy has a bunch of asian skins I cant even being to decipher due to them being a Chinese skin made for a European character. There are some smaller inconsistencies like that, that made making skins for heroes difficult. Anyways this was more on marketing, you have some of it right and some of it not so much with the lack of understanding on liberty. I wish there were more constraints that we as players could put on the artists so that it was more of an even playing field. If you're making damn near 6 figures to do art, especially for a game that's made for players, you'd better be dedicating half of that salary to the people who put the coins in your pockets instead of making easily-marketable sexy skins for every conventionally attractive lightskinned characters. Anyways that's my rant and critique. I never talk about this since its never the time nor the place but I figured it was relevant here since i had experience with this first hand. And there WERE issues I noticed. Hope this was helpful, and thanks for the content Viveros!
I’m not a kpop fan, but I bought the Le Seraffim pack because I really liked the designs and it just looked like something the characters would actually wear.
So while in the context of Overwatch, yes you are totally correct. Hell, for 98% of the shooter market you're correct. But since I've recently moved on from Overwatch to The Finals, my view on microtransactions has shifted ENTIERLY. Before that game, I'd have argued that it would be impossible to design an "ethically monetized" system or one where the cosmetics don't fall into the "paid to strip" pitfall you mentioned. But gyatt damn The Finals... it just continues to blow my mind 2 seasons later. It plays a lot like overwatch in such as it shares a bunch of similar abilities, but instead of pre packaged hero kits, you buy those abilities like items for your loadout via currency only earned thru playing the game. So right off the bat, no matter what you make you end up seeing yourself in your charecter way more than you do in overwatch. As for cosmetics, there are pre-made "outfits" or bundles but you can break those down an mix and match. Not something entirely new to the genre, but where this game differs is a few crazy aspects becoming more an more rare. 1. Battle pass+ includes enough currency to buy the next two passes. 2. Because of the game's settings (combatants in a VR game) ANYTHING goes. and has resulted in some of the most insane designs I've seen. For instance, the latest flamethrower skin literally is a glass bottle with a FRICKIN SUN inside it. 3. Another really cool skin bundle was a set of 3 weapons that are made of cooled lava but as you fire the weapon, it heats up an becomes more like piping hot lava. In other games, a single gun skin like that or a mythic weapon in Overwatch would cost like $70. These were $20 for the entire set of 3. 4. The community submits designs an the devs listen and make them. I've even gotten two designs ideas make it into the store. Anyways, I love your videos and this one's topic in particular hit close cause I felt the same way about games an their design until falling into this damn game that changed the way I view everything an I think you would love looking into it as well even if it's just to use it as a contrast to Overwatch an what works what doesn't. Plus, they even manage to do the OW's push mode better than OW. :p
I appreciate the kind words! Unfortunately, The Finals’ commitment to and aggressive defence of using generative AI to replace paid human voice actors is something that burned that game for me. It’s a shame because the gameplay looks pretty decent, and especially so because it sounds like they do have some creative ability when it comes to skins. However, even on that front, their embrace of gen AI as a cost-cutting measure makes me a bit concerned that they’re using it for more than just the voices. I’m not trying to say anything negative about anyone who plays it or anything and I hope it doesn’t come across like getting on a soapbox, it’s just that personally that stuff really left a bad taste in my mouth and turned me off of it. If that policy of theirs ever changes, though, it’d definitely be one I’d like to try.
Oh, I also forgot to mention. There is also no described "gender" option either. In fact, lookin at the various face options, aside from two, they are so nebulous it's immpossible to tell M/F an it's only from customizing an combining all the options to make your charecter does any real sense of him/her/they/it (yes it, one of the choices is a crash test dummy or gundam) start to form. Kinda neat
@@TheViveros That's actually been some false/misrepresented info that's been spread around. While they use AI voices for two charecters, it's 1 an asethetics choice because those charecters ARE AI and 2, they paid real human voice actors who agreed mutally on a fair price for their work to be the samples an they even get residuals for their work.
That’s not what they said, though. Googling it pulls up this quote from their audio designers on a podcast where they say that it’s AI by default with only a couple exceptions for things it can’t do *yet* - which to me implies that they’ll use it for that too once the tech can handle it: "We use AI with a few exceptions," Andreas said. "So all the contestant voices, like the barks, and both our commentators are AI text-to-speech. For things we call vocalisations, like player breathing, vaulting, jumping, that's something we use us in the studio to record, just grunting. We can't really get the AI to perform those kind of tasks yet." What’s more, when pushed, the studio reiterated their stance: "We saw the discussion happening, and one of the reasons we discussed it from the onset [on the developer podcast] was because we have been super transparent about the use of AI-based TTS (text-to-speech) in the game," he says. "One thing that we want to make really clear in terms of how we use those tools in The Finals is that we use a combination of recorded voice actors and AI-based TTS that is based on contracted voice actors, we don't generate voice and video from thin air." The fact that they’re contracted VAs doesn’t change that it’s done to avoid paying them to keep coming in and recording new lines. It’s a cost-cutting measure that undermines VAs both in terms of being paid for doing the voice work and also in allowing them to get more experience, and it further normalizes using AI in this field when I really don’t think we should be normalizing it at all. Games were able to make robotic, artificial sounding characters without generative AI before, and there’s nothing stopping them from doing it here. And again, it’s no shade to people who do enjoy it, and I’d be happy to see them publicly change their stance and commit to not using AI - like I said, it seems fun, it’s just that this was something that personally rubbed me the wrong way.
Huuuh. Why would different bit and pieces you can mix Mach fix that issue? Paladins only progression monetization is the 20 dollar pack that give you every character and talents for free. Wich isn't that hard to farm. Takes lik a year and a half for every character including the one you don't care for. And skins are 7 doloars. With 4 dollars battle pass with 2 skins and 2 recolor. Plenty of free premium currency for people who play the game. And they instead when from even mixing skin head. To only mixing skins and weapons. To improve character design for skins. Like you comment is so long I feel like I lost your point as some point. (BTW paladins skins arnt just costumes. They are entirely different character. With different vfx, sfx, voices packs, and a few added animations, effects, a sometime music that play and vary with abilities. Like. One big boy character skins is a tied and muzeled demoness as the chest, with magical pieces of armor flying as the arms. Like. It's really creative. Honestly you say 95% of games are horrible. But it's more like 70%. Look at a game like deep rock galactic. Ow monetisations is stupid except the pass.
Interesting point about lootboxes needing tiers of desirability, and accidentally appealing to niches. Never thought about that. However, the biggest issue with MTX and character design for me has always been the very existence of skins and perpetually adding them. As you buy new clothes for your Barbie, you take away the parts of her appearance she can be recognized by. Modern games often have amazing, well thought out character designs that get completely demolished with skins that change nearly everything about them within a year of the character's release. You used to be able to recognize Ashe by the brim of her hat, but now half the cast has witch outfits that might give them a partially similar outline. Colours as a tool for making characters easily distinguishable have also died a long time ago, because switching up the colour scheme is piss easy. Having skins constantly added to a game also ruins its visual cohesion. Overwatch, if you ignore all the cosmetics, has a very strong art direction. If you put the entire cast next to each other and then add a character from Palandins or Marvel Rivals in there, they will clearly not fit in at all. If you make Mercy a witch, Symmetra a goddess, Junkrat a beach goer, Torbjorn a pirate and Brigitte a medieval knight, suddenly no two designs work together. It is possible for games to create skins that stay within a single visual language, but almost no company has committed to that so far. One reason is that it's difficult to constantly work within those limitations, but another is that tacky garbage sells - not just because people have no taste, but also because standing out, even to the point of not fitting in with the art direction of the rest of the game, creates value for players. It's also not just visual, but also thematic. Characters get put into outfits that completely do not fit them like half the time when the skins are paid. Hell, OW even has skins where the characters are of completely different age, which is peak nonsense. And lastly, selling skins creates an expectation that the characters you bought those skins for will remain in the game, and their designs will stay largely unchanged. This makes it near impossible for devs to delete a hero with terrible mechanics, or make necessary adjustments to a visual design of a character. Imagine Widowmaker ended up looking too similar to another hero and they came up with the idea of making her a spider centaur. Do you think they'd actually go with that idea considering they'd have to completely rework like 30+ skins? Hell no.
Really cool essay, i really resonate with this type of opinions really, im a student of character design, and this is something i allways talk about with my friends, but is a little hard to put in words for me, so this is a godsend! the Barbie analogy is just a chef´s kiss! ill be watching more of your videos now, thanks for the hard work
TF2's mercenaries are the closest "video game barbie" has been realised, you can mix and match thousands of cosmetics with an ever expanding pool thats been fed for more than a decade. It works because the characters are already caricatures, they're very shamelessly character stereotypes, which means that players can mould those bases more to their personal liking. And if you know what you're doing, you can get a set of 3 cosmetics you think fit nicely for each merc for less than a buck. It's by far not a perfect system, but at least it gives you choice, a low bar of entry and much more customisability. Instead of just plucking a name from a hat with all the hot white women having 10x the notes with their name on it than others, and then selling a decent skin at the price of a king's ransom.
to be honest the frontline firebug has more effort and love than the recent my hero academia collab skins yea even more than the Juno uravity (first legendary skin to be a collab one)
XDF's Style/Series Analysis series really highlights the issue that default skins are intentionally made less well designed to sell a premium version of the character's design that should be default. His Concord video highlights this best imo; A lot of the Concord characters actually have GOOD DESIGNS... Locked behind premium skins. The ugly messes we got were given to us by microtransactions.
25:53 Nooo, and deprive us of the sassy wink and a nod every time over the reveal of the obvious, inevitable conclusion? Funny that, this was partly something that I touched on in a research question during one of my university courses! Mine though was more focused on the social context of online gaming and how it creates the ability for new forms of monetization through the creation of "social classes" of spending, manufacturing connections between luxury, experience, skill and cosmetics which prey on the desire of players to portray themselves as fantasies of who they wish to be, as well as how the very inherent disconnect of play from real world consequences by virtue of something being a game obscures the injection of such systems into them and lulls players into a false sense of security and passivity when it comes to accepting that.
