Hogwarts Legacy gets great reviews

[fromorbit]

The Hogwarts Legacy reviews have dropped from major game review sites before release tomorrow and they are great:

Review ratings :
• PSU - 9.5
• IGN - 9
• JVCOM - 9
• Xbox Era - 9
• Power Up - 9
• Press Start - 9
• Well Played - 9
• Pushsquare - 8
• Gamerant - 4.5/5
• Screen Rant - 4.5/5
• VGC - 4/5
• Metacritic - 87

Typical review below is an example it has some of the usual anti JKR performative nonsense, but otherwise the review shows how good the game is and how close it ties into the magic of the books. :
metro.co.uk/2023/02/06/hogwarts-legacy-review-the-best-harry-potter-video-game-ever-made-18230040/

The massive failure of the campaign against Hogwarts Legacy is another example of TRA self sabotage. The game itself is good and is going to do more massive sales now it is out, and the controversy helped give it great name recognition. Better than that it demonstrates that "transphobia" is a meaningless term which people increasingly ignore. It means that the gender fanatics attempt to control how people think is collapsing more and more.

Their latest TRA ploy is to call for a boycott of Twitch because it is showing Hogwarts Legacy adverts which again is going to fail and will further alienate people:
www.thegamer.com/hogwarts-legacy-twitch-ads-boycott/

What makes this all more sweet is JKR is benefitting massively from this because TRAs are so bigoted and can't tolerate dissent. This is nothing to do with helping anyone "trans" this is just about "moral" purity. It is even more blatant now it has been revealed there is a "trans" charater in the game as well as there being no rules about whether you are a witch or wizard. Yes turns out a JKR based game doesn't care whether people call themselves witches or wizards or how they dress exactly as JKR states:
"Dress however you please.
Call yourself whatever you like."

Hogwarts Legacy "Trans" Character details
www.gamerevolution.com/news/934065-hogwarts-legacy-trans-character-transgender-sirona-ryan

Yes Hogwarts Legacy is more supportive of having an avatar which can gender non conform than most other games. Which makes sense because JKR doesn't care about that and the game reflects the universe she created.

The TRAs would never challenge the Call Of Duty franchise beloved by right wingers and where Activision the company behind it who have paid directly into Republican party coffers. No they only go after the game where a woman gets some of the profits, a woman who actively opposes the right and tried to stop Trump being elected in 2016.

If the TRAs hated the popularity of Hogwarts Legacy before it launched, they are really really going to hate how big it is going to be. They also can look forward Hogwarts {Rowling] Legacy 2 which their nonsense has helped make inevitable.

Reminds me of The Trace when Dumbledore supporters used He Who Must Not Be Named's name.

my favourite gaming website (to be honest the only one I bother reading) is RockPaperShotgun. I think they are boycotting it. The most recent article about it is over 2 years old (Jan 21)

www.rockpapershotgun.com/hogwarts-legacy-is-delayed-to-2022#comments

First comment

"diamondmx 2799
2 years ago
Let's just delay it indefinitely.
Ikenfell is a great wizard game, we don't need TERF wizards."

Follows a long and tortuous thread. I think looking at that thread, I can understand why they are bargepoling the whole thing, regardless of any blue-haired staff writers (which they may or may not have, like meh, care).

I personally don't care at all that they are boycotting the game, and I will still read the site, because it has good content.

Did you post an archive link, @nauticant ?

Oh, so today links to archived pages aren't allowed. Let's try again:

Here's an example of a review from www.gameshub.com that takes as its inspiration the Cultural Revolution:

web.archive.org/web/20230207082727/www.gameshub.com/news/opinions-analysis/hogwarts-legacy-does-not-deserve-to-be-reviewed-on-its-own-merits-40246/

Yes it was Ereshkigalangcleg. For archive.DOMAIN NAME links, is it only the .fo domain name that's banned or are others too?

I'm not sure.

