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Jeff Kaplan explains the meaning behind “E54″ (x)

This is so cute ;-;

Bonus:

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Following publication of [Overwatch] League’s logo on March 28, Major League Baseball took issue with the likeness of the logo to its own. Just one day before the 30 day deadline, MLB requested an extension of time to oppose the logo, stating that it needed an additional 90 days to investigate the claim and to confer with counsel.

Considering every major sports organization uses some variation of this since-unoriginal design it seems silly that they would focus in on Overwatch. Heck, why wouldn't they just go after Activision's other subsidiary, MLG? Much easier target, if you ask me.

There's a weird fear and rivalry between baseball (specifically baseball, oddly enough) and eSports at large that just doesn't make any sense. eSports isn't taking away fans from traditional sports. Never has and never will. The fanbase and organization of the events parallel each other, but that doesn't mean that eSports is trying to "replace" traditional sports. In most aspects, it's catering to a completely different audience.

Despite the fact that it might look like I'm taking a dig at baseball in particular for being threatened by eSports, I'm a baseball fan. Of course, I've ever only bought 1 t-shirt to rep my team, and I've spent more on merchandising related to eSports. I still feel like eSports is more engaged in aspects of patronage that I just don't see in traditional mediums; eSports companies make it easier for me to get hype about the game. For example, as one commenter brought up: “Almost anytime I hear why someone under 35 has cable, it is because sports. Meanwhile you can watch a videogame tournament live on twitch or youtube with no hassle.“

The idea of free viewership seems to baffle a lot of business owners in traditional media, even though (anecdotally) free viewership seems to be better at sustaining an enterprise than gated viewership.

They focus too much on profits lost by reducing or removing the viewership paywall that they miss the bigger picture of a sustained audience that is willing to voluntarily provide profits based on other things like special events, sponsored products and other merchandising.

I don't fully disagree that the majority of people into eSports have either only had a passing interest in sports or none at all. But I do know a lot of people in the eSports industry who profess themselves to be just as big fans of traditional sports as they are about the focus of their careers. It’s not that eSports has made these individuals pull their interest out of sports like baseball, it’s simply that the world of professional gaming is developing at a rate that many outside of the scene are feel shocked by.

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Mercy and Symmetra have long been taken to task over the fact that players don’t need to aim to play well. Yet the very similar Winston and Torbjörn receive far less attention. No one calls out Reinhardt’s huge, arcing hammer. Instead, it’s Pharah that’s often brought up in these conversations, since her rockets do splash damage even if they don’t score a direct hit.

Hey, Symmetra is good, actually.

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mercy pls

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These vegan and cruelty free Overwatch inspired candles can be found over at Nerdie Nifties.

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my gay lil shit for @reypadawanjedi, happy belated birthday ho <3

sketch commissions

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Blizzard May Have Clarified Pharah’s Controversial Background In Overwatch

Blizzard is doubling down on Pharah’s depiction as a woman of mixed race. Pharah’s new skin basically confirms it. Pharah, it seems, is half Native-American. It’s a piece of lore that’s been teased and, if true, helps dispel the year-long controversy that’s plagued Overwatch’s Egyptian hero.

Honestly, I really like that Blizzard did this in striving for a more realistic depiction of diversity. A lot of people seem to feel as if media should portray different ethnicities and nationalities only with spokespersons who embody a singular culture very powerfully. However, there are roughly 10 million+ U.S. people who are identified by the census as mixed race or multiracial.

I get that it’s not always easy to portray someone who embodies multiple cultures, as well as the culture that arises from being at the crossroads between different worlds. But it will speak to millions of people worldwide in the experiences they’ve had throughout their lives. I know it’s a little too dorky and uber-progressive for some people, but representation does have a sincerely positive impact; representation “matters”. And what’s represented here is not necessarily one culture or the other, but the blending of cultures and the experiences of people who come from numerous backgrounds.

The people who say it’s racist for Pharah to “dress up as other cultures” should have stopped for a moment and considered that she could be part of more than one culture. While concerns may have come from a very positive and well-meaning place, those assumptions were very quick to ignore the mere existence of mixed-race people. We’ve been very conditioned by a lot of traditional media to think of race and cultural as being divided by boundaries across the world - the majority of fictional characters who “represent” a culture often do so homogenously - but the human experience is much more nuanced than that.

Here is to hoping we can continue to better reflect real, human experiences with our entertainment, and a celebration of the Overwatch team for keepin’ it real.

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How do you feel about the current event’s new skins? 

The most surprising imo is Widowmaker’s talon skin! We get to see her pre-blue/purple skin and with a more naturalized outfit (still just as sexy as her usual attire though). 

I had high hopes for McCree’s skins this year, and Blackwatch McCree is interesting but I’m not sure I’m totally down with it. He just keeps getting such dorky hats.

Orisa getting a skin this event is awesome! I wasn’t expecting a new Orisa skin for quite some time, considering she’s the newest hero, so all of her skins are technically “new”. 

Combat Medic Ziegler is probably my least favourite, but that might only be because we’ve been previously spoiled with good Mercy skins. My favourites are Imp and the halloween skin, Witch. Nothing’s gonna beat Witch Mercy for a long time - though Genji’s amazing new Blackwatch skin certainly was attractive!

The Torb skins are good, I just hate me some Torb.