In league, there is a champion named "Kayn" who has the ability to pick between 2 forms as the game goes on: a shadow assassin form or a evil red monster "darkin" form. Aesthetically he is emo teenage dream oc "half demon half human one red eye one normal eye" dude which would sell skins like hotcakes but because he has two forms he has to alternate between every game, he gets fewer than usual skins for how conventionally attractive he is. I don't like how league monetizes so many things and how skins for hot girls always come every year meanwhile most unconventional (monster or monster adjacent) characters never get talked about but I do commend them for making a cool gameplay design at the cost of him never getting skins because it's essentially designing 3 new skins every time they want him to have another costume. Great video Viveros! You put into words what I've always felt about the free to play monetization and how it changes character design!
Wow...seeing Mercy have more oriental skins than the actual asian characters make me kind of bummed out... Because they're not only just selling the skin but they're selling the fetishization of that culture. I hope Blizzard execs and the team behind skin design kind of wake up and start balancing it out, but that may never be because companies will always choose money.
There’s also a lot of emphasis placed on characters that are played more often; sometimes you even see Blizzard buff characters with new mythic skins so people are incentivized to play them more.
conventional attractiveness is safe and makes money -> other characters don't get a chance to shine or get used to people seeing them -> conventional attractiveness reinforced -> other designs struggle to be normalized and don't get as many buyers -> repeat
Dang, I have to agree gay vtuber man. Such a shame that art has to play second fiddle to selling cosmetics. Have to wonder do ya have a video that goes into the customizability of characters ad how the choice of the end user is being taken away (Actually now that I think of it, it would be pretty similar to the Barbie comparison ya made.)
I don't have one that's specifically about that, but it's an idea I've bounced around a bit. Maybe it'll get made someday if I can find a good angle to take on it.
MY GOAT IS BACK!!!!!! AND IT'S WITH A FUCKING BANGER!!!! LETS FUCKING GOOOOOOOO!!!!!! And I'm wishing you well in any recovery that might be related to your surgeries, atb 🙏 I've felt this for SO LONG. While there was always a number of exceptions I've always been attracted towards the cannon (or "default".. gods it's even baked into the language!! 🤮) skins of the characters, and I always felt unconsiously uglier or less-than for preferring that somehow. In recent years with my increasing awareness of the world it became more clear why that was over time, and to hear it discussed here is endlessly frustrating and facinating as a person and artist (not respectively, both for both LOL). While the character designs of premium skins are very visually appealing for the most part, they also feel so hollow and detached from the original hero or really any context. It's almost like an eerie syntax error, like the flashy or interesting design shining through the limitations of the original hero are calling to and implying a deeper character that just isn't there. And with that, the context of OW's world in a match of people running around in these skins is totally lost. (And I don't think it's an accident that skins are disabled in OW Classic, it brings the focus to the nostalgic world of OW1 when you don't have the overcomplicated and disparate skins running around. This all is also part of why my favorite non-default skins are the lore-based ones like Pajamei). Especially with OW2 (which lines up with the monetization changes) I've started noticing a gap in the level of detail in new heroes' designs (noticed it with Sojourn and Kiriko especially, Juno as well with the extra armor bits they took off after Blizzcon). Hearing you talk about this all (like how the character is designed to be a toy primarilly and a show character secondarilly) feels so shocking but vindicating, like you've given form to my existing subconcious feelings I was feeling but not fully aware of. The first thing that came to mind hearing the intro was the insane example of how Seraphine from League of Legends felt to people like she was careated and designed specifically FOR KDA FIRST AND FOREMOST and LoL secondarilly, which almost feels like the opposite side of the same spectrum from what's talked about in the video. Your 30 second summary at the end is so real, it's so frustrating. I thought of this when you mentioned My Little Pony as an example of 22 min toy advertisement despite it genuinely being important to me as a kid, but that last bit helped put it into words: It feels like making the muffled voice of art GOOD through the deafening noise of capitalistic demands has become _an artistic medium of its own,_ with it's own limitations to be worked under that your love and passion and meaning and artistry is to shine through. THAT'S how media has felt to me as of late. Again, banger of a video. 🤩🔥😤 (Sorry this is so long I zoned out for 40m and barfed out this stream of conciousness, I hope this adds to the conversation or is meaningful to someone. 😭) PS. Not entirely related, but this all and the current OW Classic stuff reminded me of how in very early OW we didn't have a lot of context for the game's story and just the base context of the cinematics, and how many of the stories people were telling through OW are so inspired by what goes on in a match (a recent Juno/Winston in-game short on Twitter also reminded me of this, as well as Pharmercy's existance/origins and all the 2016 OW memes etc.), using the existing lore and personalities and backstories as a template to work from. It's really interesting to me as someone who's more versed in more traditional storytelling and design (which btw, that Reagan segment was WILD to learn about, that's literally how the world we live in is 40+ years later, to the point where it's crazy to think it was ever not like this. Fuck him, thanks for the education.)
yay an upcoming video about linguistics and gaming!! i hope you could touch upon the subject of the law of economy in language, and how it is best reflected in gaming. (would be even cooler if you took some foreign language examples). i absolutely love the way people have subconsciously agreed to use contractions and euphemisms to speak of very specific tough to explain terms.
This is an incredibly interesting video to watch from the perspective of a league of legends player because we have been dealing with this for over 10 years now. Something overwatch thankfully hasn't had to deal with are characters whose base design aren't cannon, but have skins that are cannon. Some examples in league are Miss Fortune and her captain skin, pre rework udyr had an ultimate skin (which was the highest price tier at that time) that upgraded his models polygon count past 2 digits and was cannon while his base design wasn't, and soon Jinx will be getting a 250 dollar gatcha skin that is her design from arcane (which is cannon) while her base model isn't cannon anymore.
There’s also how it makes every character much harder to initially identify who they are which is a pretty big deal in any competitive environment, particularly ones with hero abilities
Maybe I'm simple and therefore I'll be wrong, but I believe that in the end it all boils down to the fact that the public pays for a certain type of cosmetic (especially for a specific character), so obviously sensing the revenues, more skins of that type will be created, leaving little or nothing to the other subjects.
In conclusion - put Soldier 24 reaper in a speedo! In all seriousness, this was an amazing video! You explained this formula perfectly, and one thing I always saw is how much of a double-edged sword it is. I love to contrast Mercy and Symmetra in this regard. Both have amazing base designs allowing for a wide variety of skin concepts - but there's one glaring difference. Mercy is white, Symmetra is brown. Naomi got it right - the formula is blonde and white. That's why Mercy's always dressed up as something in her skins, it's never a complete transformation, it's Angela went down to spirit halloween and picked out a costume for you all. Even in her mythic skin, it's just "what if Mercy was Moira?". There's no full transformation and the concept is never taken to its fullest potential. She's shoehorned into this neat boring box - because that's what sells. Symmetra on the other hand isn't put into that box. She gets those "complete transformation" skins as well as the fun costume skins, albeit much MUCH less frequently than Mercy and other heroes like her. I will always maintain that she gets the best skins, and I think that's because the concept artists are allowed to go all out with her. I love your Drag Race and Dragula comparison, because it really applies here. Anyways that was my ramble! (As a side note, I'd actually love to see how her Infernal Witch skin sold, Not only because that's the coven x bewitching Symmetra skin that I've always wanted for her, but because I wonder if that will impact the frequency of her shop skins going forward)
A surprising and impressive example of the difference between Design and Development; the former is a series of interconnected disciplines that those making the game pick and choose to invest resources into, depending on the game trying to be made. Sometimes you don't have enough and make due, but interesting design choices crop up within a lot of those gaps. Development, however, is a job. It has obligations and expectations, in addition to the interconnected disciplines available amongst the many developers- All of which are decided by whatever the company/corporate/executive branch decides is important; often at the expense of cohesive or even, reasonable design. If the resources the company has available are opted toward Graphics with very limited narrative resources being spent, or the animations, balance, or coding are left at "good enough" to get to the profit-makers in cosmetics? Viv's detailed breakdown captures not just corporate influence, but it's dictates on what is and isn't important. Phenomenal video mate. Welcome back and hope you're in good health.
Funnily enough with the mass marketing of skins that change the model it makes recolors rarer to see even though a lot of personality and even references can come from that. I remember playing a game forever ago (I don't remember what it was) and seeing this guy in this black recolor semi-frequantly and he became like a mini celebrity because everyone else either had the expensive skins or the default but by putting a small twist on a character he ironically stood out the most. I never pay for cosmetics in a game i feel like it's simply a waste (why would i spend 20$ on a model when i could spend 15$ on an indie game and have 5 times the fun) so i find myself often stuck with these recolors and some of them are lazy or unappealing but if someone puts effort into them they could easily outshine any other skin.
I can't believe you made a microtransaction hurting character design video without even mentioning how they destroyed widowmaker's silhouette with the new mythic. For the first time ever, when I saw the witch mythic, I had NO IDEA which character is dressed in it. In literally all other skins you can tell it's undeniably her. Another thing you forgot to mention is that collab skins are basically ads now and Blizzard will shoehorn whatever brand they can onto OW characters (like WTF was that zen warcraft skin), which are basically nothing but barbie dolls now, that lore is basically not being explored anymore.
18:03 yeah i know it's not your point, but i've always disliked the excessive trinkets the characters have. like roadhog's ow1 default skin has almost half a tire on his shoulder for no reason!
Micro transactions in live service games in general has been hurting the gaming community for a while now, with no new content being released for these games but only lazy recolors, and overpriced bundles being the only thing keeping the game going.
