There’s a phenomenon within the Overwatch group that has endured by means of the unique sport’s 2016 launch, its gradual decline, and the launch of the sequel. This phenomenon is an fascinating one, a form of “IYKYK” state of affairs that requires membership in a selected group with a purpose to acknowledge its members: in Overwatch, a variety of queer gamers select to play as healers. Perhaps you haven’t seen this—possibly you’re straight (I’m sorry) and might’t spot an alphabet military soldier in your foyer, however in the event you’re within the LGBTQIA+ group and play Overwatch 2, precisely what I’m speaking about.
Mercy mains with rainbow participant icons, Moira one-tricks sporting her Bowie pores and skin, two-stacks who instalock assist with some iteration of “-ussy” of their gamertag—in the event you concentrate, you’ll see that the gays are all over the place in Overwatch, and more often than not they’re taking part in healer.
However that is all anecdotal proof, proper? Certainly gays don’t gravitate to taking part in healers that disproportionately, do they? After a whole bunch of hours logged in Overwatch 2 comp , most of which I performed as a healer, I felt a burning want to delve deeper into this phenomenon and determine why I stored encountering fellow gays within the assist function. I had my theories: queer individuals are used to supporting their discovered households in the actual world, assist roles are notoriously much less poisonous, most of the healer characters are femme or androgynous—however I wanted extra.
So, I put out a name for “homosexual folks” on Twitter, I interviewed gamers and friends, and I spoke to a queer-identifying counselor, all in an try and correctly examine Overwatch’s homosexual therapeutic agenda. The result’s a captivating take a look at a subculture inside a subculture, one marked by real-world social queues, kink play, emotional connections, and, sadly, a irritating lack of scientific analysis.
Homosexual icons
The obvious reply (and one of many extra widespread ones I obtained on Twitter) as to why queer folks play healers in Overwatch is that the characters themselves are homosexual icons. Though the one two overtly queer characters are each DPS heroes, the lineup of assist characters appears loads like the road exterior of Happyfun Hideaway on a Saturday evening: the uber-feminine and mushy Mercy, the muscular and daring Brigitte, the candy however sturdy Baptiste, the spunky and sarcastic Kiriko, the calm and picked up Zenyatta, the androgynous and tall Moira, the soothing and maturely attractive Ana. In comparison with your typical FPS lineup, and even a lot of the different Overwatch characters (save for outliers like Zarya and Mei), the assist squad on this sport feels demonstrably queer.
Overwatch participant and freelance author Nico D. echoes this sentiment by way of electronic mail, saying the characters “are designed in such a option to be fascinating to queer communities—Moira is a REALLY good instance of this, however I additionally know a variety of queer girls or different queer people who find themselves interested in girls that love Mercy, Ana, and Brig.” Nico suggests this has to do with the futuristic, sci-fi fashions depicted within the sport “that additionally occur to be on characters with sometimes queer-coded appearances like barely extra atypical physique sorts/silhouettes/haircuts.”
That positively describes most Overwatch assist heroes. And although Mercy is slim and white and historically enticing (Blizzard does, in spite of everything, traditionally have an issue with portraying girls’s our bodies), she nonetheless doesn’t really feel as aggressively sexualized as somebody like Widowmaker, whose impossibly lengthy legs and large tits scream The Male Gaze everytime she runs (in heels) throughout the display screen.
Others who establish as queer and play Overwatch predominantly as healers inform me that the assist characters are “homosexual icons” whose presence/vibes counsel queerness despite the fact that it’s not outright said. “They really feel queer” is a sentiment that, whereas scientifically inconceivable to show, is constantly echoed in each messages to me and Overwatch group areas. However “feeling queer” is a helluva lot completely different than being canonically queer—so why doesn’t it look like members of the group play Tracer and Soldier: 76 as a lot as they play healers?
Gender roles
Enterprise into the Reddit or TikTok trenches searching for a solution as to why homosexual folks play healers and also you’ll seemingly stumble throughout the “I can’t intention” meme. Like many web fables, this one is considerably rooted in actuality. Evie Mae Barber, author and narrative designer, tells me by way of Twitter DM that when she performed Overwatch, she mained Lucio and Mercy as a result of she finds healers in FPS titles “require much less precision and extra technique,” whereas the DPS characters’ effectiveness are largely rooted in accuracy.
A want to keep away from roles that require accuracy might be a aspect impact of conventional multiplayer FPS titles being largely unsafe areas for ladies and non cis-het males—it’s onerous to really feel comfy or competent in these roles when the abilities it is advisable to excel at them ought to have been honed at the hours of darkness and scary servers of Halo 3 or CS:GO, throughout a time when the mere trace of “otherness” was met with viciousness, slurs, and threats.
The boys’ membership of FPS titles could not exist in such severity in the present day because it did within the early 2000s, however its results linger. “There was a meta-analysis performed that had a number of outcomes, particularly about Overwatch,” says Dr. Sarah Hays, a queer-identifying counselor at nonprofit org Sport to Develop and director of programming at Queer Ladies of Esports, throughout a video name. “After all, it was on a gender binary, however male esports rivals are seen as extra aggressive than feminine rivals. Feminine gamers imagine assist to be the simplest place to play and like to play it as a result of they don’t wish to be blamed for not doing nicely.” She pauses. “That meta research has a complete bunch of knowledge. I simply hate that it’s performed on a gender binary.”
