Overwatch is one of the single biggest phenomena in video games. Blizzard Entertainment (of Warcraft, Starcraft and Diablo fame) launched the online, team-based, multi-player, first-person shooter game in March of 2016. Its popularity has since continued to grow, especially with the addition of new content such as maps, skins, game modes and characters.
The game offers a fairly balanced gameplay experience featuring a cast of diverse, interesting characters that appeals to audiences that range from the casual to the hardcore, competitive gamer. The game is updated and maintained regularly to keep up the quality of the experience and interest of the player base. The story is kept light and loose, seemingly purposefully, by the creators. This way, they can drip feed it out when they want to (for instance, during the game’s special events), let it be expanded upon by side materials like comic books and leave it up to the player to imagine what could have happened in the past.
Enter Overwatch Porn
With such a wild success (and always remembering rule #34 — if it exists, then there’s a porn of it), there is little to no surprise that Overwatch has inspired its own form of adult content.
Porn parody content based on science fiction is nothing new — nor are animation and computer graphics, as anyone who knows anything about Hentai will tell you. However, with the prominent rise of crowd funding platforms, the production of porn parody changing. Overwatch’s open-ended approach to storytelling seems to be an obvious fit for Overwatch porn.
In an article posted on Kotaku, writer Kate Gray points out that Overwatch porn is creating big bucks for 3D creators on Patreon who are willing to do custom animations of characters taking part in any number of sexual acts. The creators seem to sidestep copyrights and cease and desist orders by inhabiting the nebulous space of fan art and fair use. Again, since Patreon is how the creators are getting paid, the Overwatch characters are not being directly bought and sold. It’s also interesting to note that the computer graphic short clip or static image nature of the content makes it easy for the creators to produce media for the internet.
To break it down more simply, an individual can produce and post relatively cheap, short form content that is being sought after by an audience who are not getting it in an official capacity and can be supported through crowdfunding.
Is Overwatch Porn Any Good?
There is the question of quality. The Kotaku article mentions that these are some of the best pieces of video game porn the writer has seen when compared to what else is on the market, but there does seem to be room for improvement and growth, especially in the realm of realistic flexibility and anatomy.
The article also points out that Overwatch porn has some of the same problems that the porn and video game industry faces, namely, tunnel vision for an audience wanting to see only conventionally attractive, white-looking women. The article points out how this can be problem because it guides what is acceptable in society and can affect a viewer’s self-esteem.
It seems that the current Overwatch porn environment, as well as many other fandom-inspired spaces, may be missing or simply ignoring the point of what makes the Blizzard property so popular in the first place — that is, its quality and broad appeal. If you have a good product that you can sell to everyone, why not sell it to everyone? The original game itself has characters of every race, shape and size because representation matters to an audience. It’s one of the times that doing the right, inclusive thing and doing the profitable thing align.