One thing i was notified of with the overwatch league skins that came out recently is that they changed Mei up a little so she can have a new skin archetype. A street artist doesn't seem like something she'd get but yet here we are. Though that came at the cost of making her legs ridiculously thick to compensate for her usually puffy pants. It's neither good or bad imo, but rather funny that they did this, especially with the implications now being she wears skin tight Arctic expedition gear.
Mei has never worn "thick" winter pants. Look at her OW1 default skin and tell me those are not leggings, which are actually good for the winter irl. Regarding the whole "leg skin" thing was done with the Honeydew skin way back in 2019.
This is the first video I’ve seen of yours and I don’t know how I missed such a high quality channel. Also of course Regan had something to do with this 😅
Not only all of this, but you wouldn’t see these characters dress up in the lore or anything. You’re gonna have a hard time convincing me that Roadhog would wear a swimsuit and a lifecircle thing for fun. But more importantly, why didn’t you swap your Primary and Secondary on Moira?
I would actually prefer that we don’t do that, since the last time a big Overwatch TH-camr reacted to my stuff they threw 5 midrolls on it and made far more money off my content than I did while being loud and wrong while insulting my intelligence, and I had to spend a month blocking people who decided the appropriate response to Seagull being on his bullshit was to call me slurs and tell me to kill myself.
I don’t play anymore. I really miss Overwatch 2018. That’s all. This is a great example of what started to exhaust my brain at first before I got too annoyed with hero changes
This is why it makes me sad that Venture gets SO much hate just because they’re not conventionally attractive as opposed to Juno for example. Which is why they don’t get that much love ☹️
With a topic like this, I'm reminded of Warner Bros and DC. DC does not have a lot of great films, but among their best are Batman. So when they don't make the money they want with anything that's not Batman. They just make Batman, almost always high quality and always makes its money.
I mostly hate how skins are made to visually appeal instead of staying true to the characters values. It doesnt feel like its a character anymore.
I don't mind when they do some more experimental ones, but it feels like those have become the default and staying connected to the character has become the anomaly.
With cat bundle coming out, Illari is probably the biggest offender. Her outfit is so bougie and humorous simultaneously, while she retains her sour melancholic expression which makes the whole thing fall apart. It's like she's forced to wear this, doesn't suit her at all.
@allencunningham9002 yeah I don't think anyone in the lore will be seeing Reaper as a Luchador-
I don't think skins were ever based on the character well, you got pharah with native skins, devil Mercy, goth zarya, since the launch of overwatch there have been a ton of unfitting skins
Fr, the game is starting to make skins that you just dont even recgonise the character anymore and I have had a few moments where I geuinely didnt know which hero it was for a moment
I think the most recent widowmaker mythic is a grim result of all of these elements. sex appeal/popularity over readability/function. i legit thought she was ashe when it first came out.
genuinely baffled by how many people couldn't immediately tell it was widow. because apparently i was the only one who could
This.. the hat is ashe's identity, widow's identity is the body suit and blue skin... why doesnt her mythic have blue skin :(
FOR REAL. It looked like an ashe mercy fusion more than it looked like widow, because of her bangs being styled like mercy's and because of the hat.
I know I was confused when I saw it first because I couldn’t tell who it was. Why make a character with unnatural skin that’s tied to her identity into something else, especially when witches in media also can have non-natural skin, like in Wizard of Oz.
i thought it was another Kiri skin. the new mythic oesn’t even look like Widow!
The lootbox system, for all its flaws, also got me to play new heroes. “Oh I just got a cool skin, I want to use it now”. That’s what got me playing a lot of the heroes I really enjoy! & then I wanted better skins for them, which made me pull more boxes
That's actually an interesting point that I don't think I've heard brought up before, but it makes sense - especially if you played a lot of Overwatch so you already had most of the base cosmetics, meaning that the first couple weeks after a new hero came out was usually exclusively getting their stuff out of lootboxes.
Every time I see arguments in favour of lootboxes I wonder if Overwatch's playerbase actually ever liked the game itself. It feels like people keep referring to how important the rewards were to their experience, as if fun itself isn't enough of an incentive to keep playing, or in this case, seek out variety.
I play a different hero every match just because I get bored otherwise, and I never cared for lootboxes because they gave me a bunch of undesirable crap and made me feel obligated to look through skins I got just because they're offering variety at the cost of mostly looking worse than the defaults.
@@Mezurashii5 prior to OW2, I liked the game for the lore and characters; I used to be so hyped for when a new hero or story element was teased.
Loot boxes were a nice bit of flavouring but never the main draw. It was always a bonus on top of the already addicting game overwatch was or a really cool event.
@@Mezurashii5 We liked getting stuff for playing the game. We don't like having to pay for stuff unless we grind for 2 seasons for a battlepass, 4 for a skin, or 12 for a bundle in the shop.
The gameplay of OW1 was better for solo-Qs, since you had more diverse comps (Thanks to a second tank), but also people could die fairly. Except for Pirate ships, I never felt like I couldn't stop a character even if I was solo, I just had to play much, MUCH smarter. Sure, you'd still get stomped every now and then, but I don't recall ever getting more than one game a month that felt actually unfair and unwinnable. And also, you had a better sense of community. You could give credits to people, you could LFG and find people, you could vote on scorecards AND endorse players, and you could CHAT and group up for a bit of time after POTG, without being booted out of the screen
You also see characters getting more skins based on how popular they are because it’s to make money. Monstrous characters in league get less skins and tend to be less popular. Like for year of the rat Twitch did not get a skin. For year of the ox Alistar didn’t get the prestige. For the porcelain skin line which is based off of the Chinese zodiac neither got a skin. It’s very frustrating seeing bias towards certain character types.
Vladamir was also redesigned to have a more conventionally attractive design and it didn’t feel like it fit his character at all
Also, thank you for discussing accessibility it means a lot.
I'm glad that the stuff about colourblindness has been received positively because it took me *ages* to find the LUTs and set them up and split the screens for that whole bit. Honestly it was meant to just be a bit of a passing comment in the video, but as I was working on it it's made me want to talk about it more. Seeing Overwatch with the various colourblind LUTs was really interesting, and also very revealing about how hard it is to see stuff that feels like it should stand out more obviously.
@@TheViverosyeah most large developers think of accessibility as an afterthought if they even consider it at all.
I have photosensitivity from chronic migraines and it’s much easier for devs to slap a photosensitivity warning than develop a photosensitivity mode which sucks. I’ve had games which HAVE had photosensitivity modes like Lost Arc which I’ve then been blindsided when certain boss fights have been really flashy and hurt like there was one where everything was black and white and it physically hurt.
Also legendary skins may have over the top effects and have far too much going on with skills as to look cooler and so people feel they get more bang for their buck and it comes at the expense at people who have photosensitivity and when it’s in games with team fights dear god is it bad when you see all that flashy crap at once
@@chattychatotchannel I used to love Urgot because of his old design. He was gross, bloated, disgusting thing. I hate how they changed his human part to be a buff guy instead so much
Ah yes, a video on skins, I wish I could understand but im a venture main
Don't worry, I'm sure the skin you finally get in 2027 will totally be worth the wait
It'll also be 20-30 dollars!
Really? I started playing recently again and never saw someone playing it. Except one time.
@@astupidomen1916 "that brother starvin"
We venture mains are more ghosts than people@@goodbro2046
A lot of the points you bring up in this video can be seen in action if you look at concept art for MOBA or hero shooter games. A great example is Sett from LoL. During his early concepting stages they had a ton of wild ideas for his design, including a Kaiju esque design, and an Asura's Wrath looking design with 4 arms. However, the final design we got was 'attractive buff man with animal ears' and even in that final design track they further simplified and prettified from the initial concept until you have the extremely design we have now.
This happens over and over and over in LoL. Even champions who are supposed to be monsters or ancient evils inevitably get pulled towards the infinite gravitational pull of 'generically attractive man/woman in regular clothes'.
Take Kaisa as another example she doesn’t at all look like she is affiliated with the void and has spent her life fighting for her life. Her concept art was way cooler but we got a toned down, boring version.
Also look at Aurora’s design in her introductory video compared to what we got. In the video she had an interesting silhouette fitting someone exploring the coldest parts of the Freljord with her huge puffy jacket but then we get another generic girl because I’d imagine it would be easier to make skins on that template
Even when it's not. Look at Smolder and how poorly people received his design forcing them to try altering it swiftly. It's obvious he was designed to be a marketable cat like creature first just like Yuumi and a actual character second. You can see that through his concept art. In current League design principles, we'd never get sometime so weird and off putting yet uniquely endearing like Kog'Maw.
How can one man ruin so many things. Ronald Reagen truly one of the worst.
I never thought an overwatch video about skins would fucking tie me back to ronald reagan of all people. Jesus christ lmao
RONALD RAEGAN? THE ACTOR?
@@RheaStorm He really is the modern root of all evil in this country, I swear.
It isn’t just the skins, the character designs for the female characters have become so samey-same. I legit thought that Juno was just a skin for Tracer, Kiriko, or Dva when i first saw the trailer. It feels like they’re only making cute/quirky east Asian (bait) young characters because, unfortunately that sells the most. Sojourn was the new poster girl for like… 2 minutes before Kiriko came out. The mythic skin for Widow, i thought the same thing. Looks nothing like widow. Did we really need a third Japanese character? Did we really need to design an alien from fucking outer space to look like a normal human girl?
This exactly. I love Echo's character design, I would have loved a non-human alien... Or just a new character that wasn't the most generic girl they could come up with.
@@sam-ky9sj truuue echo is gorgeous
Juno tho is human, she was born on Mars as apart of a space colony so she’s technically not an alien. (Unless I’m misunderstanding your comment.)
However, it would be funny if they had a STITCH- like hero.
