Wizard game s out, you guys. To the surprise of absolutely no one, the release cycle has been a
mess, but there s one part of Wizard Game Discourse in particular that s just mashed
my brain into putty so if you don t mind, I m going to spend a few minutes talking about it.
Quick disclaimer: I m not speaking on behalf of anyone, of any groups or communities here I m just
speaking as myself, a guy who made a video about this whole mess a few months back and received
a bunch of very arsey comments calling me the real antisemite for discussing well-documented
anti-semitic tropes, the intersections of historical racism and folklore, and
points other people had made about the way Harry Potter and Hogwarts Legacy seemed to lean into,
rather than away from, them. (Incidentally, holy shit, it s so much worse than we knew, so, y know,
I m expecting full retractions from all these guys any time now). Anyway, disclaimer over.
I don t want to talk about any of the bigger issues here, the aforementioned dicey Goblin
shit, the laughable failure of the game s trans tokenism, or the curious way reviews list glaring
flaw after glaring flaw before slapping on a 9/10 rating. I ll link some stuff on all that below.
But there is one minor point in amongst all the Wizard Game nonsense that s just baffled me the
way that some game-buying folks who re aware of, and seemingly sympathetic to the controversy and
criticism around the game, seem unable to accept that their actions amount to support
for Hogwarts Legacy, and not-support for critics of Rowling s transphobia.
I m talking about the people who play or stream the game, but apologetically profess that they
re actually on your side, saying I stand with the trans community while actively
not standing with the trans community. The games journalists sticking a big we don t support J.K.
Rowling dialogue box in the middle of a massive, glowing endorsement doing precisely that. The guys
who hear the concern, anger, and critiques expressed by trans voices, and say you know,
I totally agree, I m an ally. I am getting the game, but really? I support you. It's
like we re seeing an attempt to redefine what supporting even means, to strip away the idea
of helping , aiding , contributing to , and to instead create support as some abstract,
mental phenomenon, divorced entirely from cause and effect, separated from the material world,
requiring no action or effort whatsoever. I ve seen a good few of these people around, and
every time, it just wrinkles my brain, man. As far as I can tell, this is what s going on in their
minds. For the longest time, being seen as one of the good guys, has been easy, so easy, for those
with no skin in the game. All you gotta do is not say any slurs in public, and hey presto, your good
guy card remains valid. I think some people have become so used to this automatic virtue that they
ve started to take it for granted, to assume they have a right to the gratitude of minority
communities simply because they re not actively damaging them. They just lived their life as
normal, without going out of their way in either direction to help or harm marginalised groups, and
got used to this benign indifference constituting, I don t know, ally status. These people see
themselves as separate from trans people, from the trans issues trans issues are political,
and their everyday life isn t political! They re used to their choices being good by default
so when something like Wizard Game crops up, they are shocked and distressed to learn that being the
good guy, the ally, isn t something they get for free, a badge of honour granted automatically so
long as you don t go on a violent bigoted rampage that solidarity isn t something given once,
that it must be upheld, and that it s upheld by actions, not merely sentiment. The reason this
whole thing is a joke, though, is that the choice which prompted this dilemma isn t even a big ask,
not at all. It s ludicrously easy. It s whether or not to buy an overpriced, bugged-out video game.
Virtue signalling , is a term often bandied about in dumb ways more often than not,
it s used to criticise and shut down people for simply having a stance, or an opinion. The thing
under fire isn t disingenuous signalling, but the idea of virtue itself. It s a cudgel mostly used
by the online right for the purposes of lazy moral equivocation but if there s any actual
meaning to the term, surely it s this, right? This doing of a thing and the accompanying of
that action with an attempt to absolve yourself because your real values, your intentions,
don t support the thing you did. It s empty, it s insulting, and frankly it s embarrassing.
You get the guys who are like, oh, you libs don t like Wizard Game? Well, I think transphobia is
based, so I m buying 1 million copies, heh! And, like they re wankers, but we all know they re
wankers, and on some level, they know they re being wankers too. But these guys? The
cognitive dissonance squad? They just don t seem to grasp that for maybe the first time in their
lives their actions have consequences, and performative sympathy isn t enough.
