Journal of Other Forum Analysis (Volume II, Issue 1)

[benji]

I should go find the very old post where she explains her worship of Lucio

Trying to do this:

Overwatch is undoubtedly the most inclusive AAA game I've had the pleasure to play and experience.

It being the most inclusive AAA game doesn't mean shit.

The OW teams' writers and artists, as well as the voice actors, have done insurmountable work in regards to providing an experience that makes minorities feel included in both the community and the meta development of the work itself, hopefully paving the way for gaming, both the works it produces and the communities that surround those works, to stop being such hostile, anti-diverse, right-wing embarrassments.

However, you cannot solely measure the success of any given work's representation in just the quantity of minorities that fill your work. The quality of the representation, how these characters represent and portray the backgrounds they come from matters too, and even with Overwatch, an effort that is deliberately inclusive by design, Blizzard has made mistakes that anyone who takes a modicum to delve into a bit of the tangential learning opportunities the game presents will recognize.

I'll point the finger at Lucio. I love this boy to death. Blizzard stumbled into making a black revolutionary (yes, he's fucking black) who managed to overthrow a totalitarian regime oppressing his people and didn't get either assassinated, locked up, had a bounty put on him, or maligned by white people for it like every other black soul braver than I has experienced. There is a starry-eyed, fable-esque bent to his background that is refreshing in not just gaming but media as a whole, and that's before you get to his charitable personality. As far as I'm concerned, Lucio is my personal Superman, something for me to aspire to be.

And yet, I still wonder why Blizzard was so shortsighted as to take two years to give him any meaningful form of black Brazilian representation (the capoeira skin), why his own voice actor had to push and lobby to make him speak Portuguese when almost every other character up until that point either spoke their native language and/or had an accent to tie them to their home country while he spoke in a straight American accent, and why they continue to downplay the logisitical nonsense of a black kid growing up in the slums in the tropics being an avid player of the rich-ass winter sport known as ice hockey, all in service to a nod of their own ice skating endeavors. And it's not even like the ice hockey skins are treated like the other joke skins; they have flavor text that reference his background, and Lucio has lines referencing hockey when he's not wearing them. This stupidity is actually canon! You'll find others closer to the source than I that feel his status as a musician is stereotypical, generic in its presentation (he probably wouldn't be an EDM artist), or both, and that his ascension to fame has some seriously negative sellout connotations in Brazilian culture. One also cannot get a little uncomfortable with how fantastical his story is and the reality that was Bolsonaro's election and the embracing of right-wing fascism in Brazil we just witnessed.

Overwatch is great for representation. But it is not perfect, and arguably can never be, and I will directly quote Lindsay Ellis from her Pocahontas video as to why:

"The legacy of colonialism is baked into every facet of every culture on the planet."

The authenticity and quality of representation will always be murky and debatable because the lens with which we view representation of minorities in works not directly made by those people will inherently be made in a context built upon cultural norms that accept white supremacy as a status quo. In that vain, representation is not necessarily a concrete goal, an objective number or concept with which you can target with precision. It is an on-going process, one mechanism among many with which we use to help bang out the kinks of society. You don't ever nail it. You simply get better at it as society continues the march towards a world in which European colonialism is a horror of the past.

I approve of the OP and thread. Excellent job.

I have two stories of revelation at how video games have been improving. First was Horizon Zero Dawn. My friend got it and a PS4 and invited me over to play. Standard hangout night.I mainly watched, although I tried my hand at hunting a few things (I did enjoy the 10 minutes I've spent on HZD). A few hours in to where Aloy is grown, through the silence of observing it hit me and I turned to her.

"You realize this game has a bunch of black women just, like...existing as normal characters in the world with no strings attached or stereotypes, right?"

"....Holy shit you're right."

Yeah. Horizon Zero Dawn made me cry later that night after going home just because people like me were existing in a game all over without being a complete embarrassment or drawing attention to themselves. They were a respectfully integrated part of that game's society. It was comforting.

Second is my Lucio fanaticism. Overwatch is relatively bonkers on the front of representation. It's deliberate, it's researched, and it's respectful. The ongoing-development format means that the fandom has some control over these characters' portrayal too, meaning we can revisit missed opportunities. It's a water bottle in the desert, and thus fandoms take hold. The Lucio fandom is bonkers in its adoration of him as a "precious child," but also savvy enough to point out that Lucio is one of the only black men in all of fiction period that openly staged a violent revolution to free the marginalized and downtrodden from oppressive rule without getting jailed, assassinated, or otherwise ostracized in society by white power structures. Everything he did is so far framed as justified and he is popular and loved among most of the cast. Back at home he remains a community leader free to continue trying to better the lives of favela residents (hinted at by his New Year's resolution).

Given the fact that actual black people can't even kneel in protest of oppressive governmental structures without harsh criticism, blackballing, and pushback even sometimes amongst their own allies, the wildly unrealistic success in his backstory contrasts against this reality and subsequently elevates him to a fable or Robin Hood-like figure- someone to look up to and a symbol of utopic dreams. His backstory and accompanying album also lean real hard into leftist sociopolitical lenses, such as a preference for socialist/group-oriented approaches to life improvement with potential snipes at the rich, the validation of "millennial anxiety," the social value of artists and entertainers in Brazil, and on and on and on.

Honestly Blizzard would do well to capitalize on this more in a post-Black Panther world because the implicit lore of Lucio is fucking bananas to me. And he doesn't even have a short or comic yet.

That's just a consequence of his lack of open lore. Most players are never going to engage with the details and meta implications of his backstory because it's never brought up to any real extent in game. You have to go out of your way to read it and start connecting the dots, really talk with people in the know, which only Lucio fans and/or the demographics he resonates with are going to do.

Horizon Zero Dawn was excellent in b that regard. My friend bought it near launch and invited me over to experience it. Hours into the game, in the middle of a conversation with an NPC, I nudged her and was like, "This game has a ton of black women and they get to exist as normal people without any bullshit attached." "Oh shit, you're right."

We stopped playing for a second to admire it. Will never forget that moment lol.