Last week, I stumbled upon Overwatch porn. I wasn’t looking for it—I know as much about Overwatch as I do about sports, cars, or how to talk to my parents about what I write—but it’s not hard to stumble across porn when browsing the gigantic nudity repository that is the internet.
NSFW Warning: This post is so incredibly NSFW, even though I tried really hard to crop the images for minimum genitalia. FOLLOW THE LINKS AT YOUR OWN PERIL.
The first time I saw Overwatch, I assumed it was a Pixar trailer. Widowmaker and Reaper sparred with Winston, a cartoonish gorilla scientist, while Tracer zapped around in the background, giggling like a cockney kid in a candy store. It was goofy, not sexy—the butts that would, over time, become polished and pert like glistening hams were just functional posteriors back then. Times were simpler. I am less innocent now.
There were a few things that stood out to me while I browsed through the surprisingly broad selection of Overwatch porn.
Firstly, to absolutely no one’s surprise, the people doing the penetration in almost every video are headless, which is to say that they have the implication of a head, but they’re all cropped off. Evidently, no one’s interested in the person who managed to get into Mercy’s panties, as long as they’re packing something big enough to put a permanent look of lusty worry on her face—you know, the one that says “oh dear, I think I can feel you brushing up against my lungs.”
Secondly, everyone in Overwatch is incredibly flexible. Legs over heads, backs arched like someone in dire need of a chiropractor, and the ever-popular tits-and-ass angle that movie posters love so much. It’s hardly surprising that fictional CGI characters in porn are able to bend their bodies like sweaty fuckpretzels, but it makes me feel 90 years old. One particular clip featured Pharah being double penetrated, and I just couldn’t stop worrying about perineal tearing.
But thirdly—and most importantly—the quality is so very, very high. My knowledge of video game-related porn extends about as far as that live-action 笔辞办é尘辞苍 porn with the haunted Pikachu-Pennywise creature that doesn’t so much scream “sexy” as it does just regular screaming. But Overwatch porn is a genre all of its own: created by a small number of Patreon-funded animators who are able to recreate, in loving detail, what Mercy might look like if she was getting a sudsy dicking in the shower.
Overwatch porn—which is no means the only type of video game porn of this quality that I found—is fully animated, usually about 10-30 seconds long, usually voice acted, with impressive audio design that captures all the gross body noises that might happen during sex. Sure, the boobs might be overly jiggly, and some of the gasps of pleasure are a little too close to sobs, but the animation is amazing—subtle movements of flesh and hair, detailed fabric simulations, lifelike surfaces, realistic lighting—some of these animators are making almost $6,000 a month on Patreon for their work, and I’m not surprised. Even if someone needs to tell them that buttholes aren’t usually that spacious.
A large number of the Overwatch porn scenarios are pretty basic: Mercy giving a secret footjob in a fast food restaurant, D.va putting an entire candy cane up her chimney, Widowmaker Snapchatting herself banging in the park—any variation on character, sex act and location, really—but others take the character’s personality and preferences into account, like D.va in the arcade with her “favorite joystick” or Widowmaker deepthroating a baguette (apparently she’s French, which is one of the things I’d know if I’d ever played Overwatch).
I realize that many of you have probably heard of, or seen, Overwatch porn, and therefore to you this post might read like a toddler patiently explaining the nuances of using the Big Boy toilet to his parents. But, as someone who wasn’t really aware that 3D animated porn existed in such quality, quantity and specificity, I’m impressed—even if you, dear reader, are over it.
Of course, it’s not all sunshine and daisies in Overwatch porn-land. It has a lot of the same issues as the porn industry as a whole. Pharah always seems to be portrayed as far whiter than she is, Brigitte is heavily slimmed down, and there’s no sign of Zarya and very few videos involving Mei. It’s clear that the people making these videos are into a very specific, predominantly white, and almost always skinny version of women.
Why is that bad, if that’s what these creators and their audiences are into Well, if the porn industry—and the game industry—showcases conventionally attractive, thin white women over all other body types, races, gender presentations, and so on, that’s going to become the default for desirability. That default, in turn, affects the self-esteem of people who don’t look like that, as well as the general consensus on what’s considered “hot,” which is to say, “acceptable.”
(Also, far too many of the models don’t have clitorises. Hoo boy.)
There’s also a fair bit of really nasty homophobia and transphobia that I found amongst some of the creators of Overwatch videos. Apart from how bigoted and wrong it is to be like that in the modern day, it’s always dismaying to see porn dominated by assholes in more than one way. Straight men aren’t your only audience, you know.
There is, of course, a conversation to be had about the sinister nature of photorealistic CGI porn. In an age where we can recreate Grand Moff Tarkin and get rid of Henry Cavill’s moustache, it doesn’t take a genius to know the road we’re heading down—and we may already be there with the rise of deepfakes. Let’s just hope people stick to fantasy characters for as long as possible.