Ever since Overwatch‘s closed beta splashed onto the scene in 2015, the web has been inundated with Overwatch porn. It’s not hard to see why – beyond the game’s massive popularity, it boasts a cast overflowing with unchallengingly-attractive caricatures and broad ethnic stereotypes, each carrying JUST enough backstory to serve as the jumping-off point for a million million sexual scenarios but not so much as to bog anyone down in too many details. Add into that the fact that its character models are extremely easy to manipulate with software such as Source FilmMaker or Blender and a constantly supply of new costumes for said character models, and you’ve got all the ingredients you need for a seemingly-bottomless pot of sexual content gumbo that’s sure to keep your highly-derivative hero shooter relevant long past its sell-by date!

Things have changed. Yes, the Overwatch porn spigot is still flowing fast and strong, but the property on which it’s based isn’t doing too hot. Overwatch has, technically, given way to Overwatch 2, but by all accounts the supposed successor to one of Activision-Blizzard’s biggest blockbusters hasn’t been performing like it should. This isn’t that surprising, as the competitive gaming landscape has changed a lot in the near-decade that the game’s been active – no game remains popular forever. Some players will move on to new, similar titles like Riot’s Valorant or Respawn’s Apex Legends. Others might find their tastes drifting to other genres entirely, perhaps becoming engrossed in a roguelike such as Hades or a massive single-player experience like Elden Ring. Others still will simply melt away, becoming fed up with a toxic online player base, running short of time to play between obligations like work, school, or child care, or falling out of touch with their regular gaming group. All of this is perfectly normal, but unfortunately also represents a state of affairs completely unacceptable to Activision-Blizzard’s stakeholders, who demand infinite growth and infinite returns.

Hence, “grippers” – an unsubtle overture to the gooner wing of the player base, cloaked in a wincing reference to a long-running community in-joke about Sigma’s exposed feet. Cringe! Not because it’s somehow Not Done to sexualize the game’s characters (more on that in a moment), but because porn has carried Overwatch‘s Caligulan carcass atop its back year after year, and deserves better than a self-conscious joke from some underpaid intern who, statistically, was verbally and possibly physically chastised both before and after hitting Post.

First, however, as promised I give you an aside on the sexualization of Overwatch’s characters, and the idea of sexualization being a bigtime no-no in general: this is a concern that has always struck me as being deeply weird, in that I think it throws into harsh relief the kinds of conceptual excess that are and are not acceptable in media. Character-based combat simulators like Overwatch, League of Legends, Apex Legends, Valorant, Deadlock, DOTA, and so on, are orgies of violence that become exceptionally macabre if one thinks about them seriously. Overwatch is a game where characters kill each other over and over and over again, millions of times a day, using fists and hammers and swords and bombs and bullets and fire and all manner of color-coded laser beam. Many of these characters are, within the game’s paper-thin narrative, friends and co-workers. Fareeha Amari explodes her own mother with rockets, making her die on purpose, again and again. All of this is agreed-upon as being fine and not even worth talking about. It’s just a game! And, like, yeah! It is! It is fine to agree that killing can become an essentially-consequenceless act within the shared imaginary thoughtspace of a video game. So why are expressions of sexuality – be it a provocative character pose, a flirtatious voice line, a risqué skin, or, yes, a tweet calling attention to a character’s exposed feet – inevitably the thing that prompt a thousand hectoring thinkpieces? (This isn’t even getting into the genuinely evil habit of “freemium” titles like Overwatch creating a generation of hopeless gambling addicts who pour every available dollar into digital lottery tickets. This is something that HAS been criticized, somewhat, but is still not viewed as being as shocking/disqualifying as an official render of Mei getting her tits out would be. Interesting!)

Don’t take the above paragraph to mean “sexualizing characters is always good”. Of course it isn’t! It’s just a creative choice that can be evaluated in the same way as any other of the other thousands of creative choices that are made when developing a video game. Sexualization can be crass, tasteless, distracting, ugly, and, yes, just plain wrong in countless situations. As far as Overwatch goes, however… I mean, let’s be honest with ourselves here. Overwatch is a game about several dozen remorseless murderers killing each other forever that’s built on top of a casino that pays out in 3D renders. If the murderers also happened to fuck and suck and cum inside each other, would that REALLY upset the careful balance of the experience’s creative pillars?

Which brings me back around to the thesis of this post: Activision-Blizzard should add explicit sex into the marketing materials and gameplay of Overwatch 2, and they should employ large numbers of Overwatch porn creators to do so. Doing so would not only be perfectly in line with the game’s creative vision, but it would also signal a deep appreciation for the community that’s inarguably done the most to support this ailing franchise, asking nothing but cum in return.

I picture a team of animators headed by Rikolo, putting the finishing touches on a gorgeous six-minute animated introduction to the game’s newest hero, 240 seconds of which happen to center on them getting blasted with rope from various members of the extant cast. I see Fugtrup designing, rigging, and animating a sumptuous new skin for Mei that displays truly breathtaking quantities of nip and pussy.  I imagine play-of-the-game highlight reels in which various character models can be clearly seen tongueing out each other’s buttholes. I anticipate a dedicated corps of fanfiction writers, finally granted official permission to grant the characters depth – both in the figurative and extremely literal sense (I’m talking about their holes). I envision patch notes being delivered via JOI performed by a rotating cast of in-cosplay ero-models. Most importantly, I predict a staggering influx of cash from rapturous gooners.

Naturally, this bold change in creative direction would have an upward effect on the game’s age rating. I view this as an unadulterated positive – children should never have been playing Overwatch to begin with. Not because it’s especially sophisticated, but because as I said, it’s a casino, and I take the radical position that children shouldn’t be allowed inside casinos. Children will simply have to make do with playing Fall Guys and Minecraft and Roblox and- actually, wait, maybe scratch that last one. Maybe get kids into, uh, TrackMania or something. Kids will be fine, and they can join in on the sex, murder, and gambling with the rest of the adults when they hit voting age.

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