Jeff Kaplan looks back at the controversy behind Tracer’s original victory pose in Overwatch.
Kaplan was asked about the issue while streaming his new game, The Legend of California, via IGN. In response, Kaplan said “we actually didn’t nerf Tracer’s butt. It stayed exactly the same.”
If I remember correctly, the controversy was not over changing her model, but in changing a victory pose that highlighted that part of her model. So they nerfed how much she showed off her butt, basically.
Something I always had strong opinions about was cameraman intent. Like, plenty of media has very attractive characters, due to author appeal. But when the media’s cameraman, its writers, and costume designers, are all obviously gooner-brained, that can push the idea that I’m looking at a specific person’s intentionally-advertised sexual fantasy, not just letting my own gaze naturally wander.
So yeah; players can, and will, push their cameras up against characters’ asses. The more a media pushes that intentionally, breaking from any in-media fictional premise (like suggesting that Tracer turns tail, since she enjoys people’s attention on her tight pants) the weirder it sometimes feels.
I swear, I did it by mistake
Mass effect sure loves its cutscene cameras being at butt height.
Not really even that, they just changed her from a classic femme fatale pose to a literal pinup pose.
The controversy was that like one person said they were offended then they changed it (from one generic pose showing off her but to a more in character pose showing off her butt) and people took it and ran with it as though they were reacting to that one person instead of making reasonable design choices.