Juno isn’t an alien, she is from a human colony that came from earth to live on mars. She isn’t a alien in that sense
@@sweethistortea My apologies I assumed she was from Mars. I still think that her design is just too similar to what we already have. Her face looks near identical to the other characters we already have. Wish they’d spice things up a bit more
25:53 i appreciate you showing that the value of capitalism are antithetical to art by literally making a semi joke of how capitalism has literally influenced your art
Honestly I wish I could say that the videos are so long for capitalism reasons, the real reason is just that I'm truly allergic to shutting the fuck up lmao
@TheViveros that's honestly so real, I love a baddie that refuses to stfu./hj
but without capitalism i won't be able to spend $50 on digital products! 🤧🤧
Yeah, a lot of the OW2 skins are not only hideous, but also ruin the chsracter silhouettes. Earlier I died to a hanzo because I couldnt even tell he was facing me lmao
skill issue?
@@hugo-zi6gm Scatter arrow
I hate the Galactic Emperor skin on Sigma because it ruins his triangular shape and there are a lot more skins like that on other characters (please give Widowmaker some clothes, it's just sad at this point)
20:46 BRO, a tiger-themed skin for Zarya would have gone hard. I know you were being rhetorical, but damn we are missing out on innovative designs D;
@@sagittariusrat4959 I legit paused the video and said the exact same thing, a Siberian tiger Zarya??? like plEASE!?
Classism and Favouritism strike the anvil that forges an endless printing of skins for heroes who won popularity contests arguably upon conception, based on how much they adhered to conventional attractiveness/appeal. And then, that concept ends up not even mattering in the end anywhere near as much as what cosplays and costumes they can be shoved into; being eradicated in both identity and personality, all in favour of only being interested in their shape, which is yet another piece of their character made by the devs, too. It's all just an endless loop.
Anyways, excited for the December poll. Eager to see how the new format works out :)
12:40 in dead by daylight theres a character whos the opposite; the spirit. Every single outfit adds more clothing to her (or is equal to) than the default.
@@alexadams4017 I don't wana see spirit naked
I wana see the trapper shirtless tho
i mean yea but that’s because her default is just bandages lol
@@Bionicbutter43she has a whole swimsuit skin with see through coat lol
She? @@maxrosefoxanime7225
@@Bionicbutter43 never have I related to a comment more
Just a correction- Australia in more recent years is starting to celebrate Halloween but more so in the way that businesses are selling Halloween things. Some neighbourhoods have trick or treaters and events as well as parties but it is not nearly a big of a thing as North America.
As an Aussie I second this!
I've heard it's become more of a thing in recent years, but when Junkenstein's Revenge started in 2016 it very much so wasn't. I was living in Queensland at the time and both Halloween and Thanksgiving were holidays I really missed while I was there.
when I was growing up, we would celebrate Halloween in Victoria. but is nothing like balls to the walls that it is in the US
Also, as a woman, sexualizing characters turns me off them. I like kiriko, but I main ana because she's more relatable to me. I like mai because I'm a little chubby and constantly anxious, and I relate to her. I'm also attracted to men so I don't thirst after the female character, and I think women tend to have a wider verity of body types they like I think Lucio is attractive and I think soilder 76 is attractive and rine is attractive but traditionally attractive men like genji and life weever are meh
even as a bi woman it rubs me the wrong way a lot how female characters in games are unnecessarily sexualized SO much. knowing the target audience for those skins and who makes them just makes me feel… gross(?) and objectified considering the big picture of why that content is being created so often. kiri is very childish so seeing her in sexualizing context just feels icky, and i know for a fact it’s gonna happen w juno and she acts totally like a child. i think both of them are adorable not sexy!! and the coomers are gonna argue that “she’s technically 19” (i think) forgetting how they HAD to make dva above 18 bc ppl wouldn’t stop making porn of her despite her canonically being a minor. teen is the most commonly searched porn category and it SHOWS
Sexualization is fine. But that shouldn't be the only focus and for only specific characters.
Its a bit of a nuanced thing because some women do like playing as atractive female characters or even as sexualized ones. It is after all entertainment and escapism.
@@dan_da5213 Somewhat. If there's gonna be sexualization, there needs to be a baseline. Equal rights, equal fights for attention from all audiences.
Currently, most of the sexualization and fanservice in media is for cishet men. Young women (or girls, in many disturbing cases) are sexualized to profit off that audience. And you could say "well lesbians could also like those characters", and yeah. Some might. But in the experiences I've heard through queer spaces from queer women with varying backgrounds, most agree that the characters sexualized do not appeal to them much. And as someone who's into men, most male sexualization in media does not appeal to me.
*The issue stems from heteronormativity and many types of discrimination* (mostly based on gender, race, and sexuality).
You can sell to the majority audience and make the most profit, which is often cishet men (esp in games like Overwatch, LoL, Valorant, and R6S).
So, what would that formula be?
1. Cool men doing cool things.
2. Hot women doing hot things.
3. Avoiding overlap/swapping of the roles. Hot women can't do too many cool things, and cool men can't do too many hot things.
4. A steep difference in the ratio of character depth when it comes to cool men and hot women. Because male players need to feel like they can relate to a cool man, and there would be no point in catering to a female audience if the piece of media was made by men, for men.
This effect is also known as "The Male Gaze", which is when a piece of media is created to cater towards its male creators/viewers, often without regard or concern for other demographics.
As established, this is detrimental to women and queer people, especially young women and teenage girls.
(This next part I'd like to preface, I am American. Racially White and ethnically Hispanic. I don't speak on behalf of the experienced discrimination of Black people, Asian people, other Hispanic people, etc., as I have not experienced discrimination based on my race. The experiences of a non-immigrant mixed-Hispanic person like myself are vastly different to immigrant Hispanic people, let alone other races.)
There's also an argument to be made for racial biases, as laws and lasting prejudices (especially in the early 1900's) hurt Black, Asian, and Hispanic communities by leaving them out of the mainstream and therefor making them minorities in media. It's considered 'woke' for shows to add honest and accurate representation of different cultures, which sways the audience's perspective of such characters, as well as lessens their existence all together. As mentioned in the video, this results in fan-company-service biases. Diverse characters get significantly varied attention, with the fetishized caricatures of sexy Asians/Latinas being just as bad as the hatred and neglect often faced by Blacks/Latinos. They don't appeal to the heteronormative male gaze, or appeal in an actively harmful way (not just to their gender, but to race). And there are so many intricacies here, like the divide in popularity between light-skinned Black characters vs dark-skinned Black characters (which is glaringly obvious, even in media curated for African audiences like The Proud Family). You've also got the lack of SEA representation, as well as the generalization of Asia as an entire continent. Indians are Asians, but The Male Gaze refuses to perceive them as such. Instead, it opts to only accept Japanese, Chinese, and Korean characters, and those often lack distinction and proper representation. This can lead to characters speaking multiple North Eastern Asian languages interchangeably (ex. a Japanese character speaking Korean for no established reason) (this happened more in the past, and has recently seen a decline in such misleading representation between China, Japan, and Korea). Not to mention Vietnamese, Eastern Russian, Philippino, and a plethora of other Asian ethnicities being completely misrepresented, neglected, or forgotten because The Male Gaze didn't bother. To a lesser extent, Oceanic and European countries receive the same treatment. And I didn't even fully touch on Africa as a whole. If I did, I'd exceed the character limit.
*So, how what does this mean for sexualization* (and general fan service)?
It needs to be tasteful and authentic before it can be hot. At the very least, ask in spaces for the specific culture what you need to know before creating a character of a different race than your own. In other words, educate yourself on the experiences of others who share the same culture as your character and apply them where they fit. And honestly, this extends further than race, especially for trans characters (and as a nonbinary person, nonbinary characters are often easily readable as "A cis person wrote me without researching. I'm androgynous and somewhat feminine, always. Only they/them. Also I'm not human. Also I'm not relevant to the plot, and might get ret-conned for backlash/lack of popularity). THEN YOU CAN MAKE THEM SEXY.
This has been my rant, goodbye.
^ HOLY yappacinno, get a load of this -dude guy fella- person.
"They don't allow you to pay $20 for the legendary school uniform..." the way things are going in the US, it's a matter of time
Well, when my brother had to get a school uniform 10 years ago, he had to pay more than that for the normal uniform.
Hello, long time viewer, first time commenter. The following is a bit of rant, but something that's been on my mind for a while. You've been warned lol
I remember when it first came out, Bounty Hunter Baptiste was one of the skins I wanted the most. I always loved the idea of the "anonymous masked mysterious mercenary" archetype, a la Boba Fett, and I just thought it looked cool. This was already well after I swore off spending money on OW2, so I never bought it, but would've liked it. But it recently came back as a reward for the most recent "anniversary" event, if you can call it that, and I was finally able to get it.
I still think the skin looks cool, and the gun design is really nice, but the thing is, I got sick of the skin so quickly. You know why? Because of the voice lines. If I had to hear about how "Dorioux will have his head if he doesn't bring him a big catch soon" or how it's a "good thing he doesn't have to count his bullets" this time in a game with no ammo management, I was going to lose it. Who is Dorioux? No one knows. Blizzard doesn't even know. You search it up, and you'll find three forum threads at most even mentioning the name. It was then it fully kicked in why OW2 is so disappointing. All these characters, who were supposed to be real characters, have been reduced to mere action figures. It's why I can't bring myself to care about any of the new heroes released after Sojourn, because they stopped being real characters, instead becoming another vessel to fulfill some archetype the game is lacking. It's why I groaned when the "Phreaks" or whatever was teased, because all they're going to be when released is yet another archetype from yet another faction that will not have any clear relevance on the story or universe of Overwatch.
I know you previously mentioned how using the characters themselves as a means of storytelling isn't necessarily a bad thing, as you can tell interesting stories in contexts that wouldn't narratively be possible, but as the new characters become hollower and more basic aside from their surface level traits, and the already established cast becoming shells of their past selves, even that won't be lasting very long.
