‘Overwatch 2’ Is A Game About Cops So Maybe Stop Freaking Out About Police Skins

It’s been over three years since I last wrote about the ridiculous overreaction—and I assume feigned outrage—over police skins being in Overwatch.

This time around we’ve got the above Constable Tracer skin which, frankly, looks terrible for reasons that have nothing to do with it being a police skin. I just think it’s a poorly designed skin. I made better looking police Overwatch skins using Midjourney:

In any case, I suppose these are outrageous both because they’re AI-generated artwork (a deeply controversial subject I’m also writing about at my Substack) and because police are apparently no longer allowed to be in video games. Period. There can be soldiers, terrorists, bank robbers, cannibals and any number of other things but not cops. Cops are, in this particular cultural moment, the worst.

Yeah.

Here’s Kotaku’s Alyssa Mercante sort of trying to explain why this is, but mostly just assuming her readers already agree with her. It’s more finger-wagging than case-making.

This line cracked me up: “Kotaku reached out to Blizzard for a comment regarding the ideology behind this latest cop skin.” The ideology behind putting a cop skin in a video game about futuristic cops? That seems a bit on-the-nose as far as questions go but okay. I hope the folks at Blizzard got a good chuckle reading that request. Here’s more:

The in-game cop skins feel like Blizzard is saying the quiet part very, very loud. Overwatch characters are, essentially, cops who were forced to become vigilantes after their organization is disbanded following investigations into some of their ethically questionable and legally shaky tactics. In the game’s lore, that organization was created to combat what’s known as the Omnic Crisis, which is when the robots running robot factories went rogue and started producing evil omnics that went on killing sprees.

Tracer’s first mission saw her dispatched to quell an omnic uprising led by Null Sector (an omnic revolutionary group often referred to as terrorists) in King’s Row, London. The uprising broke out after omnics were denied basic human rights and forced to live in squalor underneath the ritzy city. Overwatch was banned from intervening in the uprising, but did anyway. Interestingly enough, the Tracer cop skin comes not long before Overwatch 2 adds its newest character, Rammatra, to the game—who is the leader of that very same terrorist organization Tracer was sent to stop. I wonder how he’d feel about seeing Tracer in a cop skin?

If you’re a new Overwatch 2 player, or even an original Overwatch player who skipped the PvE events and the opening cinematic, you probably don’t know that many in-game characters were once members of a global police force with virtually unfettered reign. That’s why this Tracer skin is so incredibly frustrating: Blizzard could choose to keep the “cop” bit quiet, but seems determined to shout it from the rooftops of King’s Row—ya know, the place where the cops were sent to violently quell an uprising.

Alyssa wonders how Rammatra—the leader of a terrorist organization—feels about seeing Tracer in a cop skin. Gee, I wonder how Tracer feels seeing the leader of the terrorist organization she was sent to stop? But also: It’s a video game about shooting at the other team in colorful multiplayer matches. Why are you spending your time wailing and rending garments and gnashing teeth over this stuff? Over there in Call Of Duty we have soldiers blasting each other to smithereens. Soldiers who, in the game’s campaign, illegally travel to third-world countries to stop terrorists. But a Constable Tracer skin somehow ranks higher on the outrage totem pole? (Franky, neither of these things is outrageous, I just find the ranking a bit confusing).

Mercante also argues that Blizzard could “keep the “cop” bit quiet” but doesn’t explain why. Her assumption is apparently that police are not just bad but uniquely bad—to the point that police should never be included in video games for any reason (unless they’re included as a critique of police, I suspect). And while I agree fully that there are bad cops and corrupt police departments, and while I have long supported efforts at police reform (though not efforts at ‘defunding the police’) I find this kind of argument juvenile and naïve in the extreme. People talk a big game about how bad cops are right up until they find themselves in a dangerous situation, or have their car stolen, or any number of other situations in which police are the only thing standing between you and something bad happening. It’s not perfect, I get it, but we don’t live in a Utopia where nothing ever goes wrong. Violent criminals really do exist, some of whom are capable of doing terrible things. I get tired of this notion that all cops are somehow bad and that even including something like an innocuous constable skin in a multiplayer shooter is morally questionable.

There is no case being made here beyond ‘cops are bad, Blizzard is bad to include a cop skin’ and that’s just not an argument. It’s a declaration. It’s preaching to the choir.

Mercante does have one good idea, though: Roadhog should get a police skin! Make it so, Blizzard!