Sometimes, defences beyond simply, I m supporting the bad thing but I mean well , are employed,
but they re not much cop really. The common one is that getting Wizard Game is fine so long as you
separate the art from the artist , but separating the art and the artist is a mental process. You
can do it, sure, but even if you pull it off, the only thing that s changed is the way you
understand your relationship with the game. Your decision to separate doesn t ripple outwards,
doesn t counter-act the inflating of the Harry Potter brand your purchase has contributed to,
charge-back Rowling s royalties, and maybe most importantly, it doesn t alter the way other people
perceive the link. I don t care if you tell me you ve decided to separate the art from the artist
and go on engaging with the Harry Potter world because to me, to the people who this upsets,
that link is as firm, as direct, as ever. Alternatively, the stand some game-buying
people seem to be taking is along the lines of I m concerned about trans issues, but the real
problem is legislation, institutions, that s what we should be fighting, this game s a non-issue,
really. But there s two problems here: A: even as a guy from outside this community,
who doesn t necessarily have his finger on the pulse of online trans discourse I ve seen plenty
of trans people showing abuse they ve received as a direct result of the game, it s popularity,
and the hateful rhetoric it s catalysed. It isn t easy to focus on the bigger issues,
the real issues, if everytime you go online you re dealing with this. And B: If the game isn t
such a big deal why did you buy it, in spite of all this? Why are you defending your choice to
play it so fervently? Wizard Game seems to exist in a paradox it s a big enough deal that they need
to play it, but too small a deal to justify the unhappiness that playing is causing other people.
This isn t about a boycott. I don t think any of the game s critics, of Rowling s critics,
thought that the result of the Wizard Game Discourse would be a sense of awareness
and conviction widespread enough to meaningfully harm the profits of these studios. It isn t about
disruption, it isn t about voting with your wallet, it isn t about them, it s about you,
and what your actions are showing whether you value playing a game about wizards for a few days
over a meaningful gesture of solidarity. And it is meaningful Rowling s on record about the fact
that she views the Wizarding World s continued success as a vindication of her transphobia,
and she is a transphobe. For all of those comments I know I ll get,
saying show me ONE time Rowling s actually said something transphobic look at this! Look at this
tweet from a couple of weeks ago! She is directly equating trans people with predators and abusers.
Look, I m not looking to make any moral judgements here, not personally. I m not
saying you re necessarily this or that if you buy it especially if you re not a very online person.
I guess it s conceivable that all this may have passed you by. What I would like to do, though,
is to point out a couple of straightforward things that cannot be abstracted or equivocated away.
First: If you buy Hogwarts Legacy if you give glowing praise to Hogwarts Legacy, you
are supporting Hogwarts Legacy. It doesn t matter if you were morally conflicted about the choice,
or if in your mind you ve constructed some sort of explanation for why your actions don t accurately
reflect who you are inside it s the action, and the effects of that action, that count.
Second: If you re buying, playing, supporting Hogwarts Legacy while aware that a lot of
trans voices are asking those outside of the community to, y know, consider their actions,
and not support the game then you are putting your own desire to play a wizard game above
a targeted community s desire for solidarity. That is what you are choosing to do. It doesn
t matter if you think you re actually against Rowling, against transphobia,
that you re really still supporting trans folks in spite of your actions - because that gesture
of solidarity isn t for you, it s for them. Granted, modern life is complex. Ethical
consumption under late capitalism is impossible but just because pure good is impossible,
that doesn t mean every other option is equally bad. It may be true that there s
no way to buy food or clothes without damaging the planet and exploiting workers but those are
necessities. Wizard Game is not. No one has a Rowling-sponsored hitman standing behind them,
holding a gun to their head, forcing them to play Wizard Game. And don t say the devs would suffer
if you didn t they ve already been paid, some of them have now come out against the game too. Oh,
and there s tens of thousands of games you haven t bought so why don t those devs need support, eh?
No, this is a rarely straightforward choice. It isn t made under duress, you know the consequences
going in. What this all comes down to is the fact that - You can t have your virtue-cake and eat it
too and it s baffling to me, it s wild to me, that so many people are in denial about this.
Cheers for watching, and don t forget to call me a woke, sanctimonious,
idiot in the comments. And big thanks as always to all my goated Patreon supporters onscreen now,
especially Ryan Emerle. And special thanks to Einthebuffboy, Meatball, and Jaimemidge