Blizzard dev apologises for "poor response" to female character design question
"This is a serious topic."
One of Blizzard's key developers has apologised for what he has admitted was a poor response to a question about "over-sexualised character designs" and vowed to listen to feedback.
In an interview at BlizzCon, Rock, Paper, Shotgun raised the issue of Blizzard's portrayal of female characters in the likes of real-time strategy game StarCraft 2 with Dustin Browder, game director of Heroes of the Storm. The question revolved around how Blizzard planned to approach character design for the upcoming multiplayer online battle arena game.
"Well, I mean, some of these characters, I would argue, are already hyper-sexualised in a sense,"Browder responded.
"I mean, Kerrigan is wearing heels, right? We're not sending a message to anybody. We're just making characters who look cool. Our sensibilities are more comic book than anything else. That's sort of where we're at. But I'll take the feedback. I think it's very fair feedback."
After RPS challenged Browder further, he added: "We're not running for President. We're not sending a message. No-one should look to our game for that."
The interview sparked debate on social networks and forums about Blizzard's character design, and yesterday, Sunday, 24th November, Browder addressed the controversy in a blog post on the Heroes of the Storm website, titled: "On character design."
It is republished in full, below.
All eyes now turn to the next showing of Heroes of the Storm to see whether Blizzard makes any changes to its character design. The cinematic trailer, below, was released alongside the game's re-unveiling at BlizzCon this year.