It’s clear that the dearth of sufficient analysis round LGBTQIA+ players and the roles they select to inhabit in multiplayer titles frustrates Dr. Hays. “My plea is: ‘folks, let’s do analysis on this as a result of it’s so cool,’” she says earnestly earlier than returning to the meta research, combing by means of it to attempt to discover some extra connections to the idea at hand: “Non male-identified folks have a tendency in the direction of selecting a personality that they’ll really feel assured in. In order that they scale back harassment they usually scale back a few of that enter. ‘It’s simpler to play assist as a result of I’m not getting as a lot shit, I’m not getting blamed for that.’ That’s one thing we’re seeing each based mostly in analysis and customarily: folks wish to look and feel and appear like they know what they’re doing, so that they’re not going to obtain flack for being one other ignorant non-dude. Which sucks. However it’s true.”
Dr. Hays doesn’t say this phrase throughout our chat, however it lingers overhead: toxicity. “I feel queer of us pattern towards assist because it feels just like the least poisonous function or a minimum of one which has much less toxicity related to them,” says Threshold Video games’ group supervisor Colin Cummings in a DM. So, a part of the explanation queer-identiying players could also be selecting healers is to keep away from the rampant toxicity that comes with taking part in aggressive FPS video games. However how a lot do real-world experiences exterior of gaming tie into selecting the assist function?
Assist programs
I’m happy when one in all my theories is echoed by a couple of fellow healers: queer folks, so usually compelled to guard themselves as a result of the federal government received’t defend them, so linked to discovered households made up of supportive associates, would naturally gravitate in the direction of characters who present security and safety.
“I don’t assume that it’s a far stretch to think about that the fantasy of assist or healers is interesting to teams of people that require communities round them for security and affection,” Nico writes.
Once I point out my concept in a DM with Eric Ravenscraft, product author and reviewer at Wired, he’s on board, too. “Truthfully, that wouldn’t shock me an excessive amount of,” he writes. “Assist could be very a lot herding cats, conserving your valuable infants alive whereas they’re getting chased down by a imply dude with a hammer…a lot of the LGBTQIA+ of us I do know stay in a really found-family kinda house that turns into very protecting of out of doors threats. Each single particular person I do know in that house is aware of what it’s like to guard their associates—and even randos—from a bigoted father or mother or establishment or whathaveyou. That kinda mindset maps fairly cleanly onto conserving 4 randos you simply met secure on-line.”
This social connection between assist roles IRL and in Overwatch is one thing Dr. Hays “loves” throughout our chat—it clearly sparks her curiosity, and I can see her cogs turning on our video chat as she begins pondering the bigger ramifications of this concept. “I ponder if there isn’t a correlation between oppressed id and feeling higher as an individual within the place of healer, as a result of it implies that you get to keep away from the blame, but in addition you get to be bolstered as somebody who’s useful and supportive, and more practical in that function? Yeah, due to the best way that our real-life experiences have catered to that, as nicely.”
Whereas Dr. Hays is clearly impressed by these concepts, she reiterates that there’s simply not sufficient analysis about this sort of stuff to supply us with a lot concrete proof. She does, nevertheless, carry up a scientific research that leaves my jaw on the ground.
Piss play
Once I wrote about how Overwatch 2’s shorthand is a selected model of twisted, the slang time period for Moira’s therapeutic (pee) was on the prime of my thoughts. So when Dr. Hays begins speaking a couple of scientific research about Overwatch’s “healsluts,” I’m, as the youngsters say, gagged—the connections are there, drawn collectively by queer gamers who’re, in reality, little freaks.
Assuming the function of a healslut, in accordance with the research from Finnish tutorial journal Widerscreen, “[invites] gamers to deploy parts of BDSM kink and sexuality not merely inside the vocabulary and design of the sport, but in addition in a communal paratext surrounding the sport involving boards, voice chat, and viral fan-designed photographs.” Kotaku already wrote about this kinky phenomenon nearly eight years in the past—a r/healslut moderator instructed author Luke Winkie that healsluts take traditional dominant and submissive roles which might be synonymous with conventional BDSM and apply it to the roles specified by Overwatch.
The tank (dom) protects and compliments the healers (subs), often scolding them in the event that they fail. Healsluts have one predominant obligation, and it’s to guard their doms (DPS characters are thought-about darker, extra violent variations of tanks, which is sensible in the event you’ve ever tried to pocket heal a Genji). Although a lot of the writing about this group was revealed a number of years in the past, I can affirm that r/healsluts continues to be an energetic subreddit.
In lots of circumstances, the Venn diagram of kink and queer communities is a circle, with kink taking part in an essential function in Satisfaction occasions and within the historical past and legacy of LGBTQIA+ folks. Kink play in Overwatch is a “a method for resisting ‘masculine-normative hegemonic fandom’ in video video games,” in accordance with the aforementioned research, and it persists even after Overwatch 1 was sundown rather than a free-to-play sequel.
So whether or not it’s due to cishet-y FPS strain making assist a extra enticing function, social roles inside discovered households that translate to video games, the indefinable however nonetheless considerably tangible queerness of the healer characters, or a preternatural must heal large, dommy tanks, it’s very clear that there are a variety of LGBTQIA+ folks taking part in assist in Overwatch 2.
I might fortunately unpack this phenomenon in one other 2,000 phrases, however possibly I ought to simply go away it at what Kaitlin Jakola, managing editor at The Trace and former Gizmodo worker, needed to say about it:
“I assume all of us heal as a result of gays like to be each extraordinarily highly effective and woefully unappreciated in our personal time????” Work, bestie.