Hogwarts Legacy earns biggest launch ever for Warner Bros Games
The game has made nearly a billion dollars for its creators—including, obviously, J.K. Rowling
Aux News Hogwarts
It’s like the old proverb says: Nobody ever went broke selling wizard shit to nerds. That’s (sort of) per Variety, which reports that Warner Bros. Games’ new J.K. Rowling-based video game, Hogwarts Legacy, is the best-selling title in WBG’s history, beating out not just one, but two Happy Feet-based video games, and also some other titles that are actually good. And all it took was a massive marketing push attached to one of the most lucrative brands on the planet. Who’d a thunk?
Warner Bros. Discovery sent out a press statement celebrating this extremely short putt earlier today, stating that the game made $850 million in its first two week of sales (representing roughly 12 million copies sold), while also setting a record for hours streamed on Twitch for a single-player game. Also, they unleashed this pile of brand-intensive nonsense, which someone presumably got paid an ungodly amount of money to write: “Additionally, there has been an increase of global franchise fan engagement overall with Wizarding World Digital garnering 300% higher traffic over the normal monthly unique visitor average for the first 10 days of February.”
The upshot is: Despite the controversy surrounding the game—which saw studio Avalanche make some blanket statements that Rowling, with her recent quadruple-downing on transphobic rhetoric, was not involved its creation (besides, obviously, profiting massively off of it)—it has sold very well, because Harry Potter stuff always sells well. (And better, typically, the less involved the author is these days; looking at you, Fantastic Beasts And How To Sleep Through Them.)
As we noted in our review, Hogwarts Legacy has players do most of those things they might expect to do in a Harry Potter video game, including flying broomsticks across a big ol’ map, attending classes, and trying not to think too much about the implications of how Rowling designed, say, the setting’s goblin residents. The game was released back on February 10.
29 Comments
Happy for Avalanche, the game is pretty good.
There is an element of this discourse that I think a lot of people are missing. I support LGBTQ+ right. I also thought Harry Potter was dumb 22 years ago when I was in high school and still think its dumb. J.K. Rowling has never gotten a penny out of me.But the people that got the tattoos, and wrote fanfic, and talk about what house they’d be in? They are almost all caring and good people that believe all people are equal. And they all gave hundreds and thousands of dollars to that transphobe. And that guilt that YOU gave her the platform is making things a lot worse.
What
Pretty much. It doesn’t help that, let’s be honest, people were seriously over-inflating just how valuable these books were as a tool for moral guidance and instruction. Like, just a few years ago, you had people — including a lot of people who are the loudest in denouncing Rowling these days — genuinely acting like these books were the 21st century’s answer to the Bible incorporating the wisdom of every one of the great religious tomes of humanity, and not just a bunch of fantasy stories for kids about wizards.
That’s one of the better aspects of this whole thing: a more frank reappraisal of exactly what the HP books bring to the table.Overall sentiment I’m running into is akin to “They’re fun enough, but there are better books that expand on the themes of HP in a more thoughtful way.” Which is accurate, from where I sit.Not shitting on HP, BTW. We all had series that we loved growing up. That said, if you’re stanning, like, the Babysitters Club books into your 40s…maybe read another book?
I know there’s a lot of good fans who aren’t raging transphobes. The problem is Rowling doesn’t care about those people. She’s openly said I’ll take financial support as a sign I’m right. She takes that money and does terrible things with it like political support against trans laws in Scotland or trans exclusionary shelters. That really complicates the matter. The fact any mention of the franchise now suddenly draws in people just spouting transphobic catch phrases also makes it hard to do death of the author. I don’t know what the right answer is in a situation like this. Scream at them all day clearly isn’t. But saying nothing all doesn’t help matters either.
Whatever your thoughts on Rowling, it is incorrect to say she has done terrible things with her money. She supports left-wing causes and went from billionaire status to millionaire by donating to: Book Aid International, Catie Hoch Foundation, Children with AIDS, Dyslexia Action, Gingerbread, Haven Foundation, Heifer International, Lumos, Make A Child Smile Appeal, Multiple Sclerosis Society, PEN, Raisa Gorbachev Foundation, Women’s Fund for Scotland, XP Support Group
She has done great things with her money and she has done terrible things with her money. Both can be, and are, true. As far as I can tell however, what she hasn’t done is vocally equate the money she earns from Harry Potter with support for her left-wing beliefs. She has explicitly equated it with support for her bigoted beliefs toward the trans community. That is the issue with self-professed ‘allies’ providing her further financial support, Rowling takes that as support for her transphobia regardless of the stance that those providing her with the money actually hold.
The charge was that she takes her money and does terrible things with it. By a large margin she donates to charities that do amazing things, so I was correcting that. Is someone supports anything to do with Harry Potter, they are by extension supporting a lot of amazing charities. People find it a contradiction, like she contradicts herself by opposing the rightwing shitshow that is Brexit but also opposes Scottish Independence which would lead to Scotland rejoining the European Union.
But it wasn’t a correction because you stated that she does not do terrible things with her money, which she clearly does. She also does great things with her money, that I admit, but they are not mutually exclusive.
