I spend a lot of time thinking about criticism as a practice, since it is my primary form of writing. I learn more about my own writing style reading the words of Roger Ebert, Pauline Kael and my own contemporaries than any run of the mill ‘how to write good’ manual. As such I’m quite invested in the state of criticism as a practice, the cultural cache of the critic, and the place of the critique as the relationship between media and consumer continues to change. Nowadays everything is either comfort food that you’re thinking too much about if you bother to suggest that there is better cuisine just around the corner or so-called progressive work that you’re doing harm by suggesting that there are more transgressive and cathartic ideas to be found deeper in the fringes of community art. There is a lot of great work about very specific pieces of art that reflect this change in how a new generation consumes and discusses it, and we have a particularly odd beast on the horizon. This week brings the release of a video game based on the Harry Potter book series. If you don’t know why a gigantic release of a new Harry Potter media spinoff is causing reservation among some folks, then I suggest putting this essay down and doing an hour of Google rabbit hole diving. Start with “jk rowling trans.” Anyhow, this wizard game will likely go down as one of the most important releases of the year, and it’s only February. If you spend any time on Twitter you’ve likely run across people advocating for a boycott of the game met with other people who just want to be left alone with their nostalgia and arguing that there’s no ethical consumption under capitalism anyway. And just to get my perspective on this out of the way: I am not going to buy or play this game, I am not going to watch streams or gameplay of it, I am only going to talk about it from an external analytical perspective. I believe a boycott of the game is the best course of action, and talking about it in any manner less than deconstructive (just saying ‘the game is bad’ and leaving it at that is not worthy contribution) is a waste of time and only contributing to the cultural footprint of JK Rowling. This essay is meant to be a deconstruction of not the wizard game, but the cultural conversation happening around it, Harry Potter, Rowling, and as many bits of minutiae I can possibly fit by casting that net. I’ve spent years listening to every possible defense of engaging and not engaging with Harry Potter in a post-"J.K. Rowling Writes about Her Reasons for Speaking out on Sex and Gender Issues" world, many of which have bled into various press reviews of the wizard game. So, let’s skip to the game itself and how those initial conversations about Harry Potter have bled into its reception.

First we must question the scenario we have found ourselves in. Since 2020 Rowling has gone on to become the face of anti-trans rhetoric in the US and the UK, which put the developers of the wizard game in between a rock and a hard place. One, they are a team of people hired to create a product with the goal of bettering their company and having their needs met in a capitalist society by putting in the work. It is not fair to suggest that developers of the wizard game, from bottom level programmers to director Alan Tew, are in the wrong for finishing the game. Tew has made a very generic statement about his position and his hopes for the game to IGN on the cusp of the game’s launch:

“For us, it’s making sure that the audience, who always dreamed of having this game, had the opportunity to feel welcomed back. That they have a home here and that it’s a good place to tell their story.”

As for gaming journalists, people have a similar hierarchy of needs. These people are doing a job in order to have their needs met first and foremost. For many people whose words I will attempt to deconstruct in this essay, their words are how they pay the bills. But we can make our ends meet without sacrificing our credentials as writers and our morals as human beings. This is a rare case where the call for a boycott of a piece of art has very little to do with the content of the art in its own right, but that purchasing it will empower Rowling further as she continues her campaign against transgender people. So what is a gaming journalist’s responsibility in all of this? I say ‘gaming journalist’ and not ‘game reviewer’ or ‘video game critic’ because the first term is the one usually associated with this occupation, but also because the place of gaming journalism in a larger food chain of industry is rather suspect. Think of it this way: game development and publishing companies sit at the top, then gaming websites/publications, the individuals who write for them, and the publications’ readers and consumers at large sit at the bottom. Each of these bodies have a symbiotic relationship with one another. Developers make games and send review copies to publications, publications give those review copies to certain writers, those writers churn out reviews, the consumer reads the review and chooses whether or not to buy the game. In some online circles it is speculated that gaming press has much more of a mutual back scratching understanding with developers than usually comes with this sort of relationship between art factory and press junket, to a point of speculating that if you were to write too negatively about a game that isn’t absolutely broken spyware, your publication could lose out on the publisher’s next few rounds of review copies. To sum it up: gaming journalism is more an extension of marketing via a 24 hour news cycle where the review of a game holds only a fraction of importance compared to providing readers with how-to guides substituting for what should be a game’s manual, listicles about things you may not have noticed in the latest trailer, and regurgitations of game ‘news’ already available from the distributor’s own marketing material. Even in the reviews, which should suggest some artistic viewpoint, many typical game reviews follow the same beats and answer the same survey questions about the game, for example:

• Does the game perform well enough on the platform the writer has chosen to play it on?

