Last night I was scrolling through TikTok in the midst of an edible comedown, and I stumbled upon something so ridiculous, so cringe, so brilliant, that I couldnât believe I had yet to see it before. Itâs called Maverwatch, and itâs a 2018 hype video for the NBAâs Dallas Mavericks that features its star players doubling as Overwatch characters.
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Edited to look like an Overwatch play-of-the-game clip, which highlights a particularly gnarly play (usually a multi-kill) at the end of every match, this minute-long video feels like something my high brain cooked up in a daydream. But itâs not. This clip is real, and every second is transfixing, a strange mix of car-wreck tragedy and knee-slapping comedy. You canât deny, however, that the editing is top-tier, with the all-too-familiar ding sounds indicating an Overwatch kill, the Overwatch font showing off âeliminationsâ of rival players getting stunted on, and the in-game music swelling in-between each wooden NBA player delivery of a heroâs line.
Athletes are, by and large, not known for their acting and line-reading skills. In the rare chance that you get an athlete with a glittering personality who can actually say dialogue without sounding like a kid forced to read out loud during class, teams will push them to the forefront of marketing materials and commercial opportunities (Eli Manning, Tom Brady) or even let them play the lead in a film (LeBron James, Michael Jordan). I can say with some confidence that none of the 2018 Dallas Mavericks players have the same je ne sais quoi as James or Brady, but that only makes the Maverwatch experience better.
The man behind Maverwatch
The clip begins with Dirk Nowitzki aping Soldier: 76âs ultimate ability line (âIâve got you in my sightsâ) while pretending to activate an imaginary visor before cutting to clips of him sinking threes.
âDirk got Soldier because heâs the rugged old leader of the team,â Austin Guttery, former in-game media creator for the Dallas Mavericks and creator of Maverwatch, told Kotaku via email.
The second player highlighted is former Mavs center Deandre Jordan, who pretends to pop a Lucio ult (âoh, letâs break it downâ) under the nickname âShootscio.â Help me. âJordan got Lucio because of his great defensive plays and his ability to keep the team alive,â Guttery explained.
But when it came time to assign Mavericks point guard and Grandmaster Overwatch player Luka Doncic a character, things got a little heated. âLuka actually reeeeeally wanted to be Hanzo, since thatâs who he usually plays, but there was a player on the team, Wes Matthews, who was known for pretending to shoot a bow and arrow after each shot during the games, so naturally we HAD to make him Hanzo,â Guttery said. âI picked Luka to be Junkrat because of his blonde hair. Luka was the tiniest bit salty and tried to talk us into making him Hanzo, but we had already shot Wesâs part, and we only got one quick shot with each player every year.â
The other players were assigned based on any connections Guttery could make between them and an Overwatch heroâor if he thought they could manage to pull off a good enough mime of a characterâs moves. No, I cannot stop laughing at Luka pretending to pull a Junkrat RIP-Tire.
Aside from the drama that came with assigning Mavs players their Overwatch counterparts, Guttery says that it took ages for him to get the video approved because his boss âdidnât actually know what Overwatch was.â But telling him that Doncic was a huge Overwatch fan âreally helped sell it.â The clip was shot during the teamâs media day, and aired on the in-arena screens during a lull in gameplay to a âpretty good reactionâ from fans.
âI almost got fired!â he related cheerily. âAfter our videos air in-game, we usually donât put them out online until after the season, or unless we get permission from [owner Mark] Cuban to run them. But I was so excited about how this one turned out, I really wanted to see how the Overwatch community would react to it. So I posted it on Reddit and within the day it BLEW UPâŠIt eventually caught the eye of my boss who got, um, pretty upset that it was out there, and he was afraid that if Cuban saw this, we wouldnât be making videos for them anymore, so I removed it. Luckily Cuban never got wind of it, so it was a non-issue.â
But Overwatch developer Blizzard did indeed see the video, and sent Guttery a âreally nice Widowmaker figureâ that the team kept on display at the office. And now, that very same video is making the rounds on social media yet again. Time is a flat circle, but Luka Doncic is no longer a Hanzo main. Itâs Zarya now.
