There isn’t, to my knowledge, another character to choose from so I do not know why the clownface?
I think the critique is very valid- while you can also say “well she had a reason and if you just play through the game you can appreciate the reasons behind it” but people did and were still thinking it was a bad call.
I mean you can tell all you like people can’t appreciate a good story but boy do I have a mountain of evidence to point out to you what happens when you tell your customers that they are wrong and your vision is right.
Hard disagree. There is an argument to be made that you can create demand on your own (see: Steve Jobbs & Henry Ford) but comparing that to people who simply meet demand from customers (which is not easy either) the former are few and far between for a reason. It is an inherently arrogant way to go about business by telling what others need and you have to be incredibly knowledgeable about what you do in order to do that. Most artists are nowhere near as industrious for that as they’d need to be.
This isn’t an argument from a financial perspective (considering how the go to example is TLOU2 which made a lot despite plot spoilers being so prevalent that any social media posts about the game had comments disabled to avoid the golf jokes) but from an artistic one.
If people focus too much on what the consumer wants then you just end up with gritty FPS games, battle royales and hero shooters over-saturating the market at the expense of more creative endeavors.
They go with the safe and trendy option over the one that could actually be putting a statement out. Not surprising. I doubt they would want to endanger their sales in Russia after all.
There’s a bit of a balance. I find it comparable to a genre like jazz. On the consumer friendly side you have your Kenny Gs and Michael Bublés who are so edgeless and corporate that they’re pretty much unlistenable when put in any context other than background noise. You then have some obscure artist you’ve never heard of writing music in a 7/11 polyrythm playing in several keys simoultaenously on an orchestra composed entirely of guitars made out of paper.
Most people will probably settle between the middle ground of those two where there’s creativity to be seen but some basis in conventionality that doesn’t get you completely lost and blindsided by all the unorthadox decisions.
I think it’s reverse honestly. People were unironically thinking what Levey was posting:
And generally considering her to be very “stereotypically butch”. To have her then be a straight woman with a family is kinda neat. Strong, muscular ladies can love anybody. Like everyone else!
Having Tracer, who was also the mascot, be gay was surprising and pretty neat.
Zarya is powerful & wonderful. She is far from fat(Not that there is a problem either if she was either!)
TLOU 2 certainly made enough to get even and over that, but the PR catastrophe and refunds aren’t anything to look past.
Anyway, your main point:
I don’t think that’s the case at all. If anything, knowing that there is demand in the first place for your game can be what drives your development and love for it. This certainly was the case in the case of shows like ATLA, Star wars: Clone wars and games like Witcher, which by the way is not related at all to the “trendy” things then but had so high demand it got so much effort put into it.
But, yes. Tit for tat. I have seen too many artists go the “you think you do, but you don’t” route and we have in 9/10 cases seen how that has went.
Zarya is a no-win situation for Blizzard. If they made her the lesbian, you’d’ve had people complaining that Blizzard are stereotyping her as the typical “butch” lesbian, but they didn’t, and people complained that they chose a character who wasn’t as representative to be a lesbian.
Personally I just think Zarya’s a fun tank and it doesn’t matter to me what her sexuality is, nor does it matter what Tracer’s is but I’ve got some boomer APM so I can’t say I find her fun. But still.
I just find it in hindsight both funny and a little sad that people got so mad about Tracer’s backside that one time. (As in angry that a pose got changed to be more in line with the character and less “here is my bum bois!”)