I don’t know what the right answer is in a situation like this. Scream at them all day clearly isn’t. But saying nothing all doesn’t help matters either. Best answer I can come up with is to work with what is: people are going to buy and play this game regardless of my feelings on it. The chud class of terminally online shitlords was always going to use this game as a conduit for their weird, unwashed shitlordery. There was always going to be absolutely, punishingly stupid, useless “discourse” around it. To fight that shit is to wade into the ocean and start windmilling punches at the oncoming tide.At the end of the day, this is a kind of fandom angst that is relatively rare at this size. There have always been solid creators who are shit people (i.e., Warren Ellis, H.P. Lovecraft, Orson Scott Card, Harlan Ellison, etc.), but the reckonings (if any) were usually smaller scale and/or posthumous. It’s easier to separate art from artist when the artist is dead. This isn’t a posthumous wrangling with, say, Lovecraft’s racism. There also isn’t a whole ass theme park and/or multi-property media empire devoted to Lovecraft’s catalogue. This is more like if Lovecraft were the face of a massive entertainment empire, were still alive, and were using his social media to rant about African skull shape and racial degeneracy.I have no real answer there. It’s just a pretty unprecedented situation, unfolding in real time. I feel for the folks who grew up with the world of HP, and who feel let down by the person responsible for it all.
Kee-RIST, now all I can think about is a theme park dedicated to Lovecraftian horrors.
I’d fucking LOVE to design a dark ride for it. Lightning effects revealing a Cthulhu head about four stories high.
So, Disneyland?
Now I really want to see a Lovecraftian theme park, and I probably never will. Thanks.
well, if it’s the equivalent of virulent racism, why are you equivocating? It’s akin to racial skull discussions? Jesus Christ, why, exactly? What has she said that is anywhere near what you’re discussing? She just disagrees with trans activists.
She just disagrees with trans activists. Incorrect. She disagrees with trans identity. She does not care to acknowledge the very much under investigation trans phenomenon, and instead has decided that her definition is all she needs to acknowledge.Me? I have absolutely zero respect for people who look at a nuanced, evolving, multifaceted issue and essentially say “Nu-uh, I refuse to consider it.” She can say and believe what she’d like, I can say that she has extrapolated her past trauma onto a whole-ass section of humanity in a way I find absolutely stupid.When your argument is “Well yeah, I want a women’s shelter, but no trans women, because they aren’t ‘real’ women, they’re just men who want to assault women,” you ought to rethink your thesis some. Maybe incorporate literally ANY crime statistics, for one.
Thats all pretty fair. Its always easier to deal with this legacy when the artist is dead.
Scream at them all day clearly isn’t. I’d also add that people taking this tack probably don’t care much about “moving the needle.” It’s an expression of id, plain and simple. It’s putting a pan on one’s head, bending over, then running full speed at some other dipshit doing the same thing.
“trans exclusionary shelters”you mean women’s shelters? where women go to get away from abusive men? why should they have to share their space with men? this is why people are upset.
Stay mad they/them! JK aint no transphobe. She’s just speaking facts.
Its funny I could sworn NPC was a common insult towards people who repeat phrases without a thought. Yet the most common phrase mentioned in threads about Rowling aren’t trans lives matter, its a blanket Rowling did no wrong just speaking facts. Facts that go unexplained and wrongs that are not mentioned. How artifical and automated you could say…
One thing that this discourse has taught me is that there are some REAL dumb chuds out there, who would arguably be of better use to the population at large as meat.I have negative respect for the deliberately stupid and childish, is what I’m saying. 🙂
Also, they unleashed this pile of brand-intensive nonsense, which someone presumably got paid an ungodly amount of money to write: “Additionally, there has been an increase of global franchise fan engagement overall with Wizarding World Digital garnering 300% higher traffic over the normal monthly unique visitor average for the first 10 days of February.”That’s a completely normal statement of traffic and returning v. unique visitor metrics regrading a website. Nobody got paid an “ungodly amount of money” to write it. You’ve been around a while, while AVC descended into answering to those same metrics, so don’t be disingenuous. Also: JKL can fuck off.
Came here to say the same thing. Community managers do not “[get] paid an ungodly amount of money.”
The AV Club’s community manager is just an upside-down mop wearing a trenchcoat. It makes $48,000/year which is roughly double what Hughes gets paid.
Lets be frank. This game was always going to be a massive hit. Nothing was going to change that. Now the people who want to gloat that this means Rowling is right, well Gone With the Wind is the highest grossing film ever and the ideas it spread, racism, the Lost Cause, well the latter at least ultimately lost and is becoming a fringe belief. Monitary value doesn’t indicate if a set of beliefs “won” or not.
Yep, that was always going to happen.
The game is doing well because there is a huge Harry Potter fanbase and because it is a well-made game that is a lot of fun to play. The vast majority of people don’t care about the political views of famous people, they care about whether or not the $60-70 they are spending is going to provide them with enough entertainment to be worth it.And honestly, that’s entirely fine. It makes no sense to have a mentality like The Good Place (before it’s fixed) in The Good Place where people are held to a near-impossible standard of never supporting anything connected to anyone or anything bad.