Roadhog is one of Overwatch 2âs quieter heroes. Where some characters like Tracer and Junkrat are real chatterboxes, the chain-slinging, shotgun-toting Tank is a man of few words. That changes with the gameâs latest limited-time mode, which makes him the announcer. Not only is he the one to declare your team the victor, but he also has nicknames for several members of the cast at the hero select screen. Theyâre delicious roasts of nearly every character that also offer a deeper look at a character who doesnât usually get a ton of spotlight in Overwatchâs grander story.
The PachiMarchi event includes several cosmetics based on the in-universe Pachimari mascot that Roadhog is a big fan of, a few of which originate from when a similar event ran in the first Overwatch back in 2021. However, the new 3v3 deathmatch mode Catch-A-Mari is the real treat because Roadhog voice actor Josh Petersdorf delivers a concise, pitch-perfect roast of most of your faves as you build your team before a match. Unfortunately, there isnât one for every character. According to senior writer and narrative designer Justin Groot, the nicknames in the mode now were part of an hour-long brainstorming session before deadline, which means a few favorites didnât get a nickname. But the ones that are here are delightful.
A few standouts include:
Cassidy – Cactus Bootbuckle
Doomfist – Largefist
Genji – 500 Edges
Mei Princess Icicle
Ramattra – Thunko, the Metal Man
Sigma – Gravity Frank
Zarya – Gravity Janice
Soldier: 76 – Legs of America
Widowmaker – Scopetta Baguette
Winston – Mister Nanners
All of these are very funny caricatures of each of these heroes, but my favorite one is Sojourn, who gets her full government name âFormer Overwatch Acting Commander Vivian âSojournâ Chase.â It shows she is not to be fucked with and that Roadhog, despite roasting everyone else, respects her. 500 Edges is such a good name for Genji because heâs got a bunch of sharp weaponry at his disposal, but heâs also an edgelord, and itâs fun to see Overwatch poke fun at itself like this. Legs of America points to Soldier: 76 being from the US of A, but the characterâs history has always made him feel like a Captain America analog for the series, so needling his patriotism is a good gag. They could have called him Americaâs Ass if they really wanted to lean into the comparison, but Soldier famously has no ass.
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Itâs a small touch, but it feels like Overwatch 2âs writing has leaned harder into both fleshing out how characters relate to each other and into the fandomâs perception of them, as well. And itâs nice to get a sense of how Roadhog views other heroes, even if the relationships arenât quite as overt. Hopefully the next time this mode rolls around, the team will add more nicknames for the whole cast.
Thereâs a phenomenon in the Overwatch community that has persisted through the original gameâs 2016 release, its gradual decline, and the launch of the sequel. This phenomenon is an interesting one, a sort of âIYKYKâ situation that requires membership in a specific community in order to recognize its members: in Overwatch, a lot of queer players choose to play as healers. Maybe you havenât noticed thisâmaybe youâre straight (Iâm sorry) and canât spot an alphabet army soldier in your lobby, but if youâre in the LGBTQIA+ community and play Overwatch 2, you know exactly what Iâm talking about.
Mercy mains with rainbow player icons, Moira one-tricks wearing her Bowie skin, two-stacks who instalock support with some iteration of â-ussyâ in their gamertagâif you pay attention, youâll see that the gays are everywhere in Overwatch, and most of the time theyâre playing healer.
But this is all anecdotal evidence, right? Surely gays donât gravitate to playing healers that disproportionately, do they? After hundreds of hours logged in Overwatch 2 comp , most of which I played as a healer, I felt a burning desire to delve deeper into this phenomenon and figure out why I kept encountering fellow gays in the support role. I had my theories: queer people are used to supporting their found families in the real world, support roles are notoriously less toxic, many of the healer characters are femme or androgynousâbut I needed more.
So, I put out a call for âgay peopleâ on Twitter, I interviewed players and peers, and I spoke to a queer-identifying counselor, all in an attempt to properly investigate Overwatchâs gay healing agenda. The result is a fascinating look at a subculture within a subculture, one marked by real-world social queues, kink play, emotional connections, and, unfortunately, a frustrating lack of scientific research.
Gay icons
Image: Blizzard / Nico D.