• Is the gameplay innovative or derivative, and what does it derive from?

• Is the story well-told? If not, is the lack of a well-told story negligible in the name of fun?

• Is the runtime of the game appropriate, with enough variety of things for the player to do?

These questions do not lend themselves to much thinking about other forms of art and how they might intersect with the game in question. Indeed, gaming journalists either do not possess or refuse to apply any broader cultural knowledge beyond ‘this game is [Thing You Know #1] meets [Thing You Know #2],’ one of which must be a video game for the mathematical equation to resolve properly. The only time cultural knowledge need be applied is when a game is directly derived from another piece of media (such as the subject of this essay), be it an adaptation of something existing in another medium or the latest iteration of a tentpole game franchise, and a verdict on whether or not fans of said piece of media will feel satisfied in giving their time and money to the latest addition to the canon. Knowledge of video game canon may apply when a game reaches a certain lofty height in the eyes of the writer, earning its place on a pedestal next to the usually universally acknowledged tentpoles of the medium. Most gaming journalists do not discuss games as if they are art, more they discuss games like they are theme park attractions. Is it worth spending a decent amount of money on? Does it provide the appropriate tenets sought by enjoyers of theme parks? Does it reach the same height of enjoyability of this other theme park attraction that is completely different than it?

Gaming journalism is not a place where people discuss art, it is a place where people discuss the value of an investment in a particular brand of leisure. In the near decade since Gamergate, gaming journalists have entered into a tenuous relationship with online weirdos who light torches at the briefest sight of ‘wokeness in my video games,’ which is why we’ve been stuck in this liminal space of cultural conversation for so long. The wizard game is a unique case, since the conversation happening around it from a perspective of ethics has nothing to do with the content of the game itself.

To briefly address the broad reception and content of the game, the wizard game is receiving pretty positive reviews all things considered. I’ve seen multiple ‘this is the game fans are waiting for’ claims to the point where they might as well be the same sentence copied across every popular site with a video game journalist on staff. Many jokes have already been made online about how the game cribs the Dark Souls dodge roll but doesn’t think to add a stamina meter, contains a sixth of the number of spells you can find in one Skyrim modpack from a decade ago, and barely crosses the Animal Crossing and Fire Emblem thresholds of customization and socialization, so I won’t waste time doing so here. Let’s not be mistaken, the simplicity of the wizard game is very much by design, adults who still love Harry Potter in 2023 will be buying it after all. Having any more than four attacks at a time and a progression system more complex than “better clothes make numbers go up,” and you’re losing out on a lot of potential buyers who care about feeling sweet nostalgia fuzzies but haven’t played a video game rated above E10+ before.

Reviews have manifested in mostly these three ways:

1. Typical review with a brief acknowledgment of Rowling’s transphobia, making the effort to review the game as it is and leave discussion of Rowling for another time.

2. Explanation of why the writer is choosing not to review or otherwise engage with the game.

3. Explanation of why the writer is choosing to review or otherwise engage with the game, despite the knowledge of Rowling’s transphobia, followed by some kind of personal defense on why it is acceptable to do so.

I’ll go over an example of each type of review, contents therein, and what each type of review suggests about the cultural conversation around the wizard game as it intersects with the current state of gaming journalism.

Review #1

Let’s start with review #1 from IGN’s Travis Northup. This is a bit of a complicated endeavor, as there are multiple versions of Northup’s review available, a longer written review and a shorter one condensed into a ten and a half minute video review that takes some of the finer details of Northup’s writing out. The video also removes this aside (assumedly written by Northup, but who’s to say) about Rowling:

The elephant in the room with Hogwarts Legacy is Harry Potter’s creator, J.K. Rowling, whose comments about transgender people in recent years have left a sour taste in the mouths of many current and former Potter fans, both at IGN and in the world at large. This has driven some to call for a boycott of the Wizarding World altogether – including Hogwarts Legacy, though Rowling was not directly involved and there are good reasons (both in-game and out) to believe the developers at Avalanche don’t necessarily share her views. Regardless, IGN has always and will continue to champion human rights causes and support people speaking with their wallets in whatever manner they choose. As critics, our job is to answer the question of whether or not we find Hogwarts Legacy to be fun to play and why; whether it’s ethical to play is a separate but still very important question. So just as in virtually all cases, we’re choosing to expose and address the views of the franchise creator separately from our consideration of the work of the hundreds of game developers and evaluate Hogwarts Legacy as it stands, leaving behind-the-scenes context to be considered in addition to that evaluation, rather than in place of it, so that it can be weighted according to your own values.

