Hey everyone! Today we re talking about Hogwarts Legacy and a racist goblin! Oops, sorry, mis-read
ma notes, that should have been racist goblins plural - the ones in the game, not the one
who wrote the Harry Potter books. So in this video we re going to take a look at some of
the discourse around the game, as well as the biggest danger I feel Hogwarts Legacy
poses. In case you re out of the loop, Hogwarts Legacy is an upcoming open world action RPG
developed by Avalanche Studios, published by Warner Brothers, and based on the Wizarding
World of Harry Potter the setting for a series of books and films from a while back you might
have heard of. And it s been doing the rounds on social media in recent weeks, because I
guess Avalanche are revealing more details about the game, and that s shining a spotlight
on what a lot of people had seen already - that some aspects of the game look kinda dicey.
First and foremost yeah, there s the goblins. I m not going to waste time explaining this
in depth, since statistically speaking, if you clicked on this video, you ll have heard
about this before, but from what we ve seen of the game so far, its depiction of the goblin
race doubles down on the antisemitic tropes J.K. Rowling baked into these little fellas
on the page, knowingly or otherwise. No longer are they just a race depicted solely as greedy,
hook-nosed, bankers now they re actively conspiring against civilised society! Yay? This of course
comes just as Rowling s trending for some unrelated unhinged behaviour take Kenzie s
tweet here, which sums it up pretty nicely: JK Rowling released a new book today about
a YouTube animator that gets stabbed to death for making racist and transphobic animations
and it is 600 pages longer than Dune If you re not keeping track, recent years
have also seen Rowling write a book about a serial killer who poses as a trans women
to sneak into women s toilets and kill cis women, no I m not making that up, and they
ve also seen her cited by noted war criminal and despot Vladimir Poutine as a parallel
to the horrid nasty cancel culture the west was doing to shit, whatever country it is
that s east of Ukraine. I m, I m blanking on the name right now. Given all this, plus
Rowling s general, the worstness, when it comes to posting and amplifying transphobic
rhetoric online, it s no surprise that this adaptation of her world, and the racial insensitivity
of the creations of hers it includes, would be the talk of Twitter-town, or that the general
vibe of this talk would be yeah, people probably shouldn t financially support this. There
s some Potter fans and Rowling apologists out there saying, hey, hold on, Rowling didn
t actually have anything to do with Hogwarts Legacy directly, and in boycotting the game,
you re only hurting underpaid, crunched-out game devs. But.. no? Sure, J.k. s not tied
to the success of Legacy specifically, but the success of the Harry Potter brand absolutely
benefits Rowling. Oh, but what about separating the art from the artist? Well, also, no..?
While, sure, Legacy is somewhat disconnected from 2022 Rowling, in terms of direct creative
input and such, it s pretty much impossible to separate the game from her work and her
beliefs in a wider sense, because while the idea that these goblins are plotting some
secret, evil scheme, is a big yikes moment unique to the game, it s obviously still using
the extremely fraught goblin race Rowling developed for her books - this new vision
of Rowling s world is inseparable from the super dicey stuff she baked into it. You d
have thought it goes without saying, but just in case this game is constructed almost entirely
from Rowling s building blocks, and these aren t great building blocks when it comes
to racial sensitivity, or, like plenty of other things. But even if this weren t true,
even if it were valid to perform this sort of intercision, and completely separate Legacy
from Rowling on a conceptual level, that doesn t make things fine, because remember - the
idea that these goblins are plotting some secret, evil scheme, is a big yikes moment
unique to the game. No one forced them to make this the story, it wasn t even embedded
in the source material, no one forced avalanche to go goblin mode! Could ve just left the
Goblins of questionable ethnicity out of this, and made a story about something else entirely.
