Arriving just in time for Ariana Grande, Street Fighter characters Cammy and Guile are dropping in Fortnite this weekend. Personally I think Guile favours the Dangerous Woman era, while Cammy is more of a Thank U, Next girl. Even if they’re just here for the gig though, Fortnite has become an endless cavalcade of crossovers these days. I mean, Cammy and Guile aren’t even the first ones from their series – Chun-Li and Ryu have been on the battle bus for ages. While Guile is pretty unsurprising, Cammy is not the choice I would have expected to join the game next, but I’m glad she’s finally being given the spotlight she deserves.
Ryu and Chun-Li were no-brainers for the first picks. Ken might feel disappointed at missing out, but considering he and Ryu started life as palette swaps, Chun-Li obviously offers a bit more variety. After those, you’d have Guile and his weird haircut next in line. I don’t think many people would expect Cammy to be next, though. It’s more likely folk would pick M. Bison, Blanka, Akuma, or maybe even Dhalsim. Honestly, I’d have been less surprised by E. Honda or Vega. It’s not that Cammy is terrible – she’s one of my favourites – but she’s consistently overlooked, so Fornite’s decision to highlight her is a surprise to be sure, but a welcome one.
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It may just be that Fortnite wanted to continue the gender split for Street Fighter, following up Chun-Li with Cammy. If that’s the case, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that – Fortnite has a diverse playerbase, so giving them crossover characters that offer a greater range of representation is always a good thing. It would also be something of a redemption for Cammy, if that were true. For her entire existence, she has been unfavourably compared to Chun-Li. While male characters get to exist, the women have to be directly compared. We already have a girl, what do we need another one for? That Cammy is being given equal footing with Chun-Li is justice for all the times the characters have been needlessly pitted against each other.
Having said that, I’m not entirely sure it is true. This isn’t Fortnite’s first rodeo, and previous crossovers have not been quite so conscious of gender. There are three professional footballers in the game – Neymar Jr., Harry Kane, and Marco Reus. While there are no female players with the star power of Neymar and Kane, the likes of Alex Morgan, Megan Rapinoe, and Fran Kirby might argue they deserve a place in the game over Reus – especially given that Reus was added in a Euro 2020 promotion despite failing to make the Germany squad. In the Marvel crossover, 25 new skins arrived. Six were female. DC had a slightly higher ratio, with four female skins out of 12 total.
If Fortnite did choose Cammy out of gender balance, then that’s great. I don’t see why that should be used against her. While I can’t imagine that was too high on Epic’s list of priorities, I don't think it's an issue if it was. Despite Fortnite’s reputation, and the younger, more casual nature of its fanbase, positive representation has been a theme of the game recently. Even when the iconic Superman was brought into the island, the face of the season was original character Dr. Sloane, a Black woman. If Fortnite wants to be more mindful of things like that moving forward, it only makes the game’s appeal grow even wider. It’s not like there aren’t enough straight white men in Fortnite for you to choose from.
Regardless, I don’t want Cammy’s arrival in Fortnite to be reduced to that. There are so many crossover characters that it’s easy to miss them, but Cammy has spent her whole existence being held back by her gender. She wasn’t Chun-Li, and that was all there is to it. Now she gets to be one of the faces of the series in Fortnite, and that’s worth celebrating, rather than dissecting why she makes the cut and Vega misses out.
Part of it is bias, with Cammy's attacks suiting my button-mashing style and her being British causing her to go up in my estimations. But more than that, it's healthy for Fortnite to consider which characters it includes in crossovers, sometimes ducking the more obvious option in favour of someone more interesting. I mean, would anyone have guessed Psylocke would be representing Marvel? Fortnite keeps us on our toes – Cammy is the latest in a long line to prove that.
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