It's why I feel the need to address the elephant in the room: **skins are boring.** The reason that it's always such a hot topic in the OW community is because... it's all we have to look forward to now. There's no story, PvE, or long term progression coming. The skins *are* the end goal now. A pretty thing to look at, chew up, and spit out, just in time for the next one to come along. It's why I don't see OW2 lasting too long, because eventually, more people will realize this, and will get bored. People will get tired of dressing up and showing off their Barbie dolls in a game that's not substantially progressing in anyway.
For all my main heroes, I've unequipped my skins, opting to use either the OW1/OW2 skins for them. The reason I still play Overwatch is the same reason I've played religiously for years now, even during the 2020 content drought: it's because the game is fun. To this day, I get excited to try out new comps, new strategies, experiment, get away with plays I have no business getting away. And also because to me, it's a form of roleplay. The idea of being Baptiste, running from my past, but still trying to change for a better. Trying to stop an EMP from wiping out an entire omnic population while also trying to save as many of my teammates as possible. Blizzard has stopped pretending that they have a story to give us, so now I'm just trying to make my own, because deep down, I still love the game and the world of Overwatch.
I've stopped trying to show off, or be an elitist in a game that's losing as many players as it's gaining. I play the game because it's fun, and at the end of the day, that's what a game should be.
I think you're underestimating how f2p games work here.
I totally get where you're coming from, but people are actually VERY easy to fool especially when people either lack or ignore information.
There's a good portion of people who exclusively play OW2 because their friends play it. There's also a good chunk who play it specifically because they played OW1 and are stuck in the ecosystem for various reasons.
En ef tees were a through and through grift, but the grift fad still lasted a year or so
Like with your skin example, there a lot of people who take the "it's not a problem unless it effects me directly" approach.
The negatives of that get out of hand REALLY fast. And that's a systemic "the way people are currently educated is fundamentally flawed and will lead to the collapse of multiple nations" level issue.
This exploitable loophole won't be fixed for literally hundreds of years
usually i don't leave comments but i had to. your comment has actually made me emotional.
it's why i played and loved OW1. i loved its characters, i loved the story, i loved looking foward to seeing more characters that add to the lore being released. i loved playing as dva, a stubborn and popular meka professional. i loved playing as mei, an anxious meteorologist that always tries her best. i loved playing as symmetra, a perfectionist in what she does, always striving to be better.
but gradually, those characters just... disipated. i dont really care about the new characters anymore. i do love venture, because i CAN tell they were made with love and passion, but not even blizzard cares about them, which says a lot.
i don't like it when a character loses its character. it is not a character anymore, its just some empty vessel for blizzard to dump their skins on, to look pretty, and, most importantly, to be bought, because blizzard desperately want money.
i know few people will relate to this. i dont think most of the people who play OW do it for this. they either will care about skins, or being the best in comp. but i dont. i loved this game and its characters, now its just a shell of what it used to be.
@@michiic0la I feel this 100%. A couple of my friends got into the game with me during OW2, and for the longest time, they thought I was joking when I said the story and the narrative were my favorite part of the game. They didn't even realize there was supposed to be one. They never experienced the hype or excitement of the Archives events, at seeing more of the story unravel, or the hype of the community anxiously waiting for the story to continue. It's a very sad realization, but Blizzard no longer wants the people who want more out of Overwatch, they only want the people who accept it as it is now.
@@starman4572You have a great way with words, person on the web!
May your wisdom spread to the rest of the OW community so, at the very least, it can be less toxic.
@@starman4572 Let me start by saying that I only played Overwatch 1 at the house of an acquaintance of mine because I couldn't afford an online subscription but I always kept informed about the "story", in my opinion the problem is that the narrative of Overwatch has always been fluctuating because it was already subject to changes or retcons before or with less detailed sides, I simply believe it had a good foundation but it wasn't built properly over time satisfying the power fantasy that every hero represents.
Maybe it would benefit them to release more stories, comics, animated shorts (not necessarily always cinematic) and finally a blessed animated series like Riot does with LoL (even though they also seem to be reducing some of these aspects), but I imagine that the choice will always be up to Microsoft, however, certainly has no shortage of funds.
(I apologize if I repeated the message but this is how I feel about it)
never did i ever think fuzion frenzy would EVER get mentioned in a video like this LMAO, literally my childhood
There’s actually a whole Fuzion Frenzy video on the channel! It was from back in May, I made the whole thing on stream lol
Hot take, the OW2 resigns were mostly downgrades. Yes it made sense in the story, as they were regrouping as a team. But look at OW1 Tracer and Mei. Thier clothes fit thier OWN design and lore more. But the OW2 makes it all collectivized... not nice
True
That is NOT a hot take, there are much more banger skins in ow1 than 2
For me some redesigns are not bad (for example I prefer the Symmetra one), while for others I preferred the previous ones (like Sigma), so i think it's different point of views.
it's the gacha iffication of character design. Looks pretty and over the top detailed but once you start looking into the details of that design a lot of things are just there for the sake of being there and looking pretty and not benefitting the character or saying a lot abt them. This can also vary to slight overdetailing to completely unecessary features like the expose shoulder detached sleeves games like hsr like to do. as someone who is studying character design I'm always a bit saddened because it doesn'T feel like skins or modern charaxters are actually that impactful towards me.
Maybe I'm naive, but couldn't this also apply to many of the original Fortnite skins (and other games with various cosmetics)?
Certainly many are beautiful to look at, but if in the end there will always be favorites and you don't focus much on them, preferring to play, why continue to buy them?
19:56 Sojourn has gotten jack apart from the 1 league skin and this current bp skin actually being nice, but ana absolutely gets a fuck ton of skins. Not countering your argument either because according to their own data ana is the most played hero in the whole game,
she has gotten at least 3 different battlepass skins, the one power ranger skin, a mythic skin and weapon. They def give her more love than the others who live in the kiriko mercy shadow
@@deadhelix Remember when Sojourn was the new poster girl for the game for like… 2 seconds before Kiriko came out? And I literally thought Juno was just a skin for tracer, kiriko, or dva. They’ve lowkey given up on making diverse female characters.
@@cocob0l0Junker Queen was the last not copy-paste Mercy style hero. Literally no interesting and umique female hero since OW2 launched
@@cocob0l0 For me, with Illari they tried to diversify a little, then they returned to the formula of beauty that sells.
@@kixmix2450 IMHO with Illari they at least tried and succeeded, but it didn't last long and we went back to more conventional aspects.
This video has become a lot more relevant after Hazard’s release.
Honestly it makes too much sense
Why what's wrong with hazard
@NightfallControl his design is not the best, but I'm glad it's not another one skinny white/asian female
@@deadpaul6587 I can't see him being a part of the universe at all. He looks like a valorant/apex character
@@NightfallControl Hazard is visually like a fusion of Sigma and 76 to me.
I think it’s also worth noting how visibly disabled characters in games are often depicted as villains.
You almost never see characters with visible differences and even rarer are prominent facial differences. When they appear they are villains with their differences showing that they are evil or a sign of their corruption like good old fashion physiognomy
When disabilities appear they are more innocuous disabilities like blindness or characters which have high-tech prosthetics as to not make non-disabled people uncomfortable. Representation of disabled people is reliant on how much non-disabled people tolerate how existence, and it’s very little.
So this is comment is going to cover a topic that is risqué, but is purely from an artistic and marketing standpoint. Though if this needs to be deleted I completely understand.
So a content creator by the name of T B Skyen made a point regarding Overwatch’s approach to sexuality in skins and I think it really pertains to this.
The development team really only ever go for the safest route when it comes to exploring those topics. They’re rarely if ever mentioned in the story/dialogue and the skin designs only really show what you would see at a beach. Now at first that seems obvious as Overwatch is meant to played by a variety of ages and is not about that type of material.
But as Skyen pointed out, it kinda of is? At least a little bit. Because as he recalls, there was a tweet the official Overwatch account made regarding a kiriko skin that had bare feet. The tweet read something along the lines of “This skin’s got GRIPPERS” with images focusing on her feet. This seemed to be with the intention of enticing the crowd who are into that. Issue being that the skin simply was not designed in a way that actually attempted to appeal to that. It just looks like she happens to be barefoot.
Now my personal opinion is this was the marketing team making a lame attempt at relating to the audience completely independent of the art team. However, it does highlight that in the profit driven, mass appeal strategy they go for in skin design, that type of risqué aesthetics will never even be attempted to be explored, even if not used in an explicit way. But on the hand, they also seem to want to have their cake and eat it too by pushing it where it isn’t.
That disconnect if very interesting to me is all. And I hope I explained my points well enough to get across what I’m trying to say.
First of all, love TB Skyen, his analysis of skins in League in particular has actually been really helpful for developing more of a critical eye for this sort of thing.
And I think your point is very relevant. I actually talked about something similar in an old video from last year - Barbie Girl, R34 Overwatch, and How Corporations Lose Control of Their Characters - talking about how Blizzard is in an awkward situation when it comes to how their characters are perceived similar to the awkward situation Mattel found themselves in with Barbie Girl. It really wasn't the brand that the company intended to foster, but it was one that outside forces (Aqua in Barbie's case and NSFW artists in Blizzard's case) created for them, and now it's on them to work around that. Mattel spent a lot of years outright hating Barbie Girl, then slowly worked it into their ads, before finally putting the remix in the Barbie Movie. I think Blizzard is just entering the transition from "We can't stop you but we absolutely will not encourage you" from "Ok so *maybe* we can dip our toes into this (pun intended) since it's clearly what the people want and it's pretty harmless" and that's why stuff like the weird grippers tweet happens. I would imagine we're probably going to see a bunch of similar stuff over the next year or two, especially now that they've basically given up on having any sort of story or anything.