I have more respect for those who really do boycott it (which seems to be the case in your example) than I do in those who post endless stories about the boycott and their own virtue at deciding to boycott. They are commercially benefiting from the outrage surrounding the game (clicks!) and adding to the Streisand effect.
I really have no issue with people having differing opinions and exercising their principles, it’s just the hypocrites I find fascinating (and the conspiracy theorists and the authoritarian bullies)!

Few interesting tweets from Sophia (who is a friend of Rose of Dawn and holds a similar position on being transgender, that is, that they both publicly talk about being male and preferring to be perceived as female. They aren’t GC as such, but they don’t expect society to completely reshape itself around them, both think current trans activists are transgender people’s worst enemies)

Bonus tweet: The Sims now have mastectomy scars! What the fuckery is this!

Yes, I daresay it'll do really well. Historically movie tie-in video games have had a long tradition of being terrible [with the odd honourable exception, showing my age, such as the N64 goldeneye and going even further back the 8/16 bit late 80s 'batman' game]. Reviews for this new game seem to suggest that it's, at the very least, modestly good, & probably a fair bit better than that, this combined with the huge HP fanbase [especially amongst 2010s and late 2000s-born kids who are still too young to know or care much about niche TRA interpretations of JKR's Twitter output] surely mean it'll sell bucketloads. Subject to decent reviews I'll almost certainly let my kids have it when the Nintendo Switch version comes out in the summer.

A significant part of the gaming media is sending out a message: you cannot trust our reviews because when it suits us we'll be actively biased.

An interesting business model. It requires the mass audience to want to have ideological alignment with you, and not to change.

I’m not remotely interested in gaming really (just interested in learning about the contemporary online/gaming world so as not to have an unbridgeable generational gap between me and my kids - thanks to KiwiFarms for a far more in-depth education than I ever set out for!)
Nonetheless I think this game looks beautiful and I love that it’s a historical prequel (I like fashion and architectural history).
I imagine there might be a few middle aged mums that spring for this to play through their teenagers PC/console, based on the imagery/general fondness for Potter/like for JK Rowling).

My mum LOVED Tetris on the original Gameboy 😂

It’s fascinating.

I wonder what will happen to those media orgs long term? Gaming culture is such a weird mix of free speech edgelords, extreme TRA leftists and normies who just want to play a game. You can’t please all of those types at once, and presumably the staff of these media orgs are more likely to be TRA sympathetic than the general readership are?

@NicolaSturgeonsSOGIbottom
I wonder what will happen to those media orgs long term? Gaming culture is such a weird mix of free speech edgelords, extreme TRA leftists and normies who just want to play a game. You can’t please all of those types at once, and presumably the staff of these media orgs are more likely to be TRA sympathetic than the general readership are?

What is a new and seemingly demented battle for common sense for gender critical woman, gamers have already been through and come out the other side. It's old history for them. The games media orgs spat in the face of gamers, and gamers just walked away from them.
If you look at the gender critical movement having to fight the mainstream media and go around it to get their voices heard you are looking in the mirror when you look at gamer free speech edgelords. Of course they like to be more coarse in their language, but the driving force is exactly the same.
The only reason games outlets are covering the Harry Potter game is money. The outlets are barely staying afloat financially after pissing off the gamers, and as much as they would like to slag off Harry Potter, they don't have enough of a financial safety net to be able to afford to do so. The primary income for games media outlets is advertising from games publishers. HP probably has an amazing marketing budget. Media outlets simply can't afford to lose that cash. The game "journalists" ( woke activists ) hate HP, the management wants the ad money. The ad money is spent by the publisher, in this case Warner Brothers games. Any media outlet doing a hatchet job on HP is going to lose thier HP ad money, and probably not get ad spend on the next Warner Brothers game. They've had to make do with side panels in the articles calling JKR transphobic to avoid turning the whole reviews into a screeds.
The media can no longer afford to bite the hand that feeds them as much as they despise and hate that hand, and gamers.

It's an interesting one, because Glinner goes on about Gamergate a lot (something that seemed to pass me by), and how a lot of it was actually misogynistic (and no doubt many of those involved became TRAs, Transmaxxers etc).

It started due to the assumption that reviews were biased based off deals publishers did with the media outlets. Ironically now reviews for this game are biased based off of the political beliefs of the reviewers.