This statement is placed a few paragraphs into the review of IGN’s website (after Northup has had the chance to get many positive words across) and is pinned in the comment section of the video review posted to YouTube. A handful of links in this statement lead to two year old IGN article “How Harry Potter Fans Are Coping With J.K. Rowling,” a report from back in 2020 that Rowling was not ‘directly involved’ with the development of the game, and a report that the game will ‘allow for transgender characters’ (no customization features are joined together, meaning you can give a character with a feminine appearance a masculine voice and vice versa, and choose how they are referred to by other characters and which dorm they are placed in).

Northup is seemingly fighting against the tides to give the game a negative review, with evocative lines like “Legacy's plot has more holes than a fishnet stocking and sorta just expects you to accept that its magical world makes no sense,” a sentence that when taken out of context sounds like the worst thing I’ve ever heard. Northup tries to criticize the repetitive nature of the game’s side quests on one hand, then in another undercuts himself by complimenting how the world of the game makes these errands fun to run anyway. He does manage to make the combat sound as fun as he seems to think it is, but underplays frequent flitches and performance issues, essentially settling for a game that didn’t break his PlayStation 5. It is mostly a roundabout celebration of a derivative but fun video game. It ends with a good old-

IGN ended up giving the wizard game a 9/10.

Review #2

Percy Ranson does a wonderful job communicating the sense of regret that comes with writing the sort of piece that they are writing. I think a big mistake people make when criticizing boycotts is they portray the boycotters as sadistic people, who love being offended, and love tearing people down. Ranson portrays the truth, that this is an uncomfortable effort on their part that forces them to swim through bigotry and tell their readers that the water is, actually, not fine. We are not boycotting this game because we don’t like Harry Potter and we think J.K. Rowling is a bad writer. We are boycotting this game because buying it directly harms the transgender community.

This is not fun. We are not having fun. Ranson goes on to console their own history with the Harry Potter IP, and extend an olive branch to the reader who may be unsure about their purchase. “Rowling has made it very clear that a trans girl would find no validation in her world” is a heartbreaking sentence, and when contrasted with the token trans bartender character that appears in the game, makes you realize trying to reckon love for this IP with Rowling’s bigotry is an insurmountable task. Ranson has clearly done work unpacking their love for this story and facing the reality of today, that the story is not worth buying into.

Does buying Hogwarts Legacy make you a transphobe? Is one bad action enough to make you a bad person? After all, one bucket of sand doesn’t make a beach, and one tree doesn’t make a forest. 

But if you buy this game, you’re making a choice. You’re choosing to support J. K. Rowling, even if just in a small way. And if you knowingly weigh the costs and decide that your personal enjoyment of a video game is worth supporting a trans-exclusionary radical feminist, that indulging your nostalgia is more valuable than supporting the transgender community? 

…well, one tree might not make a forest, but it sure is more than none.

Much has been said about the power of derivative works in bringing additional meaning to the original for those who wish to find it, that is mainly about fan fiction writers and readers trying to pat themselves on the back for their hobby. The truth behind that philosophy is that you are trying to justify still wanting to exist in this world, still wanting it to be yours, when it isn’t. It never was.

Review #3

This makes for a nice segue into the final review I want to discuss here. Jessica Conditt writes for Engadget in contrast to Ranson’s perspective, bringing her experience as a video game journalist and longtime Harry Potter fan to the table. Conditt brings a mindset that frankly I have been revolted by since all of this began, that of the person who refuses to let Harry Potter go despite acting like they know better and begging to be left alone to enjoy it in peace. After reluctantly admitting that she is enjoying her time with the wizard game and calls it… wait for it…

Conditt goes on to mount this defense for herself and any torn Harry Potter enthusiast:

I’ve been a video game journalist for the past 13 years, I’m a bisexual woman and I have a big ol’ Harry Potter tattoo next to an anti-TERF tattoo. I feel uniquely positioned to care about this particular topic, and to that end, I have a quick story to tell. It involves literary internet culture in the early 2000s, and I hope it illuminates factors that entwine the Wizarding World with the LGBT+ community, while demonstrating the vast divide that’s existed for decades between the fantasy and its creator.