The most obvious answer (and one of the more common ones I received on Twitter) as to why queer people play healers in Overwatch is that the characters themselves are gay icons. Even though the only two openly queer characters are both DPS heroes, the lineup of support characters looks a lot like the line outside of Happyfun Hideaway on a Saturday night: the uber-feminine and soft Mercy, the muscular and bold Brigitte, the sweet but strong Baptiste, the spunky and sarcastic Kiriko, the calm and collected Zenyatta, the androgynous and tall Moira, the soothing and maturely sexy Ana. Compared to your typical FPS lineup, and even most of the other Overwatch characters (save for outliers like Zarya and Mei), the support squad in this game feels demonstrably queer.
Overwatch player and freelance writer Nico D. echoes this sentiment via email, saying the characters âare designed in such a way to be desirable to queer communitiesâMoira is a REALLY good example of this, but I also know a lot of queer women or other queer people who are attracted to women that love Mercy, Ana, and Brig.â Nico suggests this has to do with the futuristic, sci-fi fashions depicted in the game âthat also happen to be on characters with typically queer-coded appearances like slightly more atypical body types/silhouettes/haircuts.â
That definitely describes most Overwatch support heroes. And though Mercy is slim and white and traditionally attractive (Blizzard does, after all, historically have a problem with portraying womenâs bodies), she still doesnât feel as aggressively sexualized as someone like Widowmaker, whose impossibly long legs and massive tits scream The Male Gaze everytime she runs (in heels) across the screen.
Others who identify as queer and play Overwatch predominantly as healers tell me that the support characters are âgay iconsâ whose presence/vibes suggest queerness even though itâs not outright stated. âThey feel queerâ is a sentiment that, while scientifically impossible to prove, is consistently echoed in both messages to me and Overwatch community spaces. But âfeeling queerâ is a helluva lot different than being canonically queerâso why doesnât it seem like members of the community play Tracer and Soldier: 76 as much as they play healers?
Gender roles
Image: Blizzard
Venture into the Reddit or TikTok trenches in search of an answer as to why gay people play healers and youâll likely stumble across the âI canât aimâ meme. Like many internet fables, this one is somewhat rooted in reality. Evie Mae Barber, writer and narrative designer, tells me via Twitter DM that when she played Overwatch, she mained Lucio and Mercy because she finds healers in FPS titles ârequire less precision and more strategy,â whereas the DPS charactersâ effectiveness are largely rooted in accuracy.
A desire to avoid roles that require accuracy could be a side effect of traditional multiplayer FPS titles being largely unsafe spaces for women and non cis-het menâitâs hard to feel comfortable or competent in these roles when the skills you need to excel at them should have been honed in the dark and scary servers of Halo 3 or CS:GO, during a time when the mere hint of âothernessâ was met with viciousness, slurs, and threats.
The boysâ club of FPS titles may not exist in such severity today as it did in the early 2000s, but its effects linger. âThere was a meta-analysis done that had several results, specifically about Overwatch,â says Dr. Sarah Hays, a queer-identifying counselor at nonprofit org Game to Grow and director of programming at Queer Women of Esports, during a video call. âOf course, it was on a gender binary, but male esports competitors are seen as more competitive than female competitors. Female players believe support to be the easiest position to play and prefer to play it because they donât want to be blamed for not doing well.â She pauses. âThat meta study has a whole bunch of data. I just hate that itâs done on a gender binary.â
Itâs clear that the lack of adequate research around LGBTQIA+ gamers and the roles they choose to inhabit in multiplayer titles frustrates Dr. Hays. âMy plea is: âpeople, letâs do research on this because itâs so cool,ââ she says earnestly before returning to the meta study, combing through it to try and find some more connections to the theory at hand: âNon male-identified people tend towards picking a character that they can feel confident in. So they reduce harassment and they reduce some of that input. âItâs easier to play support because Iâm not getting as much shit, Iâm not getting blamed for that.â Thatâs something weâre seeing both based in research and generally: people want to look and appear and feel like they know what theyâre doing, so theyâre not going to receive flack for being another ignorant non-dude. Which sucks. But itâs true.â
Dr. Hays doesnât say this word during our chat, but it lingers overhead: toxicity. âI think queer folks trend toward support as it feels like the least toxic role or at least one that has less toxicity associated with them,â says Threshold Gamesâ community manager Colin Cummings in a DM. So, part of the reason queer-identiying gamers may be choosing healers is to avoid the rampant toxicity that comes with playing competitive FPS games. But how much do real-world experiences outside of gaming tie into choosing the support role?