Something else I talked about in that video that I wish would get talked about more is that I find it very silly how touchy people get over the idea of sexuality or sex appeal when we're talking about actual murderers. Like Widowmaker canonically has at *least* a high double-digit kill streak, probably into the triple-digit range, but if she rocks up in a bikini and a giant sniper rifle there are people who're pulling the "But won't somebody think of the children!?" act over the bikini and not the fact that the weapon she uses for international terrorism and assassinations is being redesigned to look like a beach accessory lmao
@@TheViveros Yee he’s great. He gave me a deeper appreciation for the techniques and styles of animation. In fact, that point I paraphrased came from his reaction to a helluva boss episode.
And I did in fact watch that video, and now I am actually realizing that yeah, that tweet is the logical result of the loosening mindset (logical in the way it tracks. It was still super dumb). But they’re also at a point rn where I still don’t think they get it. Like Skyen pointed out, they don’t really understand the appeal of it, so they just go to “WOAH LOOK FEET! LOOK GRIPPERS!” from just the presence of feet. It’s very “how do you do fellow kids?”
And I fully agree with your violence Vs sexuality point. It is a little off topic but still relevant I think. Something similar has happened with Helluva boss and Hazbin Hotel. There is a character in Hazbin, Valentino, who is an abusive pimp who does engage in SA. People then took issue with the fact that they made merch of the character, which items with him included him in skimpy clothes. Love or hate the shows, I think this is a silly criticism. Especially since other characters from them with similar merch include a team of assassins, one of which killed a child in the non canon pilot and another who killed a child in canon. And that’s not even to mention the copious amount of merch, sexual or not, of other morally objectionable characters like slasher villains or known child killer and g*nocider Darth Vader. I get people being uncomfortable with it for sure, if they don’t like that merch that is completely fine. It just is a very interesting line that gets drawn when people talk about from a morals perspective .
Sorry for the rant, all of this is to say I agree with your last point lol
that tweet drove away as much people as it brought in ngl
I think about the paying for sexy characters thing a lot. I started thinking about it after playing Azur Lane, when I realized that I couldn't think of games in genres I really liked with characters that appealed to me sexually that are not sold as part of microtransactions or lootboxes. The stigma around sexy character designs has seemed weirder and weirder to me as I've gotten older, and mild annoyance at it has lead to me spending 4 years learning Blender and programming, so I can make my own FPS with character designs and mechanics that appeal to me. It's been an interesting experience so far, especially trying to figure out how to balance being sexy and practical, and trying to make the game not sexist.
If you think about it you can sell your barbies or give them away... You can't with microtransactions so its all the cons without the pros
24:12 Finally somebody GETS Lifeweaver.
Your break down of all the details that affect character design is just so elaborate and well written. I hope you continue these amazing videos and thank you for this one! ♡
Wasn't expected to be flashed with Sett... Back to gooning for me.
Excuse me 😭
11:28 it doesn’t help they stopped releasing base legendaries and epics, so they’re forcing u to pay money to get this unconscious satisfaction. I feel silly when thinking about it, but I heavily gravitate towards characters I’ve customized. They just feel more mine.
I've wondered if the lack of Venture's skin could have been calculated since Blizzard has now developed a hunger for one, where they could have been 'lost' within the cast from the live-service churn otherwise. Since there will sadly always be a portion of people who will dislike them, Blizzard now has a group who adores them as happens with every character, but more importantly, many others who are actively thinking about their next skin.
The fourth section of this video is another reason i think venture and bap specifically dont get skins,they all have to find a way to incorporate ventures big ahh coat or baps boots,even meis recent skin to find the owcs prize pool has to have kinda awkward looking bulky shoes to fit in with her default silhouette
Personally I think the best kind of cosmetics are the ones that work with the base silhouette of a character, and translate certain aspects of their outfit into different things that still maintain that silhouette.
Like in identity v, a hunter whose whole deal is being a freshwater naiad, she has a really unique fishtail braid in her base design that the game always keeps for her high tiers to keep her recognizable to herself, but manages to change up the details to still make it fancier/higher quality.
@@jensenpeacock8395 Identity V mention!!
Ok we NEED catgirl Zarya.
My favorite social commentary channel returns
9:11 it always comes back to regan LMFAO
eugh such a high quality video. so thankful my fyp recommended ur channel
my takeaway from this is that late stage capitalism sucks and makes everything devoid of fun and soul
Don't spoil the ending, I need the adsense from all those midrolls to survive under late-stage capitalism
@@TheViveros LMAO i commented this before i even finished the video 😭❤
I would say it's both the provider and the consumer's fault.. like if people didn't buy these overpriced skins in droves they wouldn't make it in the first place
it's even crazier when you think about people willingly spending money on something that doesnt exist technically
So , I was an intern last summer on Ow2 as a concept artist. Who was actually working within these exact parameters. I want to mention, that marketing doesn't play as much of a part as you'd think. Nowadays, we as artists on the team had a lot of liberty over what we wanted to create. I believe there is a culture shift within the roster, with there being a lot of Chinese skins due to there being a flux of Chinese concept artists, therefor making it culturally impactful and easy for them to connect with, regardless if the players were able to or not. The use of survey skins is helpful, but its far from what could be for the playerbase, considering they are who put money into Blizzard's pockets to begin with. There needed to be more diversity for all characters, whether it be by theme, or culture. Asian characters having as much as they do whilst the rest of the roster gets neglected just never sat right to me. I also want to mention that there a slight double standard as well with naming conventions. There was a slight problem with the project I was working on for the name not being able to be recognizable to the player due to the language used, yet Mercy has a bunch of asian skins I cant even being to decipher due to them being a Chinese skin made for a European character. There are some smaller inconsistencies like that, that made making skins for heroes difficult.
Anyways this was more on marketing, you have some of it right and some of it not so much with the lack of understanding on liberty. I wish there were more constraints that we as players could put on the artists so that it was more of an even playing field. If you're making damn near 6 figures to do art, especially for a game that's made for players, you'd better be dedicating half of that salary to the people who put the coins in your pockets instead of making easily-marketable sexy skins for every conventionally attractive lightskinned characters.
Anyways that's my rant and critique. I never talk about this since its never the time nor the place but I figured it was relevant here since i had experience with this first hand. And there WERE issues I noticed. Hope this was helpful, and thanks for the content Viveros!
If I may kindly ask and you obviously want to answer, how was the work experience at Blizzard?
I’m not a kpop fan, but I bought the Le Seraffim pack because I really liked the designs and it just looked like something the characters would actually wear.
I got the notif for this video right before I had to go to work. I was so excited to clock off just so I could watch this!!!
So while in the context of Overwatch, yes you are totally correct. Hell, for 98% of the shooter market you're correct. But since I've recently moved on from Overwatch to The Finals, my view on microtransactions has shifted ENTIERLY. Before that game, I'd have argued that it would be impossible to design an "ethically monetized" system or one where the cosmetics don't fall into the "paid to strip" pitfall you mentioned.
But gyatt damn The Finals... it just continues to blow my mind 2 seasons later. It plays a lot like overwatch in such as it shares a bunch of similar abilities, but instead of pre packaged hero kits, you buy those abilities like items for your loadout via currency only earned thru playing the game. So right off the bat, no matter what you make you end up seeing yourself in your charecter way more than you do in overwatch. As for cosmetics, there are pre-made "outfits" or bundles but you can break those down an mix and match. Not something entirely new to the genre, but where this game differs is a few crazy aspects becoming more an more rare.
1. Battle pass+ includes enough currency to buy the next two passes.
2. Because of the game's settings (combatants in a VR game) ANYTHING goes. and has resulted in some of the most insane designs I've seen. For instance, the latest flamethrower skin literally is a glass bottle with a FRICKIN SUN inside it.
3. Another really cool skin bundle was a set of 3 weapons that are made of cooled lava but as you fire the weapon, it heats up an becomes more like piping hot lava. In other games, a single gun skin like that or a mythic weapon in Overwatch would cost like $70. These were $20 for the entire set of 3.
4. The community submits designs an the devs listen and make them. I've even gotten two designs ideas make it into the store.
Anyways, I love your videos and this one's topic in particular hit close cause I felt the same way about games an their design until falling into this damn game that changed the way I view everything an I think you would love looking into it as well even if it's just to use it as a contrast to Overwatch an what works what doesn't. Plus, they even manage to do the OW's push mode better than OW. :p
I appreciate the kind words! Unfortunately, The Finals’ commitment to and aggressive defence of using generative AI to replace paid human voice actors is something that burned that game for me. It’s a shame because the gameplay looks pretty decent, and especially so because it sounds like they do have some creative ability when it comes to skins. However, even on that front, their embrace of gen AI as a cost-cutting measure makes me a bit concerned that they’re using it for more than just the voices.
I’m not trying to say anything negative about anyone who plays it or anything and I hope it doesn’t come across like getting on a soapbox, it’s just that personally that stuff really left a bad taste in my mouth and turned me off of it. If that policy of theirs ever changes, though, it’d definitely be one I’d like to try.
Oh, I also forgot to mention. There is also no described "gender" option either. In fact, lookin at the various face options, aside from two, they are so nebulous it's immpossible to tell M/F an it's only from customizing an combining all the options to make your charecter does any real sense of him/her/they/it (yes it, one of the choices is a crash test dummy or gundam)
start to form. Kinda neat
@@TheViveros That's actually been some false/misrepresented info that's been spread around. While they use AI voices for two charecters, it's 1 an asethetics choice because those charecters ARE AI and 2, they paid real human voice actors who agreed mutally on a fair price for their work to be the samples an they even get residuals for their work.
That’s not what they said, though. Googling it pulls up this quote from their audio designers on a podcast where they say that it’s AI by default with only a couple exceptions for things it can’t do *yet* - which to me implies that they’ll use it for that too once the tech can handle it: "We use AI with a few exceptions," Andreas said. "So all the contestant voices, like the barks, and both our commentators are AI text-to-speech. For things we call vocalisations, like player breathing, vaulting, jumping, that's something we use us in the studio to record, just grunting. We can't really get the AI to perform those kind of tasks yet."