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New overwatch comic out! Look at this shot of Tracer bein’ a newbie on the team. My dorky lil gal!

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A Good Year For Skins

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A smart and fair move if you ask me. Orisa will not be available for play in Competitive mode for a full week following release, giving players to experience her in a casual setting, learning her strengths and weaknesses before having her thrown in the comp mix.

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Jeff Kaplan’s remarks on console’s inability to rename custom matches:

We will add the ability for you to name your Custom Game on PS4. There is just some additional work we need to do in order to be compliant with Playstation's user generated content naming policy. We're sorry that you cannot name games like the other platforms can right now but you will be able to do so in the near future.

While PC has often taken priority in Overwatch updates, the team is definitely not ignoring the needs of console players! Whether it’s balancing the heroes for controller-based playstyles or readjusting the user interface to cohere with Playstation and Xbox guidelines, Papa Jeff’s got your back.

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My reflections back when Ana was released. I still stand by it and feel like Overwatch is always moving more and more in a positive and exciting direction.

Though Overwatch has had some trouble with character design in the past, I heartily thank them for making the cast of the game overall very women-friendly. They’ve managed to show that a game can include a large and very diverse cast of playable female characters - and that such game can be fun for casual and competitive players. 

Overwatch is one of the few games on the market that fits a competitive brawler niche to have a cast of women characters that differ in body type, ethnicity, and even age to such a wide degree. They’ve made it clear that women can and will be anything, that not all women characters need to have their personality modeled around their sexuality (but that some can), that having a clear ethnicity does not mean you have to become a stereotype, and that, contrary to popular myth, we only get better with age! I think this last point is so important and so often overlooked; in the course of modern media, be it video games, movies, or TV, there are very few depictions of older women compared to the myriad (positive, strong, or otherwise prominent) depictions of older men. 

Games like Bioshock Infinite and The Last of Us have you playing an aging male protagonist partnered with a youthful (and often naive) young woman, and yet if the roles were reversed we would see the game in a very different light, and I think chances are a game like that would receive higher criticism or at least be discussed as if it fills a specific niche. Games with older men, on the other hand, are often taken to be the “everyman” protagonist - something that doesn’t appeal to a niche audience and is intended for all viewers. Over the course of this pattern in media we’re being sent a message: older women can’t be interesting. Older women don’t have adventures. Older women can’t be heroes.

We’re all going to age. It’s inevitable. But the exclusion of positive and inspiring older women characters in media can create an air of fear around the concept of female aging - that we as women can’t live a passionate, exciting life the closer we get to the end of our journey.

The new Overwatch character - Ana Amari - is 60 years old. She’s a bounty hunter from Cairo and was once a founding member of Overwatch. She served in combat to protect her country up until her 50′s, when she was believed to be killed in action. She is a mother. She is a leader. She is one of the world’s greatest snipers. She is a hero.

And well, the world could always use more heroes.

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In my head I want Lucio to be everyone’s biggest fan and he legit fanboys out after meeting them.

Nondescript Numbani background because Orisa took like 5 hours to draw 

help my hand hurts 

I could really go for some Lucio-oh’s right now!

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Should Console Players Make Use of Bastion While They Can?

(Also posted this over on the Console Overwatch subreddit and Medium)

Bastion’s new passive ability  —  Ironclad  —  arrived in game patches late February. The subtle yet powerful new buff allows players to take 35% less damage from enemy attacks when they are in Sentry (stationary) configuration and Tank (ultimate) configuration.

However, this ability was already dialed back in the most recent PC update, but these updates haven’t made it to console yet; chances are the development team is waiting to bundle it with an upcoming event and the release of the 24th hero, Orisa.

There are additional updates to Bastion that haven’t been recalledon PC or console since theFebruary patch, such as: reduced reconfig time, Sentry magazine increased from 200 to 300, Recon magazine increased from 20 to 25, self repair can be used while moving (this has arguably been one of the most beneficial buffs for Bastion mains) and isn’t interrupted by taking damage.

There’s definitely the question of whether or not it’s entirely ethical to make use of Bastion’s buff while it still exists on console. The only reason it seems to still exist is not because it’s balanced, but because it’s easier to do 1 big update than many smaller updates. However, there’s also just the question of: will playing Bastion more often be that much of a benefit for console players at the moment?

It’s not unusual for the console edition of Overwatch to have differences from PC. The developers have noted in concurrent patches that they’re keeping an eye on how playing with controller changes up the overall meta. For example, Symmetra’s sentry turrets have a different damage percentage on them for console players, since it’s one of the easiest ways to do damage without aiming. Symmetra manages to be almost as formidable as Offense heroes on console, with very little in the way of countering her — Genji’s reflect ability has no effect on her primary weapon, which can also completely ignore certain enemy shields.

There’s a slim but existing possibility that the changes Bastion will receive in the following console updates will make him feel entirely different from his PC counterpart. The team might decide that Bastion’s increased damage reduction is fair on console, since controller aiming has an added difficulty to it (thus the existence of aim assist on PS4 and Xbox One). Or they might decide Bastion gets the same nerf to Ironclad as he does on PC.

Knowing that the devs recognized the Bastion update was unstable, and that it hasn’t been changed on consoles yet, I think I’m going to be playing a bit more Bastion in competitive while I still can. I’m willing to exploit the staggered release of updates that Blizzard puts out, even if it’s a little morally dubious.