I don't see similar outrage to Star Wars and George Lucas's political beliefs (where the prequels had a lot of racial stereotypes), but probably because he's a man and hasn't waded into trans rights. Many of these racist arguments made against HP can be made against SW.

I still hold the belief that a lot of these campaigners have "mummy issues" and take it out on a woman like JKR.

JK Rowling's "well documented stance" on trans people remains "firmly rooted in a callous disregard for human life", apparently.

This is interesting. I've long thought JKR will seek to avoid taking legal action for slander or libel because of unintended outcomes. She can't be seen to crush a nobody, the likely outcome of that would be that person becoming canonised as the most victimised person ever and then massive copycat behaviour of the original slander/libel all across the Internet. I think she's probably been advised only to go after slam-dunk cases by organisations that are substantial enough to put up a fight and where the damage to JKR would be particularly harmful.

A lot of people are getting carried away with their slanders and libels as they're looking to out do those made by others to stand out above the baying mob and they're edging closer and closer to the line where JKR might be advised to act. Particularly because it is crystal clear that they are seeking to cause economic damage as well as reputational damage.

I think it's a bit silly on both sides, those trying to get it cancelled AND those trying to promote for reasons related to JK Rowling's views on trans issues.

This game was always going to be successful, because it's Harry Potter, a huge global phenomenon.

The fact that it is successful and will sell millions of copies says absolutely nothing about either side of the trans debate. What is says is that a lot of people like Harry Potter and this is a well-made game.

These debates will influence about 0.0000000001% of people buying or not buying it. Absolutely a waste of time.

If the TRAs hated the popularity of Hogwarts Legacy before it launched, they are really really going to hate how big it is going to be.

It's not big because of anybody's views on trans issues (for or against). It's big because it's Harry Potter.

Anybody feeling passionately about it either way because of feelings about trans issues is a bit shortsighted tbh. The vast majority of the millions buying this game do not have this anywhere on their radar. They just like Harry Potter.

The TRAs blaming capitalism for the game's success are missing the point. The game is successful because it's a good game and people want to buy and play good games.
I think a gaming website refusing to review it just looks petulant although it's easy for people to find reviews elsewhere. If I want to play a game I often don't read reviews as many of them have spoilers.

@ReunitedThorns
Although gamergate was a huge shitshow that could fill any sized book, there's some basic elements that are similar to what the geneder critical movement are facing now.
If gamergate can be described in terms of "sides" it would be a chaotic bunch of video gamers of all races and ages versus authoritarian woke activists.
Gamers just want to play video games. Anyone with kids and a console know how much the kids just wanna play on the console. Being online means meeting new people over text and voice chat. This interaction can be friendly or unfriendly. It can encompass the whole range of human interactions that you see in real life, both good and bad including misogyny. Gamers tend to naturally organise into communities. From friendly saints to utter dickbags, gamers have the lot covered.
Woke activists came along looking for spaces to colonise and impose imperial authoritarian colonial woke values. ( most ) Gamers rejected this. A massive shitshow ensued for about 4ish years. It was vicious scorched earth, salt the ground stuff.
On the woke side were the media, just as they are now in the gender critical age, trying to impose their values through force and authoritarian means. One point that makes this really interesting from a mumsnet context is that some of the woke invaders were early TRAs e.g. Brianna Wu.

"It started due to the assumption that reviews were biased based off deals publishers did with the media outlets." - Not quite. Like everyone else gamers take the conflict of interest between a magazine covering a hobby and advertisers money as a given. Not happy but it happens in every hobby. The conflict of interest that riled up the gamers was woke games journos sleeping with woke game devs and then giving their games good reviews. see Zoe Quinn.
The woke game journos then openly turned against their own audience gamers.
Leigh Alexander ( a Gamasutra game journalist ) - "'Gamers' don't have to be your audience. 'Gamers' are over." Leigh Alexander Twitter - "These obtuse shitslingers, these wailing hyper-consumers, these childish internet-arguers." and so games journalists went to war with their own audience, gamers.