What’s more, when pushed, the studio reiterated their stance: "We saw the discussion happening, and one of the reasons we discussed it from the onset [on the developer podcast] was because we have been super transparent about the use of AI-based TTS (text-to-speech) in the game," he says. "One thing that we want to make really clear in terms of how we use those tools in The Finals is that we use a combination of recorded voice actors and AI-based TTS that is based on contracted voice actors, we don't generate voice and video from thin air."
The fact that they’re contracted VAs doesn’t change that it’s done to avoid paying them to keep coming in and recording new lines. It’s a cost-cutting measure that undermines VAs both in terms of being paid for doing the voice work and also in allowing them to get more experience, and it further normalizes using AI in this field when I really don’t think we should be normalizing it at all. Games were able to make robotic, artificial sounding characters without generative AI before, and there’s nothing stopping them from doing it here.
And again, it’s no shade to people who do enjoy it, and I’d be happy to see them publicly change their stance and commit to not using AI - like I said, it seems fun, it’s just that this was something that personally rubbed me the wrong way.
Huuuh. Why would different bit and pieces you can mix Mach fix that issue? Paladins only progression monetization is the 20 dollar pack that give you every character and talents for free. Wich isn't that hard to farm. Takes lik a year and a half for every character including the one you don't care for.
And skins are 7 doloars.
With 4 dollars battle pass with 2 skins and 2 recolor. Plenty of free premium currency for people who play the game.
And they instead when from even mixing skin head. To only mixing skins and weapons. To improve character design for skins.
Like you comment is so long I feel like I lost your point as some point.
(BTW paladins skins arnt just costumes. They are entirely different character. With different vfx, sfx, voices packs, and a few added animations, effects, a sometime music that play and vary with abilities.
Like. One big boy character skins is a tied and muzeled demoness as the chest, with magical pieces of armor flying as the arms. Like. It's really creative.
Honestly you say 95% of games are horrible. But it's more like 70%. Look at a game like deep rock galactic. Ow monetisations is stupid except the pass.
Interesting point about lootboxes needing tiers of desirability, and accidentally appealing to niches. Never thought about that.
However, the biggest issue with MTX and character design for me has always been the very existence of skins and perpetually adding them.
As you buy new clothes for your Barbie, you take away the parts of her appearance she can be recognized by. Modern games often have amazing, well thought out character designs that get completely demolished with skins that change nearly everything about them within a year of the character's release. You used to be able to recognize Ashe by the brim of her hat, but now half the cast has witch outfits that might give them a partially similar outline. Colours as a tool for making characters easily distinguishable have also died a long time ago, because switching up the colour scheme is piss easy.
Having skins constantly added to a game also ruins its visual cohesion. Overwatch, if you ignore all the cosmetics, has a very strong art direction. If you put the entire cast next to each other and then add a character from Palandins or Marvel Rivals in there, they will clearly not fit in at all. If you make Mercy a witch, Symmetra a goddess, Junkrat a beach goer, Torbjorn a pirate and Brigitte a medieval knight, suddenly no two designs work together.
It is possible for games to create skins that stay within a single visual language, but almost no company has committed to that so far. One reason is that it's difficult to constantly work within those limitations, but another is that tacky garbage sells - not just because people have no taste, but also because standing out, even to the point of not fitting in with the art direction of the rest of the game, creates value for players.
It's also not just visual, but also thematic. Characters get put into outfits that completely do not fit them like half the time when the skins are paid. Hell, OW even has skins where the characters are of completely different age, which is peak nonsense.
And lastly, selling skins creates an expectation that the characters you bought those skins for will remain in the game, and their designs will stay largely unchanged. This makes it near impossible for devs to delete a hero with terrible mechanics, or make necessary adjustments to a visual design of a character. Imagine Widowmaker ended up looking too similar to another hero and they came up with the idea of making her a spider centaur. Do you think they'd actually go with that idea considering they'd have to completely rework like 30+ skins? Hell no.
Idk if they made catgirl rein it would probably be the most bought skin in history
you kinda talked about it in part 3 but notice how once they added weapon skins mythic widow didnt have any changes in her weapon
Really cool essay, i really resonate with this type of opinions really, im a student of character design, and this is something i allways talk about with my friends, but is a little hard to put in words for me, so this is a godsend! the Barbie analogy is just a chef´s kiss! ill be watching more of your videos now, thanks for the hard work
I'm so happy that you're back posting :3 hope you recover well from surgery!
Welcome back ❤
TF2's mercenaries are the closest "video game barbie" has been realised, you can mix and match thousands of cosmetics with an ever expanding pool thats been fed for more than a decade.
It works because the characters are already caricatures, they're very shamelessly character stereotypes, which means that players can mould those bases more to their personal liking. And if you know what you're doing, you can get a set of 3 cosmetics you think fit nicely for each merc for less than a buck.
It's by far not a perfect system, but at least it gives you choice, a low bar of entry and much more customisability.
Instead of just plucking a name from a hat with all the hot white women having 10x the notes with their name on it than others, and then selling a decent skin at the price of a king's ransom.
to be honest the frontline firebug has more effort and love than the recent my hero academia collab skins
yea even more than the Juno uravity (first legendary skin to be a collab one)
Ohhhh so this is why Symm hasnt gotten any new skins in OW2 since like season 2, they literally peaked with the default lmao.
I will not stand for this art deco erasure
She got art deco and the witch from this season might be one of her best
The Naomi Smalls clip absolutely sent me.
XDF's Style/Series Analysis series really highlights the issue that default skins are intentionally made less well designed to sell a premium version of the character's design that should be default. His Concord video highlights this best imo; A lot of the Concord characters actually have GOOD DESIGNS... Locked behind premium skins. The ugly messes we got were given to us by microtransactions.
My first video of yours but this was so well done ❤ will definitely be back for more of these types of discussions
Wake up everyone, new Vivdeo!!!!
I am feeling ungodly levels of hype for the V3 video. No pressure but it will make my month.
It’s already at 15k words and I think I’m *maybe* halfway done, it might take a month for people to watch it at this rate lmao
25:53 Nooo, and deprive us of the sassy wink and a nod every time over the reveal of the obvious, inevitable conclusion?
Funny that, this was partly something that I touched on in a research question during one of my university courses!
Mine though was more focused on the social context of online gaming and how it creates the ability for new forms of monetization through the creation of "social classes" of spending, manufacturing connections between luxury, experience, skill and cosmetics which prey on the desire of players to portray themselves as fantasies of who they wish to be, as well as how the very inherent disconnect of play from real world consequences by virtue of something being a game obscures the injection of such systems into them and lulls players into a false sense of security and passivity when it comes to accepting that.
so basically, make more skin revealing skins for male characters
In league, there is a champion named "Kayn" who has the ability to pick between 2 forms as the game goes on: a shadow assassin form or a evil red monster "darkin" form. Aesthetically he is emo teenage dream oc "half demon half human one red eye one normal eye" dude which would sell skins like hotcakes but because he has two forms he has to alternate between every game, he gets fewer than usual skins for how conventionally attractive he is. I don't like how league monetizes so many things and how skins for hot girls always come every year meanwhile most unconventional (monster or monster adjacent) characters never get talked about but I do commend them for making a cool gameplay design at the cost of him never getting skins because it's essentially designing 3 new skins every time they want him to have another costume.
Great video Viveros! You put into words what I've always felt about the free to play monetization and how it changes character design!
Wow...seeing Mercy have more oriental skins than the actual asian characters make me kind of bummed out...
Because they're not only just selling the skin but they're selling the fetishization of that culture.
I hope Blizzard execs and the team behind skin design kind of wake up and start balancing it out, but that may never be because companies will always choose money.
There’s also a lot of emphasis placed on characters that are played more often; sometimes you even see Blizzard buff characters with new mythic skins so people are incentivized to play them more.
Man the microtransactions are the truly enemy of gamers.
Hope your surgery went well!! Amazing vid!
why do you think Lux and Miss Fortune in League have the most skins out of all other champions?
i never clocked all these drag race/dragula references before and i’m so obsessed omg
conventional attractiveness is safe and makes money -> other characters don't get a chance to shine or get used to people seeing them -> conventional attractiveness reinforced -> other designs struggle to be normalized and don't get as many buyers -> repeat
"Legendary School Uniform" as a gaming term would honestly go hard ngl. That is surprisingly intuitive.
Anyone else got Witch Teresa from All Stars 7 when he said Trinity The Tuck witch skin😂
Dang, I have to agree gay vtuber man. Such a shame that art has to play second fiddle to selling cosmetics. Have to wonder do ya have a video that goes into the customizability of characters ad how the choice of the end user is being taken away (Actually now that I think of it, it would be pretty similar to the Barbie comparison ya made.)
I don't have one that's specifically about that, but it's an idea I've bounced around a bit. Maybe it'll get made someday if I can find a good angle to take on it.
MY GOAT IS BACK!!!!!! AND IT'S WITH A FUCKING BANGER!!!! LETS FUCKING GOOOOOOOO!!!!!! And I'm wishing you well in any recovery that might be related to your surgeries, atb 🙏
I've felt this for SO LONG. While there was always a number of exceptions I've always been attracted towards the cannon (or "default".. gods it's even baked into the language!! 🤮) skins of the characters, and I always felt unconsiously uglier or less-than for preferring that somehow. In recent years with my increasing awareness of the world it became more clear why that was over time, and to hear it discussed here is endlessly frustrating and facinating as a person and artist (not respectively, both for both LOL).
While the character designs of premium skins are very visually appealing for the most part, they also feel so hollow and detached from the original hero or really any context. It's almost like an eerie syntax error, like the flashy or interesting design shining through the limitations of the original hero are calling to and implying a deeper character that just isn't there. And with that, the context of OW's world in a match of people running around in these skins is totally lost. (And I don't think it's an accident that skins are disabled in OW Classic, it brings the focus to the nostalgic world of OW1 when you don't have the overcomplicated and disparate skins running around. This all is also part of why my favorite non-default skins are the lore-based ones like Pajamei).
