Revnak said:
That the pose was didn't fit her character due to it being too sexual. Kaplan said nothing about the pose being sexual, just that they were replacing it and that they wanted people to feel heroic and comfortable. Then he stated that they had been planning to remove it for some time. Why must we assume the worst about every design decision?
Kaplan's initial response, the later (polished) response, and the end product are in contradiction, especially in light of the initial complaint. My interest, at this point, lies with how Blizzard handled this controversy and the decision to change the pose internally, and I believe the lack of polish on the pose holds insight.
You'll notice in my commentary on other threads, my chief point of contention with the complaint is how in the very process of complaining about objectification, the complainant perpetuates a larger, more pervasive, gender stereotype that is harmful to women. That being, and I'll restate here, that sexuality and sexualization are reductive forces in the quality of a woman's character. And, depending on Blizzard's own response, managing to perpetuate that harmful stereotype as a triple-A gaming company.
So -- please exercise caution in generalizations about me, and whatever perception you hold about my "righteous fury" or "outrage" in the future.
Now, had that pose been in development since prior to Kaplan's post, there certainly would have been time to polish it. Change the leg positioning to avoid clipping and mesh distortion, rotating the pose on the Y-axis to hide mesh distortion, altering the mesh to work around the distortion. However, none of this is the case currently -- it was added as-is. In fact, this change is undocumented in the patch notes,
http://us.battle.net/forums/en/overwatch/topic/20742886413
It strikes me, that considering how quickly this escalated, Blizzard would
want attention drawn to the change, least of all by documenting the change. However, they
didn't.
