Overwatch's Latest Brigitte Skin Stirs Controversy
By Wyatt Fossett ·
The Overwatch Anniversary event has begun and one of the new unlockable skins has some fans upset and other defending.
There’s no denying that continuously making new aesthetic content for a lively game like Overwatch cannot be an easy task. For the now-running Overwatch Anniversary event, the newest Brigitte skin -- a Riot Police uniform -- has received some fairly critical feedback from some players.
In a piece written for Vice’s Waypoint by Dante Douglas, the skin for Brigitte “celebrates police militarization” among many other potentially traumatizing iconographies for those affected by police brutality, or other unjust issues involving law enforcement.
“Blizzard is an American studio. If you haven’t been following American politics, these past few years have been a time of reckoning with the ongoing militarization of police forces throughout the country,” writes Douglas. “Her new skin recalls the black-clad troopers that menaced anti-racist and anti-fascist protesters in Ferguson, Charlottesville, Chicago, Portland, and countless other cities. According to the Washington Post, 360 people have been killed by police so far in 2019.”
Douglas isn’t the only one to feel this way about the skin. “what would possess anyone in 2019 as a game developer to think, huh, a riot gear cop, that is in no way a charged image literally right now,” writes Twitter user AppleCiderWitch.
if you can hear a yikes faintly from space that's me
— Year of the Demon (@appleciderwitch) May 21, 2019
overwatch doesn't even want to address properly why its whole lore is problematic in the context of western imperialism, let alone why a cop skin is bad in the year 2019
— Victoria Rose, freelancer moved into Brooklyn :3c (@riningear) May 25, 2019
Seriously. I got this skin today and was immediately like "who would want this?" It feels so gross. https://t.co/yONvAzR7il
— Psycho Jenny ?? TBD (@hacksawjenny) May 23, 2019
On the other side of the “conversation” -- because let’s face it, hardly any of these Twitter spats delve into having actual conversations with one another -- are those that argue Overwatch itself as exhibit A.
Firstly, Overwatch is a fictional piece of entertainment, immediately providing the potential for removal from reality. Others stated that Overwatch (the organization within the fictional universe) is essentially a global militarized police institute.
In a cheeky (but often overly insulting) piece written by Erik Kain at Forbes, the ties between Overwatch’s never-ending cycle of good guys versus bad guys are expressed. Alongside it, the always hard to hear the argument of “not all cops are bad” comes up quite a bit.
“I hope Blizzard has a police-themed event sometime with cops-and-robbers skins all around, just out of spite,” writes Kain.
Putting the Forbes versus Vice squabble aside, there’s an ever-evolving separation in public opinion regarding police forces in America and beyond. Overwatch’s new Brigitte skin has just been a catalyst to kicking that conversation off within this specific fandom.
I know the cute riot cop skin for Bridget sucks but aren't Overwatch literally a paramilitary police force? Like aren't they basically the black and tans but for putting down rebellious machine intelligence?
— nobody calls me the space cowboy (@NotE0157H7) May 26, 2019
i'm not at all surprised by brig's new cop skin in overwatch. i did frown at it, but i wasn't about to go yell about it on the internet. on the other hand, it irks me when the response to those who do yell about it is, "it's a video game character." don't shit on ppl for caring.
— ?????? (??????) (@zenoslime) May 23, 2019
Wait, are people upset over Brigitte's new cop outfit for Overwatch?
— P'Shewwww (@SoupMcBirdGod) May 23, 2019
It's fiction?
It's non-canon?
Overwatch is an international law enforcement organization?
You don't have to use the skin?
Though this (Twin Galaxies) is hardly an easy place to have a conversation with heavy impact, it’s always an interesting occurrence when our favored entertainment spurs on larger, more important conversations about bigger subjects than just video games.
What do you think about the Riot Police skin in Overwatch? Or police representation in gaming in general?