Especially with OW2 (which lines up with the monetization changes) I've started noticing a gap in the level of detail in new heroes' designs (noticed it with Sojourn and Kiriko especially, Juno as well with the extra armor bits they took off after Blizzcon). Hearing you talk about this all (like how the character is designed to be a toy primarilly and a show character secondarilly) feels so shocking but vindicating, like you've given form to my existing subconcious feelings I was feeling but not fully aware of. The first thing that came to mind hearing the intro was the insane example of how Seraphine from League of Legends felt to people like she was careated and designed specifically FOR KDA FIRST AND FOREMOST and LoL secondarilly, which almost feels like the opposite side of the same spectrum from what's talked about in the video.
Your 30 second summary at the end is so real, it's so frustrating. I thought of this when you mentioned My Little Pony as an example of 22 min toy advertisement despite it genuinely being important to me as a kid, but that last bit helped put it into words: It feels like making the muffled voice of art GOOD through the deafening noise of capitalistic demands has become _an artistic medium of its own,_ with it's own limitations to be worked under that your love and passion and meaning and artistry is to shine through. THAT'S how media has felt to me as of late.
Again, banger of a video. 🤩🔥😤 (Sorry this is so long I zoned out for 40m and barfed out this stream of conciousness, I hope this adds to the conversation or is meaningful to someone. 😭)
PS. Not entirely related, but this all and the current OW Classic stuff reminded me of how in very early OW we didn't have a lot of context for the game's story and just the base context of the cinematics, and how many of the stories people were telling through OW are so inspired by what goes on in a match (a recent Juno/Winston in-game short on Twitter also reminded me of this, as well as Pharmercy's existance/origins and all the 2016 OW memes etc.), using the existing lore and personalities and backstories as a template to work from. It's really interesting to me as someone who's more versed in more traditional storytelling and design (which btw, that Reagan segment was WILD to learn about, that's literally how the world we live in is 40+ years later, to the point where it's crazy to think it was ever not like this. Fuck him, thanks for the education.)
yay an upcoming video about linguistics and gaming!!
i hope you could touch upon the subject of the law of economy in language, and how it is best reflected in gaming. (would be even cooler if you took some foreign language examples). i absolutely love the way people have subconsciously agreed to use contractions and euphemisms to speak of very specific tough to explain terms.
Love this video. Thank you for also mentioning how much colorism plays into this, it often goes unchallenged and it is VERY apparent in OW.
This is an incredibly interesting video to watch from the perspective of a league of legends player because we have been dealing with this for over 10 years now. Something overwatch thankfully hasn't had to deal with are characters whose base design aren't cannon, but have skins that are cannon. Some examples in league are Miss Fortune and her captain skin, pre rework udyr had an ultimate skin (which was the highest price tier at that time) that upgraded his models polygon count past 2 digits and was cannon while his base design wasn't, and soon Jinx will be getting a 250 dollar gatcha skin that is her design from arcane (which is cannon) while her base model isn't cannon anymore.
Okay, so one weird little thing is that all of Orisa’s skins still include her barrier projector on her arm, even the OW2 skins
There’s also how it makes every character much harder to initially identify who they are which is a pretty big deal in any competitive environment, particularly ones with hero abilities
Maybe I'm simple and therefore I'll be wrong, but I believe that in the end it all boils down to the fact that the public pays for a certain type of cosmetic (especially for a specific character), so obviously sensing the revenues, more skins of that type will be created, leaving little or nothing to the other subjects.
In conclusion - put Soldier 24 reaper in a speedo!
In all seriousness, this was an amazing video! You explained this formula perfectly, and one thing I always saw is how much of a double-edged sword it is. I love to contrast Mercy and Symmetra in this regard. Both have amazing base designs allowing for a wide variety of skin concepts - but there's one glaring difference. Mercy is white, Symmetra is brown. Naomi got it right - the formula is blonde and white. That's why Mercy's always dressed up as something in her skins, it's never a complete transformation, it's Angela went down to spirit halloween and picked out a costume for you all. Even in her mythic skin, it's just "what if Mercy was Moira?". There's no full transformation and the concept is never taken to its fullest potential. She's shoehorned into this neat boring box - because that's what sells. Symmetra on the other hand isn't put into that box. She gets those "complete transformation" skins as well as the fun costume skins, albeit much MUCH less frequently than Mercy and other heroes like her. I will always maintain that she gets the best skins, and I think that's because the concept artists are allowed to go all out with her. I love your Drag Race and Dragula comparison, because it really applies here. Anyways that was my ramble!
(As a side note, I'd actually love to see how her Infernal Witch skin sold, Not only because that's the coven x bewitching Symmetra skin that I've always wanted for her, but because I wonder if that will impact the frequency of her shop skins going forward)
21:20 DRAGULA
19:49 actually I think they should’ve made Genji younger and Hanzo a older brother. Genji doesn’t look older then 30 at most
A surprising and impressive example of the difference between Design and Development; the former is a series of interconnected disciplines that those making the game pick and choose to invest resources into, depending on the game trying to be made. Sometimes you don't have enough and make due, but interesting design choices crop up within a lot of those gaps.
Development, however, is a job. It has obligations and expectations, in addition to the interconnected disciplines available amongst the many developers- All of which are decided by whatever the company/corporate/executive branch decides is important; often at the expense of cohesive or even, reasonable design. If the resources the company has available are opted toward Graphics with very limited narrative resources being spent, or the animations, balance, or coding are left at "good enough" to get to the profit-makers in cosmetics?
Viv's detailed breakdown captures not just corporate influence, but it's dictates on what is and isn't important.
Phenomenal video mate. Welcome back and hope you're in good health.
Funnily enough with the mass marketing of skins that change the model it makes recolors rarer to see even though a lot of personality and even references can come from that.
I remember playing a game forever ago (I don't remember what it was) and seeing this guy in this black recolor semi-frequantly and he became like a mini celebrity because everyone else either had the expensive skins or the default but by putting a small twist on a character he ironically stood out the most.
I never pay for cosmetics in a game i feel like it's simply a waste (why would i spend 20$ on a model when i could spend 15$ on an indie game and have 5 times the fun) so i find myself often stuck with these recolors and some of them are lazy or unappealing but if someone puts effort into them they could easily outshine any other skin.
I can't believe you made a microtransaction hurting character design video without even mentioning how they destroyed widowmaker's silhouette with the new mythic. For the first time ever, when I saw the witch mythic, I had NO IDEA which character is dressed in it. In literally all other skins you can tell it's undeniably her.
Another thing you forgot to mention is that collab skins are basically ads now and Blizzard will shoehorn whatever brand they can onto OW characters (like WTF was that zen warcraft skin), which are basically nothing but barbie dolls now, that lore is basically not being explored anymore.
Thankful to the algorithm fir pushing this to me. Really thoughtful take!
hope you're recovering well from your surgery!
This is the first time I have ever witnessed some mention Fusion Frenzy online. Fun game (and nice video)
Shout out to fuzion frenzy, Dub might be the whole reason why i gravitated towards lucio
Hi an Aussie here let you guys know that we do celebrate Halloween the holiday we don’t celebrate is Thanksgiving
18:03 yeah i know it's not your point, but i've always disliked the excessive trinkets the characters have. like roadhog's ow1 default skin has almost half a tire on his shoulder for no reason!
Micro transactions in live service games in general has been hurting the gaming community for a while now, with no new content being released for these games but only lazy recolors, and overpriced bundles being the only thing keeping the game going.
Holy. Ronald Reagan came out of a left field
One thing i was notified of with the overwatch league skins that came out recently is that they changed Mei up a little so she can have a new skin archetype. A street artist doesn't seem like something she'd get but yet here we are. Though that came at the cost of making her legs ridiculously thick to compensate for her usually puffy pants. It's neither good or bad imo, but rather funny that they did this, especially with the implications now being she wears skin tight Arctic expedition gear.
Mei has never worn "thick" winter pants. Look at her OW1 default skin and tell me those are not leggings, which are actually good for the winter irl.
Regarding the whole "leg skin" thing was done with the Honeydew skin way back in 2019.
Wonderfully put, I also don't like how flashy and distracting some skins ontop of all these points, just think it's so loud looking
This is the first video I’ve seen of yours and I don’t know how I missed such a high quality channel. Also of course Regan had something to do with this 😅
Soooo, DO you want a lifeweaver in speedos skin ?
Not only all of this, but you wouldn’t see these characters dress up in the lore or anything. You’re gonna have a hard time convincing me that Roadhog would wear a swimsuit and a lifecircle thing for fun. But more importantly, why didn’t you swap your Primary and Secondary on Moira?
12:48 Rein Thor Mythic skin 👀
This is why I'm so happy that Overwatch Classic does not allow for any skins so thus we get to enjoy the original beautiful designs
Someone send this to flats to react
I would actually prefer that we don’t do that, since the last time a big Overwatch TH-camr reacted to my stuff they threw 5 midrolls on it and made far more money off my content than I did while being loud and wrong while insulting my intelligence, and I had to spend a month blocking people who decided the appropriate response to Seagull being on his bullshit was to call me slurs and tell me to kill myself.
I don’t play anymore. I really miss Overwatch 2018. That’s all. This is a great example of what started to exhaust my brain at first before I got too annoyed with hero changes
This is why it makes me sad that Venture gets SO much hate just because they’re not conventionally attractive as opposed to Juno for example. Which is why they don’t get that much love ☹️
With a topic like this, I'm reminded of Warner Bros and DC.
DC does not have a lot of great films, but among their best are Batman. So when they don't make the money they want with anything that's not Batman. They just make Batman, almost always high quality and always makes its money.
So what you are saying is that we gonna get 2-3 new/recolored Mercy skins every 8 weeks until the playerbase gets skin fatigue