Ok, here’s a possible solution to a non-problem that never had to be as complicated as some people insist on making it for imaginary (political) reasons.
Basically, there are some people who think it would be nice to include pride flag sprays to the game. I agree on the merit of allowing players more options of self expression. I also support adding other demographic specific sprays such as Crosses, humming birds, bangot, shamrocks, and my people’s battle flag.
And it needs to be said that the only reason to take acceptation with a particular demographic’s symbolism is if you have a problem that demographic. It’s obvious why someone might have a problem with the Star of David. If someone has a problem with a symbol representing Caucasians or heterosexuality, there reasons are equally obvious. But their excuses are hilarious.
My solution (to the surprise of anyone who didn’t read the title) Is to allow players to submit and use custom sprays. After all, we can’t realistically expect Blizz to represent everyone. It only makes sense for players who want to use such symbols to help create them.
By virtue of being a thing on the internet, people are going to abuse this. . There’s no realistic way to keep people from doing that. It’s just a part of humanity. People who don’t deserve attention will often go to extreme lengths to get it.
I saw a video of two people storming a podium to push a presidential candidate away from his microphone so they could complain about problems that are 99 percent imaginary. Does that mean it’s a bad idea for presidential candidate to publicly campaign? I also saw a picture of a naked man running across a football field in the middle of the game. Does that mean football games are a bad idea. There are people who will misuse and abuse every aspect that is or will be a part of Overwatch, and Overwatch is still not a bad idea.
There are some things that can be done to mitigate any potential problems.
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Create an art program that can be purchased. Only images made with this program can be used as sprays. And the program should be designed in such a way that photos cannot be used.
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Restrict this option to profiles over a certain level. If somebody has worked their way up to level 50 they’ll be less likely to risk loosing their account over a drawing of a ████.
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Add social networking features to Battle Net. And only allow verified members to use this feature.
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Charge a deposit to anyone using this feature. The deposit would be repaid once the player sprays the spray in play (say that 10 times fast) in at least 20 games without someone making a valid report.
Let the salt flow!
If this is a continuation of the pride flag discussion, why don’t you just continue the discussion there?
Now, political symbolism is a terrible argumen, if you haven’t realized it yet, because it just goes back to the “all in or nothing” discussion.
However, a custom spray (profile picture at best) program would be a good solution for a single reason:
- The company stays neutral. They directly don’t add any political symbols and thus don’t Express any political stance. The players themselves can do it but Blizzard only gave them the tools for doing it. If someone accuses blizzard for, as an example, g4y prop4ganda, they will lose because, just like it’s not the Smith’s fault that his knife was used for m0rder, it’s not Blizzard’s fault that the program was used for g4y propaganda.
Custom sprays (profiles) would also satisfy both sides of the all in or nothing argument. The all in side can make every symbol they like, even political, and the nothing side don’t get all those political symbols shoved in their throat when choosing an icon.
For the abuse part: deal with it. People can already abuse the name customization and that is dealt with easily with reports.
All I foresee is pornographic and hate filled sprays all over the place. Would never fly for this reason
Oh yesssss the good old days of TF2 custom sprays. Is the pure OW community ready?
@FatBluDragon: Ya, pretty much.
@OhSnap: Both of those are subjective. To some, the Pride flag is an anti-Christian hate symbol. To Islamic Fundamentalist an image of a woman’s hair may be pornographic.
@Buster: Yes.
I mean more like KKK symbols, Nazi Symbols, known hate symbols like that. Not national flags or pride flags, You see them in games like Call of Duty every so often. That or the person who can use all the little symbols and objects to make a detailed picture of a woman’s body parts(seen it before). Blizzard would never allow custom sprays because of that.
Hold on, those are objective!
Pornographic imagery has no place in a pg 13 game. Also, it is stated that vulgar and obscene language (this would include sprays, too) are prohibited.
What if they make custom sprays an inn-app purchase? Similar to name changes, you wouldn’t mess around with a profile picture or spray worth 5€, would you?
dang… I hit reply again instead of edit…
@OhSnap: There are ways around that. But there are also people who see the Nazi symbol as an anti (forced sex) symbol. But I do see your point.
The thing is, the possibility of abuse can be minimized. And the opportunities for player expression are far more important. Most people would use it the way I intend. The amount of people who will use it to create pixels in the shape of human anatomy is irrelevant by comparison. And I personally love it when bigots self identify. for the same reason I like warning labels. Still, people could simply report them to Blizz and get them banned.
Wait what? Who sees a swastika as an anti rape symbol? That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard
You know we’ve spoken a lot, but this comment tells me a great deal about your viewpoint… it’s not in the slightest bit political, and whilst we shouldn’t have custom sprays I don’t see a reason not to add certain iconography if Blizzard thinks it suits a given character.
I really want this and personal icons since they for sure they are more personal than the random boring once we got.
But it will be hard for them to monetize this.
Why gives the players a personal spray when it’s obvious that they’ll stop buying any other in game spray.
The only icon and maybe skins that should be customizable, should be when/if Blizzard finally make a guild/clan/team option, and only then there should be limited options to do so… The game already struggles on showing portraits when loading hero selection…
Please don’t. It was bad enough when blizz tried to integrate crpbook into SC2.
By virtue of being a thing on the internet, people are going to abuse this. < Exactly that is why custom sprays never going to be added, they would need to spend extra workhours on censoring out sprays.
They already spend work hours policing player behavior. Blizz staff are already doing this job.
ummm ok maybe? or just not
People, The overwhelming majority of players who will use this feature will use it to spray portraits of their families, pets, logos for their small business, Twitch tags, memes, and whatever else matters to them. And a lot of players would probably like to do that. I think that sounds like fun. And I don’t think it’s anymore of a bad idea then letting people stream matches on Twitch.
To be blunt, you guys are starting to remind me of this The Birds and The BS - Nice Assault Weapons feat. Ana Gasteyer - YouTube
The bigger question is: does the satisfaction outweigh the pain? Do custom sprays do more harm than good or vice versa?
One thing is clear: A bitmap custom spray will never happen because it degrades the quality of the game aesthetics. What’s more likely is that there will be a tool like in CoD or For Honor where you can use vectors and Icons to layer them and create illustrations, similar to collages.
Also, refrain yourself from using ad hominems like these:
…can likely derail the topic. It would be ironic that it’s the OTP’s fault that the thread derails, wouldn’t it?
The argument could be made that I derailed the thread by posting on this site.
I did suggest creating a specific program for this. Both the pride flag and my Star and Bars would be easy to make in such a program.
Blizz could charge people for custom spray slots, and creates an online market for them. That would make this idea profitable quickly.