What Conditt is trying to portray is a cycle of reclamation out of the trend of Harry Potter fanfiction across LiveJournal, FF.net and AO3, how much of HP fic is gay as hell, and that the fanbase has always pushed back against the limits of the Wizarding World. This assessment of course fails to acknowledge a few things: factually, AO3's demographic breakdown is a cul-de-sac of white women. To add a couple of more guesstimated anecdotes:

• Most people buying the wizard game have likely not spent a lot of time on AO3.

• A lot of people buying the wizard game likely have little to no knowledge of Rowling’s transphobia.

• A lot of people who casually enjoy Harry Potter, especially older generations, do not engage with its supplemental content (video games, fan fiction, etc.)

This type of writing is one that I like to call ‘discourse prepping.’ You know (or at least fear) that when you hit that big Publish button and send this out into the world that you will receive backlash from people. Hell, you probably know exactly the type of person that will be lashing back. Maybe you are that type of person. All of this is to say that when you mount your defense against knowingly crossing the proverbial picket line by citing a small sector of the fandom you participate in, you are making a direct appeal to the kind of uber-online tenderqueers who associate consumption, and in this case creating fan work, with activism. To that end, calling gay Harry Potter fanfiction transgressive is laughable considering the many conversations the gay community has has about fetishization by straight women both in real world dynamics and in online spaces like AO3. Conditt accuses the wizard game boycott of distracting from real issues, saying the conversation is ‘sowing division’ when she is the one doing the sowing by actively going against a simple boycott while patting herself on the back for playing a AAA video game despite the haters. What really frustrates me about this piece is that Conditt goes out of her way to absolve herself of a supposed wrongdoing, one that she could have avoided by simply not writing the essay. Or taking the IGN route and going with review template #1. Or passing the review copy onto a colleague if the moral quandary is tearing you asunder in this way. What angers me most about Conditt’s piece is her insistence that people she claims to care about will be upset with her, which makes this really hard, without taking the actual anger of those people she claims to care about into account. Obviously you aren’t worried enough about the feelings of the people and communities you claim to care about and be a part of.

Conclusion (or, Forgive Me Subscribers, For I Have Sinned)

Never mind J.K. Rowling’s current anti-transgender brigade, the insistence that you can make Harry Potter better by making it gayer and more colorful is a waste of your time and energy. Read a better book, watch better movies, play different video games. There is better escapist fantasy out there. If you are similarly torn over the ethical and moral quandaries of this wizard game, pick a side and shut up if you choose the side where Rowling gets more money. You do not have to prostrate yourself and fully show your shame before there is ever a reason to be ashamed as some attempt at earning forgiveness of the communities you claim to be part of. You cannot make Harry Potter yours while doing so funnels money and cultural relevance to transphobia. I don’t care if you spend the rest of your days “supporting local inclusion efforts, protesting discrimination, calling my lawmakers, [and] loving my community.” If this is the line in the sand you draw for yourself in terms of your activism, I do not trust you. Neither should people of color who have felt a lack of belonging in the wizarding world since its inception, neither should trans people whose lives Rowling is endangering. If reliving your childhood means giving money to a woman who doesn’t want trans kids to have childhoods, I do not want to hear what you have to say.

Further Reading

J.K. Rowling, "J.K. Rowling Writes about Her Reasons for Speaking out on Sex and Gender Issues"

Luke Winkie, IGN, "Hogwarts Legacy Developers Respond to Controversy Around Creator's Anti-Transgender Views"

Travis Northup, IGN, "Hogwarts Legacy Review"

Percy Ranson, Games Hub, "Hogwarts Legacy does not deserve to be reviewed on its own merits"

Jessica Conditt, Engadget, "Why I'm Reviewing Hogwarts Legacy"

For more AO3 data: Racquel S. Benedict, The Most Dangerous Newsletter, "An Archive of White Woman's Own"