The goblin stuff here then is an issue even when considered apart from Rowling, and the
books. So yeah, I m not really sold on attempts to separate Legacy from Rowling, because A:
you kind of can t, and B: even if you could? It s still pretty goddamn dicey. And one more
point before we move on I have, in the past, been a vocal proponent of not judging things
prematurely, of not condemning a film or series from the trailer alone. You might call me
a hypocrite, but that isn t what I m doing here, not quite. I can t say that Legacy will
have a bad, problematic story with certainty, because nobody s played it. What I can say,
though, is that it s clearly leaning on problematic tropes. And that s enough for me to declare
this a yikes. Now, if the game comes out, and it turns out they were playing 4D chess
with audience expectations, that the real villain isn t the goblins at all, but corrupt,
hatemongering Ministry wizards cooking up a false, racially charged hate campaign in
the papers for personal gain, then I ll post an hour long apology video and beg for Avalanche
s forgiveness. But. Given the track record this franchise has, the way the Wizarding
World routinely approaches sensitive areas with all the decorum and grace of a coked-up
bull in the world s smallest Chinashop, there really isn t any reason not to assume that
this is exactly what it looks like. So! Upon looking into Legacy, the first thing
you might notice is how fraught and problematic this central goblin mystery is, or how its
pretty firmly linked to this not great public figure. But the second thing you d notice?
Well that s far, far more concerning to me. And that is just how good this game looks.
Look, I m not speaking mechanically here, there s no telling whether or not this game
ll be balanced, or whether the magic combat system will be satisfying, or anything like
that. I m just saying look at this trailer. For the millions of people exposed to Harry
Potter as a child, this game is quite literally a dream come true. If you d have shown me
the gameplay trailer when I was, say 8? I d probably have tried to put myself into a
medically-induced coma for the next 15 years, to fast-forward my life to the game s release.
Even if the simulation isn t very deep, even if the mechanics are shite, Legacy s still
selling the fantasy of an immersive life in Hogwarts. And even to people who recognise
the deeply flawed ideological basis of the Harry Potter series, even for people who ve
sworn off supporting anything Rowling related that s still super appealing. Because in some
ways this isn t even about Rowling. It s about this game and the dangers it poses to younger,
more impressionable players. The fact that Legacy looks really appealing is cause for
concern it means more people are going to play it, it probably means more players are
going to be sucked in, absorbed completely into the world. And if you re fully bought-in
to this world, if you re not playing a game so much as imagining yourself within it, you
re not going to be on the lookout for sus shit like goblin coding. It s the same as
film if you re captivated by something, especially if you re emotionally invested, it s a lot
easier for problematic messaging to go unnoticed. And when that messaging goes unnoticed, when
you ve got a pool of viewers or players drinking the kool-aid without a second thought that
s when it does the most damage. In addition this recent social media bump
isn t the first time Hogwarts Legacy has trended for controversial reasons. A bit over a year
ago, lead designer Troy Leavitt was outed as a Gamergater, and general anti-SJW content
creator. He subsequently resigned - so, name checks out, I guess but this is a game based
on the work of a bigot, and for most of its development, led by another. There s probably
going to be more dicey shit here than the stuff they showed us in the trailers. So,
am I saying that everyone who plays this game is going to take one look at the goblins plotting
to destroy the noble wizard race and suddenly turn into an antisemite? Obviously not, that
d be stupid! But this does have the potential to normalise insensitive stereotypes in the
minds of many less-aware players. And that isn t nothing.
If you re watching this, and you re on the fence about trying this one out when it drops?
Hey, do whatever you want but, just do that while being aware of what you re supporting,
and what your support could be amplifying. Perhaps there is no ethical consumption under
capitalism but that doesn t mean all consumption is equally unethical. Personally, I d be lying
if I said that I had no interest whatsoever in playing Legacy I love free-roam RPGs, I
ve spent thousands of hours playing them, and like many a Brit my age, I grew up fantasising
about the very setting this game brings to life in such tantalising detail. I re-read
those books over and over, not for the plot, just to feel like I was in them. But at the
end of the day, this is just a game. In the grand scheme of things, not playing a cool-looking
game is hardly some big sacrifice. And if there s even the smallest chance that my not
playing it will reduce Rowling s platform by a fraction of a fraction of a percent,
or help in some tiny way any one of the communities who ve borne the brunt of these aggressions?
Then that s a choice I m delighted to make. But that s about it. I hope some of you, at
least, were interested in hearing my general take on Hogwarts Legacy, the discourse surrounding
it, and the danger it may pose by actually being good. If you didn t, then don t fret.
Next video s gonna be a back-to-Pillar of Garbage-basics kinda deal, we re heading back
to the Yostverse, so drop a like if you re excited for that, or even if you re not, a
like d be pretty gosh darn sweet, and big shoutout to all my Patrons onscreen now great
to see some new names, thanks so much for the support and especially to Kevin Douglas
and Ian Fyfield.