Support systems
Image: Blizzard / Nico D.
Iâm pleased when one of my theories is echoed by a few fellow healers: queer people, so often forced to protect themselves because the government wonât protect them, so connected to found families made up of supportive friends, would naturally gravitate towards characters who provide safety and security.
âI donât think that itâs a far stretch to imagine that the fantasy of support or healers is appealing to groups of people who require communities around them for safety and affection,â Nico writes.
When I mention my theory in a DM with Eric Ravenscraft, product writer and reviewer at Wired, heâs on board, too. âHonestly, that wouldnât surprise me too much,â he writes. âSupport is very much herding cats, keeping your precious babies alive while theyâre getting chased down by a mean dude with a hammerâŠmost of the LGBTQIA+ folks I know live in a very found-family kinda space that becomes very protective of outside threats. Every single person I know in that space knows what itâs like to protect their friendsâor even randosâfrom a bigoted parent or institution or whathaveyou. That kinda mindset maps pretty cleanly onto keeping four randos you just met safe online.â
This social connection between support roles IRL and in Overwatch is something Dr. Hays âlovesâ during our chatâit clearly sparks her interest, and I can see her cogs turning on our video chat as she begins pondering the larger ramifications of this idea. âI wonder if there isnât a correlation between oppressed identity and feeling better as a person in the position of healer, because it means that you get to avoid the blame, but also you get to be reinforced as someone whoâs helpful and supportive, and more effective in that role? Yeah, because of the way that our real-life experiences have catered to that, as well.â
While Dr. Hays is clearly inspired by these ideas, she reiterates that thereâs just not enough research about this kind of stuff to provide us with much concrete evidence. She does, however, bring up a scientific study that leaves my jaw on the floor.
Piss play
I have used this image three times on Kotaku.com.Image: Blizzard / Kotaku
When I wrote about how Overwatch 2âs shorthand is a specific brand of twisted, the slang term for Moiraâs healing (pee) was at the top of my mind. So when Dr. Hays starts talking about a scientific study about Overwatchâs âhealsluts,â I am, as the kids say, gaggedâthe connections are there, drawn together by queer players who are, in fact, little freaks.
Assuming the role of a healslut, according to the study from Finnish academic journal Widerscreen, â[invites] players to deploy elements of BDSM kink and sexuality not merely within the vocabulary and design of the game, but also in a communal paratext surrounding the game involving forums, voice chat, and viral fan-designed images.â Kotaku already wrote about this kinky phenomenon almost eight years agoâa r/healslut moderator told writer Luke Winkie that healsluts take classic dominant and submissive roles that are synonymous with traditional BDSM and apply it to the roles laid out in Overwatch.
The tank (dom) protects and compliments the healers (subs), occasionally scolding them if they fail. Healsluts have one main duty, and itâs to protect their doms (DPS characters are considered darker, more violent versions of tanks, which makes sense if youâve ever tried to pocket heal a Genji). Though much of the writing about this community was published several years ago, I can confirm that r/healsluts is still an active subreddit.
In many cases, the Venn diagram of kink and queer communities is a circle, with kink playing an important role in Pride events and in the history and legacy of LGBTQIA+ people. Kink play in Overwatch is a âa way for resisting âmasculine-normative hegemonic fandomâ in video games,â according to the aforementioned study, and it persists even after Overwatch 1 was sunset in place of a free-to-play sequel.
So whether itâs because of cishet-y FPS pressure making support a more attractive role, social roles within found families that translate to games, the indefinable but still somewhat tangible queerness of the healer characters, or a preternatural need to heal big, dommy tanks, itâs very clear that there are a lot of LGBTQIA+ people playing support in Overwatch 2.
I could happily unpack this phenomenon in another 2,000 words, but maybe I should just leave it at what Kaitlin Jakola, managing editor at The Trace and former Gizmodo employee, had to say about it:
âI assume we all heal because gays love to be both extremely powerful and woefully unappreciated in our own time????â Work, bestie.
An inappropriate Overwatch 2 game mode reappeared, but itâs not one to get excited about. The mode, titled âsexual harassment simulator,â was played enough times that it appeared as one of the most popular over the weekend for some players, according to PC Gamer, which spotted the reappearance just before Blizzard quickly pulled it down.