TRAs seem a logical progression of the woke journalists given that there was early TRA activisim on that side. The fact the media supports the woke authoritarian TRAs now as they did during gamergate is a direct continuation of the same role.
Gamers have mostly gone back to playing video games. Possibly some will have become incels and transmaxxers. Gamers include those with less developed social skills. Less females game than males, and it can lead to a much less complicated care free gaming life for a female gamer if she doesn't disclose that she is female. Male gamers can turn to all sorts of wierd places to try and meet their relationship needs. Incel, transmax, furries, LARPing and as a female online, some sort of wierd being a kwai loli ( Japanese animae influences ) cute femboy. I don't even know if the femboys class themselves as trans it gets that complicated. Also half of them are just pretending for shits and giggles because they are bored. Never underestimate the ability of online gamers to say stupid stuff just because they are bored, trying to get attention, or trying to shock. Take everything with a grain of salt.

HL is the most streamed game on twitch atm. So that hasn't worked.

We've ordered the deluxe version. I haven't played anything more than Just Dance in years but I'm actually really looks forward to giving it a go.

My DS is as excited as I am. He has a trans "boyfriend" and several other trans pals so I thought his friends might put him off but doesn't seem to be the case.

Oh I am celebrating its part in the gender wars.....
The 😱🤬 bullying behaviour of the trans activists is peaking people as far as the eye can see.

Funny how they can't see its backfiring massively.

m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=pfbid02xDMXaWNr8bopY8bPcK2r4Wxydb3oDjEMf22hQA4CwkiVEy4TnuajD9VJxNBS7H4Jl&id=146505212039213

Thanks for that @lechiffre55!

Gamergate went over my head at the time, wasn’t on my radar really and the little bit that was didn’t seem relevant to my life. I’m not sure where I would’ve landed, the top level narrative of ‘masses of anti social faceless males bullying a handful of in subculture celeb women’ was a powerful one, but I’m a Gen X punk/metal/grunge antiauthoritarian type who just happens to be trapped in the body of a middleaged mother so I might’ve been suspicious enough of the media to look below the surface.

Piecing gamer gate together years after the event has been challenging and I’ve only been motivated to do so due to the weird KF/MN that has sprung up due to a shared interest in knowing what a loosely connected group of terrible individuals are up to. I absolutely agree that MNetters are akin to the gamers, which on a surface level seems ridiculous… but here we are! 🤡🌎

So is this a sort of footnote to GG, do you think? Is it like a closing chapter of a book set in the future, like when Harry sends his kid off on the Hogwarts Express?

Are the majority of the gaming media now behaving because they know that pulling the on the intersectional stack will make it collapse like jenga bricks all over their advertising income? Is this where the shadowy internet janitors get slapped with the material reality of capitalism, that all the reeeeing on the world internet won’t stop people from buying things when they really, REALLY want them? Is this where they realise their power is mostly just illusionary and no matter how much aggressive Reddit modding they do, there are still only two sexes and only the ones of the sex who don’t game as much can birth babies?

And while I agree with PP who say that millions of people will just enjoy the game and not know anything about any of this, I do think it’s important that parents understand how awful some of the men in tech are, and that children are groomed via video games (ROBLOX!)

At some point most new parents will have their own experience of the gaming world and be far better equipped with the understanding required to keep kids safe, but right now, there is a generation of parents who are cluesless about what goes on on discord or how many utter degenerates are secretly influencing their children hours and hours a day.

And Joshua Moon and Justine Roberts are both modern day heroes for making it possible to even discuss these topics (albeit more politely over here).

Somewhat related question: do you think Elon Musk’s twitter purchase has changed the atmosphere? I think it’ll be a key part of the authoritarian activists losing their grip of influence, although might be a slow and incremental change rather the more instant one free speechers might’ve hoped for

Wow, the moral purity is strong with this lot, isn’t it? Their blue hair must be standing on end.

Anyway, I’m not even a gamer - last game I bought was Theme Hospital, so that shows a) my age and b) just how often I buy games - but HL looks awesome. If I can find a way to play it I might have to give it a bash.