Another âsexual harassment simulatorâ was discovered in October 2022, but both tasked players with knocking down Overwatch 2‘s female heroes (like Mercy and Widowmaker) while playing as the cowboy Cole Cassidy and repeatedly crouching over their bodies, apparently, as PC Gamer reported, with the word ârapingâŠâ until the character in question is labeled âpregnantâ as an AI-controlled Torbjorn supposedly fills the role of the baby. This is disgusting on so many levels itâs not even funny, especially because players are forced to play as Cassidy, previously known as McCree, the same name as the ousted Activision Blizzard developer who took part in the controversial âCosby Suiteâ meetups.
A screenshot of the custom mode was posted to Overwatchâs official subreddit by user Joyolo13, who simply asked: âWhat in godâs name?â
âLol I remember seeing this every day in [Overwatch 1],â said Redditor sw1nky. âCanât say Iâm surprised itâs still around, [to be honest].â
âMcCree is back in the game I guess,â said user FoulfrogBsc.
Kotaku was unable to find the custom game mode in Overwatch 2 as it appears Blizzard took the âsexual harassment simulatorâ offlineâfor now. So, it seems the company is aware that such a mode exists but might be having a hard time preventing it from reappearing in the game.
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âInappropriate or explicit content has absolutely no place in our game,â a Blizzard spokesperson told PC Gamer when the outlet asked about the first version of the mode last year. âWe immediately removed the user-created game mode once made aware of its existence. We are continually working to improve automatic filters to prevent inappropriate user-created content, and manually removing any that are not caught by the system.â
Kotaku reached out to Activision Blizzard for comment.
While this is at least the second time the âsexual harassment simulatorâ has popped up in Overwatch 2 specifically, players noted that a similar mode existed in some form in the original Overwatch game. At the time, players posted PSAs to warn the community about the offensive content. Of course, not all player-created game modes are this egregious. But it is concerning that this issue has come up more than once within a few months.
Suffer, as we have.Image: Blizzard Entertainment / Kotaku
Overwatch 2âs latest hero, Ramattra, is an omnic robot who mostly doesnât adhere to traditional human concepts of form and shape. But someone over at Blizzard decided that didnât have to be the case for his new skin for the gameâs Greek mythology-inspired event, and they gave him human feet.
Ramattraâs skin is based on Poseidon, the Greek god of the sea. It comes complete with a trident emote, tentacles that grow off his back when he changes into his tanky Nemesis form, and two sets of five little piggies courtesy of his new human feet. Blizzard, apparently not content to let that just be an unfortunate piece of knowledge we all have and can forget unless weâre actively playing Overwatch 2, posted a close-up of the feet in question, and asked us to âdiscussâ them. So, here we are.
The weird thing is, Overwatch has a bizarre, ongoing fascination with feet, both in-game and in its community, and people were quick to remind whoever is running the gameâs social media of this in the comments. One response included a chart of all the heroesâ feet Overwatch has shown (although it might need some updating, as this is the original game, not the sequel).
Another infamous instance of the Overwatch community going batty for feet was a user named Tyrone, who spent a lot of time on the gameâs forums asking for emotes, highlight intros, and skins that would expose certain charactersâ feetâthough no one knows what happened to them. Hopefully nothing is afoot, and Tyrone is doing okay.
Despite all this, while several characters have historically gone shoeless as they run toward the payload, Sigma, the last tank character added to Overwatchâs roster before the shift to its sequel, is perhaps the most notorious for letting the dogs breathe because itâs a near constant for his character. Originally, the floating, rock-throwing scientist left his shoes at home as part of a questionable design choice meant to represent how patients in mental institutions often go without shoes to mitigate self-harm through laces. In the years since, and with Overwatch 2 getting a complete refresh of its character interactions, Sigmaâs bare feet have become the butt of several jokes, such as Widowmaker remarking someone should get him some shoes after landing a kill.
So Overwatch and its communityâs fascination with feet continues well into 2023, and now theyâve dragged Ramattra into these sinful ways. He is an innocent robot. He doesnât deserve this. Havenât we suffered, as he himself says in-game, enough?
